What Remains

The phone vibrated against the white tablecloth. Her iphone, screen cracked at the corner, another silent notification from someone she wouldn't name. I watched her twist a strand of hair — darker now than when we met, the first silver threads emerging at her temples like morning frost on dead grass. She'd stopped plucking them months ago.

The waiter, overeager, refilled our water glasses. I thought about the vitamin supplements in my pocket — prescribed after the scare, the doctor's voice still echoing: "Your body's telling you something, Thomas." My body had been telling me plenty. It had been screaming, actually, in the language of elevated blood pressure and sleepless nights and a persistent metallic taste in my mouth whenever she walked through the door.

"You should charge it," I said, gesturing to her phone. "The cable's in your bag."

She didn't move. "What if I don't want to?"

Outside, lightning fractured the sky. The restaurant went dark for a moment before the emergency lights flickered on. In that brief darkness, I felt her hand brush mine — accidental, perhaps, or perhaps not. The charge between us had always been like that: sudden, unpredictable, capable of illumination or destruction.

"I found the receipt," I said quietly. "The vitamins. They're not for you."

She pulled her hand away. The emergency lights cast everything in a strange amber glow, making the restaurant feel underwater, like we were already drowning in what neither of us would say.

"I'm sorry," she said. And then: "He has a condition. It's genetic."

The thunder came late, a hollow sound that seemed to come from inside me rather than outside. I thought about all the things I hadn't noticed — the late nights, the sudden appointments, the way she'd started keeping her phone face down. The vitamins weren't for memory loss or stress or aging. They were for someone else's child, someone else's future, someone else who mattered more than the life we'd built together.

"Charge your phone," I said again, standing up. "Call him."

She didn't stop me as I walked out into the rain. The lightning had passed, leaving only the steady, quiet downpour of ordinary grief.