Where the Lightning Strikes

Martha stood at the kitchen counter, forcing spinach into the colander as if she could wring out the last three years of her marriage along with the water. The storm outside had been building for hours, much like the silence between her and David, who sat at the table reviewing documents he refused to discuss.

"You're eating at your desk again," she said, not really a question.

"Busy." He didn't look up.

The sky outside turned that bruised orange color that comes before something breaks. Martha remembered David wearing that same shade of shirt the night he'd come home smelling of someone else's perfume—the night he'd claimed it was a colleague's birthday celebration, the night she'd stopped believing him but kept pretending anyway.

"There's lightning coming," David said suddenly, finally glancing at the window. "Weather app says severe."

"Everything's severe these days."

She dumped the spinach into a pan, listened to it hiss and surrender, the way she had surrendered her suspicions, her dignity, the fierce independence that had defined her before him. She was swimming through days that felt thick and opaque, unable to find the surface, unable to remember why she'd chosen this particular form of drowning.

"Martha—"

"Don't." She stirred the spinach viciously. "Just don't."

The first lightning flash illuminated the kitchen in stark relief: David's exhausted face, the papers scattered across the table, the half-packed suitcase by the door that he hadn't noticed she'd seen. Another flash, closer now, and the power died, leaving them in darkness punctuated by the storm's violence.

"It's the deposition," David said into the dark. "The malpractice suit. I didn't want to worry you."

Martha laughed, a sharp sound that surprised them both. "Three years of distance, of working late, of smelling like hotel soap, and it's a malpractice suit?"

"There's someone else." The admission came out like vomit—urgent and ugly. "It's been over for months, she—"

Lightning struck so close the kitchen filled with the ozone smell of split atmosphere. In that brief, terrible illumination, Martha saw everything clearly: the lawyer's letter on the table (divorce papers, not malpractice), the second suitcase he'd hidden, the way his hands shook as he reached for her.

"I'm going to my sister's," Martha said when the darkness returned. "The spinach is yours."