Learning to Swim

The pool was empty at 5 AM—that was the point. Elena moved through the water with practiced strokes, the only sound the rhythmic splash of her arms cutting the surface. Thirty laps. Every morning. Since the funeral.

She'd always hated swimming. Too much vulnerability. Too much reliance on something you couldn't control. But after Marcus died, she'd found herself here, day after day, as if the water could wash away the things she'd never said to him.

A figure appeared at the pool's edge, backlit by the harsh fluorescent lights. Her father—Marcus's father—stood there in his ridiculous bull-shaped slippers, a housewarming gift she'd given him eight years ago. He held two steaming mugs.

"You're going to drown yourself," he said, not unkindly.

"I'm fine, Dad."

"You've lost weight. You're pulling out your hair." He gestured to the bathroom counter, where she'd been leaving increasingly alarming clumps each morning. Stress shedding, the doctor called it. Grief, she knew.

She pulled herself from the water, wrapping a towel around her shivering frame. The pool area smelled of chlorine and childhood summers, of things that were supposed to be innocent but never really were.

"Your mother sent these." He passed her a mug of hot chocolate. "She said you used to live on this stuff when you were little."

"What does she want?"

"She wants to know if you're coming to Thanksgiving." His voice caught. "We're doing the turkey. Marcus's recipe."

The name hung between them like smoke. Marcus—her husband, his son—who'd overdosed in their bathroom three months ago. Marcus, whose departure had left them all drowning in different oceans.

"I can't," she said. "The house—it's still full of his—"

"Bullshit," her father-in-law said softly. She'd never heard him curse before. "It's full of your life too, El. Both of you."

He sat on the bench, the bull slippers absurd against his tired face. "You know what Marcus told me the week before he—the week before?"

She shook her head, water dripping from her hair onto the concrete deck.

"He said you were the strongest person he'd ever known. Said you swam through things that would've drowned anyone else." He looked at her with eyes that were so like his son's. "But he also said you needed to learn that sometimes you have to stop fighting the current and just let yourself float."

The water lapped against the pool walls, a gentle, relentless heartbeat.

"I don't know how to float," she whispered.

"Then we learn," he said. "Together."

He extended a hand, and for the first time since the funeral, Elena reached for it.