Glass Bowl Surveillance

Margot had become a spy in her own marriage. It hadn't started that way—just small things, really. Marcus leaving his phone face-down. The bathroom door locked during showers. The way he'd started humming songs she'd never heard before.

Tonight, she watched him through the reflection of the kitchen window as he stood by the goldfish bowl on the counter. The fish—a carp they'd called Wolfgang because Marcus found it hilarious—circled endlessly in its glass prison. Just like her, she thought. Just like both of them.

Marcus peeled an orange, the citrus scent cutting through the stale kitchen air. He always ate them the same way: tearing the peel in one long spiral, letting the juice run down his wrist. His mother had taught him that. Or had it been someone else?

"You're staring again," he said, not turning around.

"Just thinking."

"About what?"

About the credit card charge for a boutique hotel three towns over. About the woman named Elena who kept calling his work line. About how every story he told her now seemed to have holes you could drive through.

"About how we used to be happy," she said instead.

The dog, Buster, thumped his tail against the cabinet door. He'd been Marcus's idea—something to care for together, he'd said. Now Buster slept mostly in Margot's home office, following her from room to room like he understood something had shifted beneath the house's foundation.

Marcus turned, orange half-eaten in his hand. "We can be happy again, Margot. If you'd stop looking for things that aren't there."

"Am I?" She stepped closer, close enough to smell the orange on his breath, close enough to see the tiny hesitation in his eyes. "Or am I the only one finally seeing what's actually here?"

Wolfgang the goldfish broke the surface, gulping air. A terrible sound, like drowning.

Marcus set down the orange. "What do you want from me?"

"I want," she said, and her voice surprised her with its steadiness, "to stop being a spy in my own life. I want either the truth or a marriage worth lying for."

The silence stretched between them, filled only by the refrigerator's hum and Buster's worried whine. Outside, something fell—a branch, maybe, or perhaps just the sound of a different kind of surveillance ending.

Margot waited. Whatever came next, at least she wouldn't have to guess anymore.