Disconnect

The iPhone buzzed against the nightstand, its screen illuminating the empty side of the bed where David used to sleep. Maya had stopped reaching for it in the mornings. No good morning texts. No check-ins during lunch. Just the cold blue light reminding her that their seven-year marriage had been reduced to digital silence.

She stood in the home office they'd painted together that spring they were so sure they'd start a family. Now it was just boxes. The Ethernet cable lay coiled on the desk like a black snake, disconnected from the router, from the life they'd built.

"You're always somewhere else," David had said, the night he left. "Even when you're here."

Maya picked up the framed photo from the shelf: their first date at a baseball game, both of them grinning like idiots, mustard on her chin, his arms around her shoulders. They'd talked that night until dawn, about everything and nothing, about the goldfish she'd won at a carnival when she was eight and how it had lived for seven years because she refused to let it die the way everyone said it would.

"That's us," David had whispered against her hair. "We're gonna outlive them all."

Now the goldfish bowl sat on her kitchen counter, its solitary inhabitant — a rescue from her brother's move — swimming in endless circles. She wondered if it remembered other waters, if it felt the walls closing in, or if fish simply forgot what they couldn't have.

Her phone buzzed again. A notification from her padel league: Thursday match at 7. She and David had joined together, played mixed doubles every week until last month. Her partner now was Mark from accounting, kind and unhappily married, whose hand lingered a second too long when they switched sides during changeovers.

Maya typed a response: *Can't make it this week.*

She opened her texts with David. The last message was from three weeks ago: *I think we need to talk.* Before that, a string of conversations that had grown shorter over time, like waves receding from shore, until there was nothing left but the sand where the ocean used to be.

Her thumb hovered over the keyboard. She could call. She could ask him to come over, to try again, to rebuild what they'd broken. They'd been happy once. They'd loved each other once.

The goldfish broke the surface, its mouth opening and closing in silent observation.

Maya set the phone down, screen dark, and began sealing the first box.