Cable Ties and Empty Pools

The baseball hat sat on the edge of the bathtub like a dead bird. Blue mesh, stained with sweat that wasn't even mine anymore. I'd stolen it from Mark's locker on my last day at the firm, three years ago, when we were both still pretending we had souls worth saving.

Now the cable guy was in my living room, explaining why my internet had been dead for forty-eight hours. "Somebody cut the line," he said, kneeling beside the wall socket. "Looks like they used cable ties. Professional job."

My stomach did that familiar lurch—the same one I'd get whenever a partner's door clicked shut behind me.

"Bear with me," the cable guy continued, oblivious. "This is gonna take a minute."

Bear. The word hit me like physical violence. That's what we called Mark in the litigation department. The bear. Big, lumbering, dangerous when cornered, but mostly just wanted to be left alone to lick his wounds and nurse his single malt. We'd laughed about it at happy hours, invented whole mythologies around his nickname. The bear hibernates. The bear attacks when provoked. The bear knows where the bodies are buried.

Now Mark was gone. Two weeks after he blew the whistle on the pharmaceutical client—the one whose drugs caused strokes in teenagers—he'd disappeared. His apartment was empty. His brother said he'd mentioned going camping.

"Ma'am?" The cable guy was looking at me. "You okay?"

I realized I was gripping the bathroom doorframe so hard my knuckles were white. "Fine. Just... tired."

He returned to his work. I went into the bathroom and picked up the baseball hat. It still smelled like him—cigarettes and expensive cologne and the particular metallic tang of desperation that clung to all of us in those final months. Inside the brim, I found what I'd forgotten I'd hidden there: a folded photograph from the company retreat. Mark and me, drunk on cheap wine, arms around each other's shoulders, both of us smiling like we didn't know we were already dead.

On the back, in his handwriting: *We don't have to bear this forever.*

"All set," the cable guy called from the living room. "You should have service now."

I walked to the window. Down below, in the parking lot, a black sedan idled. Two men sat inside, watching the building. They'd been there since Monday.

The baseball hat fit perfectly, like it had been waiting for me all along. I packed a bag—cash, passport, the photograph. Mark was right. We didn't have to bear it forever. Some things, you eventually learn to stop carrying.