Surveillance of the Heart

The vitamins sat on the counter — a colorful array of promises I made to myself each morning. Vitamin D for the bones that already ached with premature age. B-complex for the energy I hadn't felt since before Ella started coming home late. Fish oil for a heart I wasn't sure was still beating properly.

I gave Buster his pill too, tucked into a piece of cheese. Our old golden retriever looked up at me with milky eyes, the only witness to what this house had become. He'd been here for the baseball games on television, the ones Mark and I used to watch with our legs tangled on the couch. He'd been here for the swimming lessons I gave our daughter before she left for college. Now he was just here, eating cheese while my husband's phone buzzed with messages I wasn't supposed to see.

I'd become something grotesque — a spy in my own marriage. I knew Mark's passcode by heart. I knew the woman's name was Sarah, that she worked in accounting, that she thought my husband's jokes were funny. I knew they met for lunch on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which explained why Mark had suddenly become obsessed with "eating healthy."

The irony was crushing: I'd spent twenty years as an actual intelligence analyst for the government. I'd monitored foreign threats, tracked terrorist cells, decoded encrypted communications. But none of that training had prepared me for surveillance of the heart. The intelligence I gathered now didn't go to anyone who could act on it. It just sat in my chest, rotting.

"Going for a swim," I called out, though the house was empty. Mark was at his Tuesday lunch.

The pool water was cold. I slipped beneath the surface and held my breath, letting the silence wrap around me. Underwater, I could almost believe there was nothing wrong. The world became muffled and blue. No vitamins. No baseball games playing to empty rooms. No lies.

When I surfaced, gasping, Buster was waiting at the pool's edge, tail thumping a slow rhythm against the concrete. He knew something was wrong. Dogs always know.

I toweled off and checked my phone. Three messages from Mark. "Thinking of you." "Love you." "Can't wait to see you tonight."

The vitamins were still on the counter when I got home. I took them all without water, swallowing hard against the lump in my throat. Tomorrow I would confront him. Tomorrow I would demand the truth.

Tonight, I would pretend. Tonight, we would watch the baseball game, and Buster would curl between us, and I would swallow every lie like it was medicine I couldn't live without.