Vitamin Deficiency

Emma sat at her desk staring at the plastic bottle of vitamin D supplements. The recommended daily allowance. The minimum required to function. She wondered if there was an equivalent for marriages.

Her phone buzzed. David. Again.

She'd been eating spinach salads for lunch every day since the affair began—as if the dark greens could somehow compensate for the moral rot spreading through her life. Her coworker Sarah had commented yesterday that Emma looked 'radiant.' Emma had almost laughed. Radiant wasn't the word. Radiant was for women who slept eight hours and didn't keep secrets.

'Drinks tonight?' David's message read. Simple. Clean.

Emma typed 'I can't,' deleted it, typed 'I shouldn't,' deleted that too. The cursor blinked like a tiny judgment.

At 7 PM, she found herself at the community pool anyway. Her nightly ritual since David's first text three weeks ago. Lap swimming, the water washing away the day's accumulated lies. Back and forth, counting strokes like penance.

Tonight the pool was empty except for an older man in the lane beside her. They fell into an awkward rhythm—Emma swimming faster, trying to outpace whatever reflection awaited in the locker room mirrors.

She surfaced after her final lap, gasping, and saw him watching her. Something in his face shifted—recognition, maybe. Or was it pity?

'You're the new VP's wife,' he said. Not a question.

Emma's stomach dropped. 'I prefer Emma.'

'Right. Emma.' He paused. 'He mentioned you. At the shareholders' meeting. Said you were understanding about his late nights.'

Understanding. The word landed like a stone in the chlorinated air between them.

'His assistant helps with that,' Emma said finally. 'With understanding.'

The man's expression didn't change. But something in his eyes did—an acknowledgment of complicity. They were all swimming in the same murky water.

She drove home with the windows down, cold air filling the car. David's sedan was in the driveway. The routine resumed. Dinner, dishes, the vitamin supplements on the counter. The endless performance of marriage.

In bed that night, David's phone lit up on the nightstand. Emma watched him sleep. She thought about the fox she'd seen last week, slinking through their backyard at dawn—lean, hungry, moving like it owned everything it touched.

She reached for David's phone, then pulled her hand back. Some deficiencies, she realized, weren't about vitamins at all. Some were about knowing exactly what you needed and choosing to starve anyway.