Concrete Heart

The cat had been watching her for three days. A stray calico with one ear missing, sitting on the railing of the third-floor balcony like it understood something she didn't.

"You're judging me," Elena said, not looking up from her wine. The cat remained impassive.

Down by the pool, Mark was laughing with someone else—some woman with yellow hair who touched his arm too easily. Elena had been watching them through the sliding glass door for twenty minutes, nursing the same glass of merlot, feeling something inside her slowly hollow out. This was her fourth evening playing zombie: moving through the motions of dinner preparation and conversation, neither alive nor dead, just undead enough to keep going.

She'd found the texts three weeks ago. Nothing explicit, but the weight of what wasn't said—canceled dates, working late again, can't talk now. The language of someone slowly checking out of a life they'd built together.

The cat meowed, sudden and sharp.

"What?" Elena turned. The animal hopped down, padded to the door, and scratched at the glass. Beyond it, the pool's surface caught the last light—blue and perfect and utterly indifferent. She'd loved that pool once, the way Mark's face looked when he surfaced from the water, slicked back and smiling at her like she was the only thing worth seeing.

Now the woman with yellow hair laughed again, and Mark's face tilted toward her, and Elena wondered how long she'd been haunting a marriage that had already ended.

"Fine," she said.

She slid the door open. The cat bolted past her, streaking toward the stairs. Elena stepped onto the balcony, the evening air cool against her skin. Down at the pool, Mark looked up, startled, as if he'd felt eyes on him and finally registered whose they were.

He didn't wave. He didn't smile. He just stood there, waist-deep in the shallow end, watching her like he'd been caught somewhere he wasn't supposed to be.

Elena turned back inside, closed the door, and poured another glass of wine. The calico was sitting on the counter again, tail curled around its feet, waiting.

"You were right," Elena told it. "I've been dead for months."