Drained

The pool had been empty for seven years, and Elena still came every Tuesday. She'd sit on the chaise lounge, run her fingers through her graying hair—still thick, still the one thing about herself she couldn't quite hate—and watch the light move across the cracked concrete bottom.

That's where he'd fallen. Where his head had struck the decorative tile. The police called it an accident. The baseball he'd been tossing—his retirement gift after thirty years at the plant—had rolled into the gutter, evidence of nothing more than a man enjoying his final day of freedom.

She'd asked him, that morning, palm pressed against his chest in bed, "Do you still love me?" And he'd laughed—that dismissive, weary laugh that had become their marriage's native tongue—and said, "What kind of question is that?"

Now a teenage boy vaulted the fence, skateboard in hand. Elena watched him circle the drained pool, testing the acoustics. The echo of his wheels against concrete was the sound of something beginning.

"You know there's water in there," he said, stopping when he saw her. "Metaphorically speaking."

Elena almost smiled. "My husband died here."

The boy's face fell. He gripped his skateboard, looked for an exit.

"It was an accident," she said. "He slipped. Hit his head. I wasn't even here—I was at my sister's, two towns over. The police cleared me of everything." She paused. "He was having an affair. Did I mention that?"

The boy stood frozen.

"She was twenty-three. A bartender. He bought her drinks after his baseball league, told her he was unhappily married. Classic story." Elena stood up, smoothed her dress. "I found the texts after the funeral. Thousands of them. Planning a future. Planning my exit."

The pool seemed to shimmer with impossible water.

"I never told anyone," she said softly. "Not the police. Not his family. Not even the woman." She looked at her hands, palms lined with forty years of holding on, letting go. "Some truths don't need witnesses."

The boy nodded once, then vaulted back over the fence and disappeared.

Elena sat down again. The light had moved. Another Tuesday, another lie folded into the silence at the bottom of the pool, where it would keep forever, gathering dust, waiting for someone to finally fill it with water.