Charging Indicators

Maria found it on the nightstand, the screen glowing with an incoming message preview. His iPhone, forgotten in his rush to the pool.

She shouldn't look. She knew she shouldn't. But her palm hovered over the device, drawn by that terrible gravity that pulls you toward the thing that will break your heart.

*Kat says yes. Saturday works.*

The message preview faded, but the damage was done. Kat. Not Katherine. Not his sister. Just Kat, who could apparently meet on Saturday when Maria believed David was at a conference.

She dropped the phone on the bed as if it burned. Through the sliding glass doors, she watched him swimming laps in the resort pool, his strokes smooth and rhythmic, completely unaware that his life above the surface was fracturing.

They'd come to Barbados to reconnect—or so he'd said. Eight years of marriage, two years of trying to conceive, and suddenly they needed "time apart" to "remember who they were individually." She'd wanted to believe it was about growth, not distance.

Now she understood. The cable trailing from the nightstand to the charging port beside her seemed like a metaphor for everything wrong between them: tethered, connected, yet pulling in opposite directions.

Her phone buzzed. David: *Having a great swim. Join me?*

Maria stood at the threshold, the air conditioning chilling her skin. Outside, the palm trees swayed in a breeze that carried the scent of salt and coconut oil. Other guests lounged in chairs, reading, drinking, living their uncomplicated vacation lives.

She stepped onto the balcony. David waved from the pool, water droplets glistening on his shoulders. He looked happy. He looked like a man who'd just received permission to destroy the best thing in his life.

Maria wrapped her arms around herself. In three days, they'd return home. In four days, he'd meet Kat. In a week, she'd have to decide whether to pretend she hadn't seen the message, whether to salvage something that had been hollowed out from the inside, or whether to finally let go of the edge and start swimming toward something real.

"Coming," she called back, and wondered if he heard the way the word cracked in half.