Electric Water

Margaret stood at the edge of the hotel pool, Virginia summer humidity clinging to her skin like a second, unwelcome marriage. The water was still—unnaturally so, as if holding its breath alongside her. She'd come here for the writers' retreat, determined to finish the novel that had been living in her head for seven years, longer than she'd been with Richard.

The first flash of lightning splintered the sky, turning the pool's surface into a fractured mirror. Margaret counted. One, two, three—thunder rattled the deck chairs. Six miles away. She remembered counting thunder with her father, the way he'd made a game of storms to keep her from being afraid. He'd been gone three years now. She'd stopped counting.

She'd stopped swimming, too.

The pool called to her anyway. Margaret kicked off her sandals, let her silk robe slide to the concrete. At forty-seven, her body was a map of small griefs: the stretch marks from the baby she'd lost, the surgery scar from the appendix that almost killed her at thirty, the softening middle that Richard said made her "comfortable to hold." That was the year she stopped wearing the swimsuit.

Another flash. Closer this time. The water seemed to electrify with light, rippling with phantom currents.

Margaret remembered the night Richard asked for a divorce—not during a fight, not after some betrayal, but over takeout Thai food on a Tuesday. He'd said it so gently: "I think we've both been swimming underwater for a long time, Margie. I need to breathe."

The thunder arrived almost immediately. The storm was here.

She didn't move. She let the rain come, warm and heavy, running down her bare arms and legs. The pool surface broke apart with each raindrop, thousands of tiny explosions. Lightning struck somewhere nearby—the air tasted of ozone and possibility. For the first time in years, Margaret didn't count the distance.

She stepped into the pool. The water was shockingly cold, waking something in her chest that had been asleep since she was twenty-five and believed every story could have a happy ending if she just wrote it carefully enough.

She began to swim.