Electric Fish

The storm outside matched the one in Mara's chest. Lightning cracked across the sky, illuminating the living room where her husband Mark sat hunched over his iPhone, thumbs moving frantically across the screen. He'd been guarding that phone for weeks—taking it to the bathroom, keeping it face down on tables, silencing it whenever she walked into the room.

Their goldfish, Bubbles, floated in its bowl on the windowsill, orange scales catching each flash of lightning. Mara had bought Bubbles three years ago, on their fifth anniversary. 'Goldfish have terrible memories,' Mark had joked. 'Every day around the bowl is a new adventure.' They'd laughed then, tangled in sheets hungover from champagne, confident in the infinite stretch of their future.

Now she wondered if their marriage had become like Bubbles—swimming in tight circles, forgetting everything after each revolution, sustained only by the artificial light of manufactured routine.

'Mark.' Her voice sounded thin, worn.

He didn't look up. 'Mmm?'

'Who are you texting?'

Lightning struck again, closer this time. The power flickered.

'Work,' he said, but his voice cracked.

Mara crossed the room and saw it—the name on his screen before he locked it: SOPHIA. Not a coworker. The name he'd mentioned once at a party, eyes lighting up with something Mara hadn't seen in years. The Something Was Missing speech followed weeks later, delivered with practiced sorrow between Netflix binges and pizza deliveries.

She didn't scream. She didn't cry. She just felt hollowed out, like lightning had struck through her center, leaving only a smoldering absence.

'Sophia?' she whispered.

Mark's shoulders sagged. The phone slipped from his hand, screen cracking against the floorboards. Outside, thunder rolled.

'I'm sorry,' he said to the floorboards, to the walls, to Bubbles swimming obliviously in her bowl.

Mara watched her husband's bent head and felt something incomprehensible—not just loss, but relief. The wondering was over. The goldfish would keep swimming. The lightning would pass. And tomorrow, she'd begin again.