Chlorine and Regret

The backyard pool shimmered under the August moon, its surface undisturbed until Ellie's emergence broke the glass-still water. At forty-two, she swam nightly—not for exercise, but because the weightlessness made her forget the arthritis that had crept into her joints like an unwanted houseguest.

Inside, David arranged his vitamin supplements on the kitchen counter: D3 for bone health, B-complex for stress, magnesium for sleep. A pharmacopoeia of middle-aged preservation. "You're going to rattle when you walk," Ellie had joked three years ago, when the pills had numbered twelve instead of thirty-two. Now she didn't joke at all.

He watched her through the sliding doors, her silhouette cutting through the blue-lit water. In college, she'd pitched a no-hitter against State. He'd sat in the stands, his heart hammering like a trapped bird, not because he gave a damn about baseball but because he'd already fallen in love with the fierce determination in her eyes when she wound up for the pitch.

The baseball trophy collected dust on their fireplace mantel—Third Place, 2003 Regional Championships. She'd stopped playing after the first miscarriage. Something about the crack of the bat making her flinch, she'd said. Something about the way bases cleared and runners scored while she stood alone on the mound, exposed.

"Your vitamins are on the counter," David said when she came inside wrapped in a towel, smelling of chlorine and summer nights.

Ellie swallowed them without water, methodical as clockwork. "Thanks."

"I got that promotion," he said. "The one in Seattle."

She paused, her hand hovering over the magnesium. "When do you leave?"

"Two weeks. They want me there by the fifteenth."

"That's—the anniversary."

"I know."

The baseball trophy seemed to glow in the fireplace's reflection. The pool lay silent beyond the glass.

"Will you come back?" she asked, and for the first time in three years, something like hope moved beneath the careful blankness of her expression.

David looked at his wife—really looked at her—at the woman who'd pitched with fire in her veins, who'd buried their child and their marriage without complaint, who swallowed pills prescribed by doctors who couldn't fix grief.

"They've got great salmon runs up there," he said. "And a baseball team. The Mariners."

"I hate Seattle," she said, but her hand moved toward his across the cold granite counter.

"I know," David said, turning his palm upward to catch hers. "I was hoping you'd help me hate it too."

Outside, the pool reflected two moons—the real one overhead, and its twin trembling on the water's surface. Somewhere in the distance, a baseball game crackled through a neighbor's radio, the announcer's voice rising with each pitch, calling out balls and strikes, measuring out the remainder of a game, of a season, of the time they had left to decide whether this marriage would survive or whether, like a poorly executed pitch, it would signal the end of the inning and walk away from the plate forever.