Salt Water and B-12

She cut her hair in the bathroom sink at midnight. The long strands that David had always run his fingers through—the ones he said reminded him of wheat fields in summer—circled the drain before she washed them away.

The dog, Buster, stared from the doorway, his tail giving a tentative thump against the doorframe. David's dog, really. A rescue who still flinched at sudden movements and loud voices, a creature of damaged attachments. They understood each other now.

"Vitamin D deficiency," the doctor had said, looking at her bloodwork with professional concern. "Seasonal affective disorder. Take these supplements. Get more sunlight."

She'd laughed. The problem wasn't the season.

The affair had been over for months. David had moved out. Buster slept on her side of the bed now. She'd discovered that running until her lungs burned helped—sometimes. Other times, the rhythm of her feet on pavement just emphasized the emptiness of the house.

Her sister kept inviting her to dinner parties. "You need to get out there," she'd say, like happiness was something that could be found like lost keys. "I met this guy—a friend of a friend. He's really great."

Instead, she drove to the ocean at dawn, before anyone else was awake. The water temperature was barely sixty degrees. The cold shocked her system in a way that nothing else could.

Swimming out past the breakers, where the ocean turned that deep, impossible blue, she could almost forget. The salt stung her eyes—freshly cried, anyway—and the rhythm of her breathing, the pull against the water, demanded absolute presence. No room for the past. No room for the missed calls from David saying he'd made a mistake. No room for the vitamins she forgot to take.

This morning, something shifted. Maybe it was the way the light hit the water. Maybe it was the way Buster greeted her when she returned, smelling of salt and exhaustion, his tail doing full circles now. Maybe it was simply time.

She looked at herself in the hallway mirror. The short hair revealed her face—not the face David had fallen in love with, but her own. Stronger. Different.

The vitamins sat on the counter, untouched. She reached for them, then paused, and instead opened the drawer where she'd tossed the postcard from her sister.

"I'll come," she said aloud to the empty room. Buster lifted his head, ears perked.

Not for the guy. For the possibility of something else. Something that wasn't this house full of ghosts and ocean mornings.

She swallowed the vitamin with a glass of water. Then she called her sister.