The Betting Pool

The betting pool started three weeks after Sarah's dog, Buster, was hit by that Tesla in the company parking lot. Sarah hadn't been the same since—distant, eyes rimmed with red, the kind of grief that makes coworkers uncomfortable. They didn't know what to say, so they started gambling on her instead.

Fifty bucks to enter. The pool stared at me from my monitor: WHEN WOULD SARAH RETURN? The options were measured in weeks, as if human grief could be predicted like quarterly earnings.

I'd been playing padel with Marcus, the VP who'd started the whole thing. We'd smash the ball back and forth, the blue court blurring beneath our feet, while he joked about "office morale." Last Tuesday, he'd sliced the ball hard and said, "Three more days and I win the pool. You should've put money on week four."

That's when I stopped returning his serves.

Now I stood by the pool in Sarah's backyard, the one she'd filled with concrete after Buster died. The empty space looked like a wound in the earth. Sarah sat on her porch, staring at where the water used to be.

"They think it's a game," I said, and she looked up, confused. I explained about the pool—Marcus, the spreadsheet, the way they'd turned her tragedy into entertainment. I told her I'd reported them to HR this morning.

Sarah studied my face for a long moment. Then she surprised me: she laughed. Not the broken laugh I'd expected, but something real and incredulous.

"You know what's funny?" she said. "Buster would've hated that dog pool anyway. He was terrified of water."

We sat there together as the sun set, two people marked by different kinds of loss—hers obvious and raw, mine quieter, the loss of my own complicity. In the distance, someone was hitting a padel ball against a wall, a steady, rhythmic thwack. It sounded like a heartbeat.

"Thanks," Sarah said finally. "For choosing not to play."

The pool between us stayed empty, but for the first time in weeks, the space didn't feel like a wound anymore. It felt like possibility.