Deleted Messages
Margot stood at the edge of the apartment complex pool, clutching her iPhone like a lifeline. The blue glow of the screen illuminated her face in the gathering dusk. Three unread messages from David. She knew what they said without opening them—I'm sorry, let's talk, please come home.
A calico cat slunk through the pool gate, its collar jingling. It approached Margot with the confidence of something that knew exactly what it wanted, winding around her ankles. She'd seen it before—belonged to the woman in 4B who'd told her, weeks ago, that David had been leaving their building at odd hours.
"You knew," Margot said to the cat. It blinked at her, unimpressed.
Her thumb hovered over the delete button. Not the messages—those could wait. She meant everything. The shared playlists. The five years of texts. The life they'd built in apartment 7C, where she'd learned to sleep through his tossing and turning, where they'd decided—just last month—to start trying for a baby.
Someone cannonballed into the pool. Water sprayed Margot's legs, beading on her jeans. The cat hissed and scrambled away, vanishing into the bushes like a secret.
That's when it hit her: secrets were easy. Keeping them, finding them, living with them. The hard part was the aftermath—the choice to forgive or to break, to stay or to leave. She'd been making that choice every day since she'd seen his phone light up with another woman's name, had been choosing it over and over in her head, and somehow she was still standing here.
Margot tapped the screen. The messages disappeared. Then she dialed her mother, a number she hadn't called in six months—not since her mom had asked about David, and Margot had lied and said everything was perfect.
"Mom?" she said when the line connected. "Can I come stay with you for a while?"
Her voice didn't shake. That surprised her almost as much as the answer that followed, the simple yes that felt like both an ending and something else entirely—something she couldn't name yet but thought, vaguely, might be hope.