What We bury in the garden

Emma stood in the doorway of their bedroom, watching David pack his suitcase with the quiet precision of a professional spy. He'd been good at secrets—she'd learned that too late. The irony was she'd spent three years as an actual intelligence officer before quitting to open her bookstore, and somehow she'd missed the most obvious operation happening in her own marriage.

"You're leaving," she said, not a question.

"The spinach is wilting in the crisper," he replied, which was his way of saying everything had its expiration date. They'd always had this communication style—circumlocutions and deflections, like a pair of sphinxes guarding their respective mysteries with riddles neither could solve.

She remembered the dinner party last month, when his colleague Lena had kept laughing too loudly at his jokes. Emma had felt like a fox watching from the edge of someone else's territory, hungry but unwilling to compete for scraps. That night, David had come to bed smelling like someone else's perfume, and Emma had lain awake beside him, feeling like a zombie going through the motions of a life that had already died.

"I'm sorry," David said now, zipping his bag.

"Sorry you're leaving, or sorry I found out?"

"Both."

He walked past her without touching her shoulder, the way he used to when they were happy. She followed him downstairs, watched him walk out to his car. The neighborhood was quiet—too many married couples sleeping in separate beds, too many people pretending.

She went to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. The spinach sat there, green and wilting, a testimony to all the meals they'd never share. She took it out, walked to the backyard, and buried it in the garden where nothing grew anyway. Tomorrow, she'd plant something new. Maybe something thorny. Maybe nothing at all. But at least it would be hers.