Papaya at the Edge

The cat watched from the balcony railing, its golden eyes tracking Elena's movements as she circled the pool. Dawn was still an hour away, the water flat and obsidian-dark in the pre-dawn gray.

She wasn't running anymore—that had stopped three years ago when Marcus died—but some mornings her feet still carried her here, to his brother's house, to this pool where they'd all spent that last July together.

"You're up early."

Elena didn't turn. David's voice came from the terrace doors, sleep-rough and low. She heard the slide of glass, the soft tread of bare feet on stone.

"Couldn't sleep."

He joined her at the edge, two glasses in hand. The papaya juice caught the first light bleeding into the sky—tropical and incongruous against the desert backdrop. Marcus had loved the stuff. Had bought it by the crate during those final months, as if consuming enough of something vibrant and living might somehow reverse what was happening inside him.

"Three years today," David said, handing her a glass.

"I know."

"You never talk about him."

"What's there to say?" Elena's reflection rippled in the pool. "Your brother. My husband. You want me to what? Replay the hospice weeks? The morphine dreams? The way he looked at me that last day like I was someone he used to know?"

David set his glass down on the coping. "I want you to stop treating me like I'm him."

The silence stretched, charged and terrible.

"I'm not."

"You are." His hand found hers, his fingers lacing through with practiced familiarity. "You come here at dawn. You drink papaya juice. You look at me with his eyes."

"David—"

"I'm not him, El. And I'm done being his ghost."

He walked back to the house, leaving her alone with the cat, the juice warming in her hand, the pool reflecting a sky that had turned the color of fresh bruises. Elena realized with sudden clarity that she'd been running from the wrong thing all along.

She set down the glass and followed him inside.