Goldfish in the Empty Pool

Maria stood at the edge of the drained swimming pool, her work hat pulled low against the midday glare. The homeowners had left in a hurry — foreclosure, divorce, some catastrophe that made people abandon lives like shed skin. She'd seen it before in this line of work. Cable disconnections were always the last to go.

She was supposed to be cutting the line to the house, but her radio had been dead since noon, and nobody was answering at dispatch. The silence out here in the valley felt heavy, like the air before a storm.

That's when she saw it.

A goldfish, orange and impossibly bright against the cracked blue tile of the empty pool, flopping in what remained of the murky water at the deep end. Someone had left it behind, too.

Maria found herself sliding down the concrete slope, work boots crunching, until she reached the shallow puddle. The fish gasped, its mouth opening and closing in silent desperation. She remembered finding her own goldfish, Bubbles, in similar straits when she was seven — her mother had forgotten to feed it during the weeks after her father left.

She scooped the fish into her hard hat, filled it from the puddle, and carried it back to her truck like it was something precious. Later, she'd transfer it to a large water bottle she'd brought for lunch. Later, she'd drive it twenty miles to the pond behind the community center where she'd released countless forgotten pets over the years.

But for now, Maria sat on the tailgate of her truck in the empty driveway, watching the goldfish swim confused circles in her hat, and thought about how many things got left behind when people moved on to whatever came next. She radioed dispatch to say she was done for the day. Then she buckled her hat — passenger and fish — into the seat beside her, and drove away from a house that wasn't hers anymore than the life she'd been living for thirty years.