The Art of Drowning

The palm tree leaned over the pool like a question mark, its shadow stretching across the water where Sarah floated face-up, feeling precisely nothing. Forty-two years old and she'd become a zombie in her own life—moving through meetings, dinner parties, and marriage kisses with the rehearsed responses of someone who'd already died and forgotten to lie down.

She'd hired the private detective two weeks ago. Not because she suspected Ethan of infidelity—she didn't care enough about that—but because she needed proof that her suspicions were correct: he was a corporate spy, selling her company's proprietary research to competitors. The irony made her want to laugh, but she hadn't laughed in months.

Their golden retriever, Buster, paddled toward her from the shallow end. Ethan had bought the dog three years ago, saying they needed something to care for together. Now the dog was mostly hers—another thing Ethan had lost interest in when the novelty wore off.

"You're going to prune," Ethan called from the lounge chair, not looking up from his phone. Probably texting his handlers.

Sarah flipped onto her stomach and began the slow crawl toward the pool's edge. Every stroke felt like moving through mercury. This was what grief felt like, she realized—not sharp pain but this terrible heaviness, this decay that turned you into something that walked and talked but couldn't really feel anything anymore.

She'd file the divorce papers tomorrow. Keep the house, keep the dog, let him keep his secrets. Maybe later, if she was lucky, she'd learn how to want things again.

Buster shook water from his coat as she climbed the pool ladder, droplets spraying like tiny cold stars against her skin. For the first time in months, something almost like a real emotion flickered in her chest—not hope exactly, but something adjacent to it.

The private detective's report lay folded in her beach bag. She thought about Ethan's face when he realized she'd known all along and simply hadn't cared enough to confront him.

That thought, at least, made her smile.