Salt Water Oranges

Margaret stood at the edge of the infinity pool, the water reflecting the dying light like liquid amber. She'd been bearing the weight of this conversation for three months—since the night Thomas had come home smelling of someone else's perfume.

"You're doing it again," he said from behind her. "That thing where you go somewhere else entirely."

She turned. He was holding an orange, his thumb breaking the skin. Citrus scent bloomed between them, bright and incongruous against the decay of their marriage.

"I was thinking about that trip to Mexico," she said. "Remember? You almost drowned swimming out to that reef."

"You pulled me back."

"I did." She touched his palm, the callus there from years of holding instruments he no longer played. "I've been pulling you back for a long time, Thomas."

He dropped the orange into the water. It bobbed, a small bright sun sinking slowly.

"I'm leaving, Margie."

The confession sat between them, smaller than she'd imagined. Less violent. She'd thought it would be a bear attack—sudden, tearing, bloody. Instead it was this: a gentle unwinding, like the tide receding.

"I know," she said.

"You know?"

"I've known since February. I just thought..." She stopped. "I thought if I bore it quietly enough, it would change. That's what women do, isn't it? Bear things."

He was crying now. She'd expected to cry too, but she felt hollowed out, like the orange skin he'd discarded. Palm fronds rattled above them in the wind, a dry applause for the end of things.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I never wanted to hurt you."

"That's the worst part," she said, watching the orange disappear beneath the water's surface. "You didn't want to. You just... did."

Later, she would learn that apologies are just words people arrange into something that sounds like absolution. But here, in the lavender dark, she simply nodded and wondered how long she'd been swimming alone while thinking she was still holding his hand.