Last Lap

The pool was empty at 6 PM, exactly how Mara liked it. She'd been coming here since Thomas left, since the apartment became too quiet with just the orange tomcat glowering from his perch on the refrigerator. Thomas had taken the dog—Barnaby, that traitorous golden retriever who'd looked at her with equal parts pity and accusation when she'd told him she couldn't do it anymore. Couldn't do the marriage, couldn't do the pretending that everything was fine.

Now she spent her evenings swimming laps, the only place her brain truly shut off. Underwater, the world reduced to the rhythmic sound of her own breath, the burn of her muscles, the blue tile blurring into nothingness. No phone calls. No well-meaning friends asking if she was okay. No Thomas texting about Barnaby's vet appointments, as if she cared.

Tonight the sky through the skylights was that particular orange of things ending—sunsets, spent campfires, the last good day of a vacation. She finished her laps and rested at the edge, breathing hard, watching her fingers prune in the water.

"You're here late," said a voice.

Mara turned. It was the older man who always swam in the next lane, the one with the prosthetic leg and the terrible form. He was sitting on the bench, towel around his neck, holding something bundled in a towel.

"Yeah."

"My wife died," he said, apropos of nothing. "Two years ago this month. I started swimming here after. The water. It helps."

Mara didn't know what to say. "I'm sorry."

"She hated cats," he continued, opening the towel to reveal a small orange kitten, mewling and indignant. "Found him in the parking lot. Can't keep him—my daughter's allergic. You seem like you could use some company."

The kitten blinked at her with mismatched eyes, one blue, one green. Mara looked at it, really looked at it, and felt something crack open inside her chest. Not healed, exactly—she didn't know if that ever happened—but changed.

"I have a cat," she heard herself say. "But he's kind of an asshole."

The old man laughed. "The best ones are."

Mara dried off and took the kitten, whose fur was impossibly soft and who immediately began to purr against her wrist. Outside, the last of the orange light was fading, and for the first time in months, she didn't want to stay in the water forever. She wanted to go home and feed the cats, even the one who glared from the refrigerator. She wanted to call Thomas and ask about Barnaby, not because she wanted to go back, but because the dog had been hers first, once. Some things you don't get to keep. Some things you do.

She would name this one Swim, she thought, and immediately recognized it as a terrible name. She would keep him anyway.