Still Waters

The pool sat in the backyard like an empty eye socket, rimmed with cracked concrete and the ghosts of summer parties. David stood at the edge, holding a whiskey he didn't want, watching the wedding guests scatter like leaves in wind. His brother's marriage had lasted exactly three years.

"You think she knew?" Elena asked from behind him. She'd appeared soundless, which she'd always been annoyingly good at. "That he was sleeping with his assistant?"

David turned. His ex-wife stood with her hands in the pockets of a black dress that cost more than his car. Her hair was shorter now. Sharp. "She knew," he said. "Everyone knew. Even the dog knew."

"Buster's dead, David."

"I know. But he knew before he died."

She laughed, which was the worst part—the sound of it, like something fragile refusing to break. The water in the pool had been drained years ago, after the incident no one talked about. Now it was just a basin collecting rainwater and regret. The concrete was warm through his dress shoes.

"Remember when we talked about filling it in?" Elena said, stepping closer. "Turning it into a garden?"

"You wanted a koi pond."

"I wanted anything that wasn't this."

The silence stretched, thin and dangerous. Between them lay five years of marriage, the infertility treatments they'd stopped talking about, the fights that started in whispers and ended in slammed doors. The dog had been the last thing they agreed on, and even Buster had chosen David's side in the divorce.

"I'm selling the house," David said finally.

Elena's face shifted. Something flickered behind her eyes—not surprise, exactly. Something older. Relief, maybe. "Good. You should have sold it years ago."

"I bought it for you."

"I never asked you to buy me a house with a pool I couldn't swim in."

She reached out, her fingers brushing his wrist. The contact was electric, terrible. He remembered how she felt against him in bed, how she'd trace the scars on his back and call them maps to nowhere.

"Do you ever think about it?" she asked softly. "What we could have tried?"

"Every day."

"But you never called."

"You never called either."

She stepped back, her heels clicking against the concrete. Behind them, the reception was winding down. His brother's new girlfriend already looked too young for him.

"The pool company can come Monday," David said. "Fill it with earth. Plant something."

"Or leave it empty," Elena said, already walking away. "Some things are better that way."

David finished his drink and dropped the glass into the drained pool. It shattered, the sound sharp and final. The water from the melted ice pooled in the bottom, reflecting a fractured sky.