The Supplement Protocol

Elena sorted the pills each morning with military precision. The **vitamin** C supplements went in the Monday compartment, the D3 in Tuesday, the B-complex on Wednesday. It was the kind of ritual that made her feel like she had control over something, anything, even as her marriage dissolved around her like sugar in hot tea.

Marcus had always been meticulous too, but in a different way. She'd discovered his surveillance app on their shared laptop three days ago—screenshots of her text messages, location history, call logs. He'd been playing **spy** in their own life, cataloging her movements like she was a person of interest in some investigation she didn't know she was part of. The betrayal stung less than the pettiness of it. If he suspected an affair, he should have asked. Instead, he'd collected evidence in silence, letting the resentment curdle.

Her phone buzzed. Marcus's brother Greg.

"You coming to the game Saturday?" he asked. "Ben's first real **baseball** season since the accident."

Elena touched the jagged scar above her left temple, then ran her fingers through her **hair**—still uneven where the surgeons had shaved it for the staples. The accident had been nine months ago. A drunk driver, a shattered windshield, a week in the hospital. Marcus had visited every day, brought flowers, held her hand. But somewhere in those long hospital afternoons, something between them had calcified. He'd stopped asking how she felt and started watching her instead, as if her recovery were a performance he couldn't quite trust.

"I'll be there," she told Greg.

She placed the vitamin supplements in their compartments with deliberate care. Maybe Marcus wasn't the only one who'd been collecting evidence. She opened her laptop and began compiling her own documentation—years of canceled plans, unreturned conversations, the slow erosion of intimacy that preceded the accident by years. Some surveillance, she decided, was justified.

The Wednesday compartment clicked shut. Tomorrow, she'd tell him she knew about the app. But today, she would watch their son play baseball and pretend the crumbling architecture of their life was still standing.