Still Water Runs Deep

Margaret stood at the kitchen sink, watching cold water rush over her trembling hands. The funeral had ended hours ago, but she couldn't wash away the feeling that she'd somehow failed him. Arthur's old fedora sat on the counter—she'd found it that morning, tucked behind the liquor cabinet where he'd hidden his worst moments.

'You're like a damn fox,' he'd told her once, drunk and laughing, 'always waiting for the perfect moment to strike.' But the truth was, she'd never struck at all. She'd watched their marriage dissolve like sugar in hot tea, saying nothing, doing nothing, just waiting.

The phone rang. His business partner.

'The bull market turned,' David said, voice tight. 'Arthur's investments—everything's gone.'

Margaret almost laughed. 'He's been dead for three days, David. The money doesn't matter.'

'It does when you're fifty-three with nothing.'

She hung up and walked to the backyard, where the above-ground pool sat stagnant. Arthur had bought it on impulse during his midlife crisis, along with the red sports car he'd crashed within a month. The pool water had turned green, thick with algae—a mirror for what they'd become.

Their daughter would arrive tomorrow. Margaret would have to explain why her father had gambled away her college fund on speculative tech stocks. Why he'd refused to sell when the market turned bullish, convinced he knew something the analysts didn't.

She picked up his hat from the counter. The leather band was cracked, sweat-stained. He'd worn it to their anniversary dinner last month, pretending everything was fine. Pretending he hadn't already lost them everything.

'That fox of a wife,' she imagined him saying at the bar, 'she never suspects a thing.'

Margaret placed the hat on her head. It smelled of him—tobacco and expensive cologne. She walked to the pool's edge and watched her reflection ripple across the stagnant water. For the first time in thirty years, she didn't see Arthur's wife. She saw herself.

And for the first time, she understood: she hadn't been waiting at all. She'd been hiding.

She pulled off the hat and threw it into the green water. It floated for a moment, then sank.