Dead Pool at Midnight

The pool was black as ink, save for the single security light rippling across the surface. Elena sat on the edge, legs dangling in water that should have been heated but wasn't. Three months since David died, and still she found herself here at midnight, unable to sleep, drawn to the place where they'd scattered his ashes.

She adjusted his baseball cap on her head—the Mets one he'd worn since college, sweat-stained and fraying at the brim. It smelled like him still, or maybe she'd just convinced herself it did. That was the thing about grief. It made you hoard scents like a desperate animal.

Her phone buzzed. The office betting pool. Elias wanted to know if she was in for the weekend games. The baseball playoffs. David had loved baseball, had lived and died with every pitch. Elena had never cared about sports, but after the accident, she'd joined the pool. It was something. A thread connecting her to who she'd been before.

She typed: Not tonight.

The water lapped against her calves. David had wanted his ashes here because they'd met at this pool during a corporate retreat, both of them drunk on cheap champagne and the thrill of breaking rules. He'd been wearing that ridiculous baseball hat, trying to impress her with stories about his high school glory days. She'd pretended to care.

God, she'd pretended to care about so much.

The truth was, she'd stopped loving him two years before the crash. She'd stayed because leaving felt like admitting failure, because their friends expected it, because she didn't know who she was without being David's wife. Now she was a widow, everyone's tragic hero, mourning a marriage that had been hollow for years.

She pulled the hat off and held it over the water. Her hands didn't shake.

"I hated baseball," she whispered to the pool, to the darkness, to whatever part of him might still be listening. "I hated that you never asked what I wanted. I hated that I was too cowardly to say it."

She let go.

The hat didn't make a sound when it hit the water. Just slipped under, gone. For a moment, Elena considered diving after it—letting the black water take her too. The thought wasn't scary anymore. It was just...

A choice.

She stood up, dripping, shivering in the cold night air. Behind her, the hotel pool glimmered like a wound that wouldn't close. Ahead, the parking lot was empty.

Elena walked toward her car and didn't look back.