Palm Shadows, Blue Screens

The resort pool shimmered like liquid turquoise, its surface broken only by the solitary figure moving through lap after relentless lap. Elena watched from the lounge chair, nursing a drink that had gone warm twenty minutes ago. Above her, palm fronds whispered against the sky, casting lacy shadows across her legs, her phone, her marriage.

Marcus had been in the water for an hour. His iPhone lay face-up on the small table between them, its screen dark but somehow screaming. Three notifications had lit it up since he'd disappeared beneath the water's surface. Each time, Elena had found herself reaching for it, fingers hovering like a thief over someone else's wallet, then pulling back. Not her business. Not yet.

The day was perfect—eighty-two degrees, cloudless, the scent of coconut sunscreen and expensive chlorine hanging in the thick tropical air. Their fifth anniversary trip. The one they'd both said would save them.

"You going to join me?" Marcus stood at the pool's edge, water dripping from his hair, his chest. He looked like the man she'd fallen in love with in a crowded airport bar seven years ago. The same crooked smile, the same eyelash that curved just wrong on the left side.

He reached for his phone, shook water from his hand, and unlocked it with a thumbprint Elena couldn't watch.

"In a minute." She gestured vaguely at the palm trees, at the perfect blue emptiness above them. "Just enjoying the view."

The lie sat between them like something dead. Marcus's phone buzzed again—short, quick. His expression didn't change, but something in his shoulders did. A subtle armor going up.

"Work," he said, not meeting her eyes. "I have to take this."

He walked toward the cluster of palms at the edge of the property, already speaking in low, urgent tones. Elena watched his back recede, watched the palm fronds sway and part around him, swallowing him whole. The pool lay still before her, its surface reflecting nothing but sky, perfectly mirroring the hole opening in her chest.

She picked up her own phone, scrolled through photos from five years ago—Marcus holding her hand across a restaurant table, Marcus laughing, Marcus looking at her like she was the only thing in the world. Then she opened the airline app, searched for the next flight home, and pressed book.