The Vitamin Bottle on the Windowsill

Emma placed the vitamin bottle on her office windowsill, watching the morning light catch the amber plastic. Three months since Marcus left, and she was still taking his supplements. A small, daily act of quiet rebellion against the empty space beside her in bed.

Her hair had started showing gray at the temples last week—not the distinguished silver of storybooks, but the chaotic aftermath of stress. She'd considered dyeing it, then decided against it. Let the damage show, she thought. Let it be a map of what survived.

The knock on her door shouldn't have surprised her. Colin, her junior analyst, stood there with his beanie pulled low—hat hair flattened against his forehead in tragic tufts. "They're restructuring," he said, not meeting her eyes. "Your position. They're eliminating it."

Outside, lightning split the sky, illuminating the dust motes dancing in her office air. The storm had been brewing for days, much like the rumors she'd chosen to ignore. Some part of her had known this was coming, had felt it in the way her director avoided her gaze in meetings, in the way her inbox had grown strangely silent.

"When?" she asked, and her voice didn't sound like her own.

"End of month. They're offering a package."

Emma nodded, already calculating. The savings account. Marcus's half of the house. The supplements she didn't need but kept taking anyway, like a prayer to a god who'd stopped listening.

Colin hovered in the doorway, uncomfortable with her calm. "I'm sorry, Emma."

"Don't be," she said, picking up the vitamin bottle. The plastic was warm from the sunlight. "I was planning to leave anyway. Just hadn't worked up the courage."

Later that evening, as thunder rolled across the city, she packed her office box. The vitamins went into her bag. The lightning flashed again, and for the first time in months, she didn't think about Marcus. She thought about the way her gray hair caught the light, about the junior analyst with his tragic hat hair and his guilty conscience, about how sometimes the universe did your choosing for you.

She left the building without looking back.