Salt Water Memory

The divorce papers sat on the kitchen counter next to a wilting bag of spinach from Tuesday. Mara stood at the sink, watching water run over her hands, remembering how Richard used to wrap his arms around her waist while she did dishes. His face would press into her hair, inhaling the coconut shampoo she'd worn since college.

"Padel tonight?" he'd asked yesterday morning, already lacing his shoes, already halfway out the door. That was them now — parallel lives intersecting only through scheduled activities.

She turned off the faucet. The spinach had gone slimy. Everything did when you ignored it long enough.

The beach near their rental house in Spain that summer — before the promotions, before the fertility treatments that failed quietly in sterile rooms — Richard had been swimming out farther than she'd liked. He'd waved from the deep water, golden and strong and infinite. She'd watched him from the shore, thinking this was what forever looked like.

Now she walked to the community court where their weekly padel match waited. Richard was already there, stretching, not looking at her.

"You okay?" he asked when she double-faulted twice in a row.

"Fine."

"You seem—"

"I said I'm fine, Richard."

They played in silence. The ball ricocheted off the glass walls, a trapped thing looking for escape.

Afterward, at home, she found him in the kitchen making dinner. Fresh spinach sautéed with garlic, the way she liked it. The water for pasta boiled on the stove.

"I thought," he said, not turning around, "we could eat together. Like we used to."

She watched him a moment. His hair had started thinning at the temples. She'd noticed it last month swimming at the gym, watching him cut through the water alone, and felt a sharp unexpected grief for the man who'd once seemed infinite.

"Okay," she said.

They ate at the counter, not saying much. The spinach was good. The apartment was quiet. And somewhere in that silence, something small and tender began to swim toward the surface, gasping for air.