The Wellness Retreat

The fourth day of the corporate wellness retreat found Mara standing alone on the hotel balcony, peeling an orange with aggressive precision. Below her, twenty of her colleagues were doing sunrise yoga on the beach, their movements synchronized in that particular way that happens when everyone is trying desperately to appear genuinely committed to mandatory self-improvement.

Her phone buzzed. David. Again. She'd stopped answering his calls three days ago, when he'd texted that he'd "accidentally" run into his ex at a coffee shop. The coincidence was too perfectly timed, too utterly convenient. It was the straw that broke the marriage's already fractured back.

"You should take more vitamin D," the company's wellness coach had told her during her mandatory consultation yesterday, examining her pale skin and tired eyes with predatory concern. "Women your age, the levels just drop off. You'll feel better."

Mara had wanted to scream. Vitamin D wasn't going to fix her life. None of this would.

After dinner, the resort had hired entertainment—a palm reader who sat in the corner of the ballroom, her table draped in purple fabric, her fingers heavy with rings. Mara had found herself drawn there almost against her will, sinking into the chair across from her.

The woman had taken Mara's hand, traced the lines with practiced detachment, then looked up with eyes that suddenly seemed ancient.

"You've been carrying something for a long time," she'd said quietly. "And you think if you put it down, you'll disappear."

Mara had pulled her hand back as if burned.

Now, standing on the balcony in the predawn dark, she took off her hat—the wide-brimmed straw thing she'd bought specifically for this retreat, trying to embody some version of herself she'd thought she was supposed to become. The hat had been expensive. The retreat had been expensive. The marriage counseling sessions had been expensive. The supplements, the therapy, the aggressive pursuit of some imagined better version of herself—all of it, so expensive.

She watched the sun begin to rise over the ocean, the sky turning that particular shade of orange that makes everything feel momentarily possible. The kind of orange that suggests endings might also be beginnings.

Her phone buzzed again. This time, she looked.

It was her mother. "Your father died in his sleep. The bear market took everything he had left, and I think he just gave up."

Mara stood there for a long time, the orange peel still in her hand, its juices sticky on her fingers. She could go back inside, pack her bags, catch the earliest flight home. She could call David back, or not. She could quit the job that demanded she attend retreats to find herself. She could simply exist, without constantly trying to become something else.

She threw the orange peel over the balcony and watched it fall into the darkness below. Then she went inside and began to pack.