Chlorine and Sunlight

The afternoon light hit the water with blinding precision. Eleanor sat at the edge of the pool, legs dangling in the cool blue water, clutching a bottle of vitamin D supplements like they were the last rosary beads on a sinking ship. Her therapist insisted they'd help with the seasonal affective disorder, but she suspected nothing could help with the Richard problem.

"You're always swimming in your own head," he'd told her last night, while packing his suitcase with that calm, methodical cruelty she'd grown to hate. "I can't keep drowning with you."

Now she watched her neighbor's cat—a sleek orange thing that moved like it owned the subdivision—padding along the fence line. The cat stopped, ears pricked forward. Something moved in the bushes behind it. A fox, all rust-colored cleverness and sharp teeth, emerged from the shadows. They stared at each other across the careful suburban boundary, neither moving, both assessing.

She thought about vitamins, about how she'd been taking them religiously for three months. How Richard had joked they were her little personality pills. How she'd laughed because she wanted to be the kind of woman who took vitamins, who had healthy coping mechanisms, who didn't keep her mother's suicide letter in her nightstand.

The cat arched its back and hissed. The fox tilted its head, considering, then turned and slipped back into the undergrowth. The orange cat stood there a moment longer, tail twitching with residual adrenaline, before continuing its patrol along the fence.

Eleanor realized she was holding her breath. She exhaled, finally, and slipped into the pool. The shock of cold water was immediate and absolute. She began swimming laps—stroke, breathe, stroke, breathe—counting them like prayers. Richard was probably halfway to Denver by now. She would have to tell her mother-in-law. She would have to sell the house, or maybe keep it, maybe learn to be alone in it without feeling like she was haunting her own life.

By the time she pulled herself from the water, shivering, the sun had dropped behind the trees. She found the vitamin bottle where she'd left it on the concrete. One pill left. She dry-swallowed it, then. Tomorrow she'd call her doctor and ask for something stronger. Tomorrow she'd figure out who she was when she wasn't Richard's wife, when she wasn't drowning, when she was just a woman in a pool with a cat watching from the fence line and foxes in the woods beyond.

For now, she sat on the edge of the pool and watched the water settle into stillness, her skin drying in the cooling air, perfectly alone.