Laps in the Dark

The pool opened at 4:30 AM. That was the only time Marcus could swim without seeing the ghost of her face in the water's reflection. He'd been doing it for six months—since the funeral, since the doctor handed him a bottle of **vitamin** D supplements and told him grief manifested physically sometimes.

He swallowed one each morning with tap water. Placebo, probably. Like the **swimming** itself.

Marcus was fifty-four, a division VP at a consultancy firm built like a **pyramid**—thousands of junior associates supporting the handful of partners at the top. He'd spent thirty-two years climbing it. Elena had hated how it consumed him. She'd died while he was at a team-building retreat in Scottsdale, learning to build trust through obstacle courses. The irony wasn't lost on him.

The water was always colder at this hour. His body remembered each stroke, even as his mind drifted into the twilight between sleep and waking. This was where he could admit what he couldn't say to his therapist, his children, his mirror:

He'd reached the top of the pyramid. The corner office, the equity, the generations of men before him who'd sacrificed families for the same view. And it had cost him Elena's laugh, her warmth, the way she'd hummed while cooking Sunday dinners.

The vitamin bottle sat on his bathroom counter, half-full. He kept taking them because she would have wanted him to. Because somewhere in the decade of autopilot mornings, he'd forgotten how to want anything for himself.

Marcus touched the pool's edge, breath ragged. Fifty-six laps. He'd have to shower, swallow another pill, put on the suit that cost more than his father earned in a year, and ascend to the pyramid's peak again.

But for thirty more seconds, he floated. Weightless. And if he closed his eyes, he could almost believe she was swimming beside him.