The Art of Drowning

The spinach garden had been Julia's pride before Thomas left. Now it was a jungle of bolted stems and flowering bitterness, stretching toward a sky that refused to rain. She stood on the porch with a glass of water, watching the neighbor's cat—a ragged calico with one ear—prowling through the overgrown rows.

"He's not coming back," her sister had said over coffee that morning, the words landing like stones in still water.

Julia set down the glass. Her reflection distorted in the water—someone she almost recognized. The cat paused, looked back at her with yellow eyes, then pounced on something in the spinach. A mouse, maybe. Or just shadows.

She remembered Thomas's hands on her skin, how he'd said he loved her most when she was quiet. How he'd bought her a cookbook she never asked for. How she'd learned to cook everything in it, even the dishes she hated. Even the creamed spinach that made her gag.

"I'm going to flood it," Julia whispered.

The garden, she meant. But she could have meant anything.

Inside, she ran the bathtub. Water rushed into the porcelain vessel, drowning silence with noise. She'd left Thomas six weeks ago. Why did it still feel like he'd left her? The cat appeared on the bathroom windowsill, watching through the glass. Julia turned off the tap. The water settled into something almost peaceful.

She'd make something new for dinner tonight. Not from the cookbook. Something that couldn't be saved or frozen or reheated. Something fresh and terrible and entirely hers.

The cat meowed, hungry or expectant or just alive. Julia ran the bathwater down the drain and went to the kitchen, where the spinach still grew wild and unruly in her neglected garden, and for the first time in months, she didn't want to fix anything at all.