Lightning in the Bowl

Mara stood outside the funeral home, her thumb hovering over her iphone. Three missed calls from her mother, two from work, and one text from him: 'I'm sorry about your father.' She deleted it without reading the rest.

Her father's hat sat on the passenger seat—a brown fedora he'd worn every Sunday to church, even during his affair with the woman from the bakery. Mara had found out last year, scrolling through his old ipad while he slept in the hospital. The hypocrisy still tasted like ash.

Inside, the reception was suffocating. People hugged her with practiced sympathy, their eyes flickering toward the open bar. Mara escaped to the bathroom, where a goldfish swam in desperate circles in a bowl on the counter. Probably some centerpiece from the catering company. She watched it mouth at the glass, trapped and unseen, while she fixed her mascara in the mirror.

'He was a good man,' her aunt had said earlier. Mara had nodded, swallowed the truth, and excused herself to check her phone.

Lightning cracked the sky outside, illuminating the room's cheap drapery. The storm had been brewing all day, heavy and humid, matching the pressure in her chest. She thought about calling Adam—about asking him to come pick her up, about telling him she was ready to forgive whatever unforgivable thing he'd done three months ago. But then she'd have to forgive her father too. Some things couldn't be swept away by heavy rains and cowardice.

The goldfish rose to the surface, gulping air. Mara wondered if it remembered the pond it came from, if it dreamed of something larger than this glass prison. She touched the bowl, and the fish darted away.

Her iphone buzzed again. Adam this time: 'I still love you.'

Mara watched the fish return to its endless circling, its memory reset every seven seconds, or however the myth went. Lucky bastard. She turned off her phone and dropped it into her purse, then carried the goldfish bowl out to her car, through the rain and thunder, toward something that wasn't quite forgiveness but might be the closest thing she could manage.