The Supplemenal

The bottle of vitamin D pills sat between them on the café table like a small white accusation. Rain streaked the window behind Sarah's head, catching the glow of streetlights in liquid amber.

"You're not actually taking those," Elena said, not a question. She stirred her coffee with deliberate slowness. The cream swirled in patterns that reminded Sarah of the storm cell she'd watched on the radar that morning, tracking its path toward the city where her daughter lived three states away.

"Doctor says I need them," Sarah said. "Forty-five comes for us all, Elena. Even the ones who thought they'd outrun it."

Elena laughed, but it was a sharp thing. "We used to sneak onto your roof during thunderstorms. Remember? Waiting for lightning to strike, convinced we'd catch it in a mason jar if we were brave enough." She'd brought the mason jar to Sarah's wedding. Sat on the gift table like a promise neither of them had kept. Now Elena worked in insurance and Sarah hadn't been on a roof in fifteen years.

"Your messages," Sarah said, and the words felt like pulling teeth. "I haven't been answering them."

"No shit." Elena reached for the vitamin bottle, turned it in her hands. "You know what the plastic surgeon told me last week? That the little lines around my eyes are from smiling. I wanted to say: no, they're from watching my best friend disappear into someone I don't recognize anymore."

A flash of lightning split the sky outside, sudden and violent. The café went dark for a heartbeat before the backup lights hummed to life, casting everything in pale blue.

Sarah's phone vibrated on the table. Her daughter's name lit up the screen.

"Answer it," Elena said, sliding the vitamin bottle toward her. "And take the damn pills. But call me back too. I still have that mason jar."

The phone kept vibrating. Sarah picked it up, and somewhere in the distance, thunder finally arrived.