Dead Things Float

The padel court echoed with the hollow thwack of racquet against ball, a rhythm that had become the soundtrack of their vacation. Elena watched from the lounge chair as Marcus played with strangers—German tourists who laughed easily, beers sweating on the sidelines. She felt like a zombie, hollowed out by eighteen months of grief counseling and the slow erosion of their marriage into something polite and performative.

Her iPhone buzzed with another work email. Marcus had told her to leave it in the room, but she couldn't. The device was her lifeline to a version of herself that still functioned—still capable, still needed. The woman who could negotiate contracts and manage teams, not this shell who couldn't remember the last time she'd felt anything resembling desire.

The pool stretched before her, an impossible blue. Dead things float, she remembered from some biology class, and wasn't that the truth? She was floating, suspended in chlorinated water and sun that felt too hot on skin that felt too little.

"You're not eating," Marcus said, dropping into the chair beside her. He pointed at her lunch—the spinach salad she'd ordered because the old Elena would have cared about antioxidants, about fitting into her clothes, about performing wellness even in the middle of falling apart.

"Not hungry." She didn't look at him. Instead, she watched a woman across the pool, young and drunk, laughing with her head thrown back, throat exposed. When was the last time she'd felt that loose? That unguarded?

"We came here to reconnect, El." Marcus's voice had that edge it got when he was trying not to sound frustrated. "To try."

"Try what?" She turned to him then. "Try to pretend our daughter didn't die? Try to fuck like we used to when everything hurts? What exactly are we supposed to be doing here besides lying to each other by a pool in Tenerife?"

He flinched. Good. Something landed.

"I'm going to the room," he said stiffly. "Alone."

She watched him walk away, then picked up her iPhone. The screen reflected her face—a stranger's face, really. Some dead thing that hadn't had the decency to stay buried. The spinach wilted in the heat as she typed out a response to her boss, arranging meetings for next week, already mentally preparing to be the person everyone needed her to be.

The zombie that could pass for alive, if nobody looked too close.