The Color of Goodbye

Mara sat on the balcony of the hotel room they'd once shared, watching the **orange** sun bleed into the Pacific. Two years ago, this had been their honeymoon suite. Now it was a hospice for a marriage that had died slowly, without dignity.

Her phone buzzed. David, again. Forty-seven messages since she'd left. She couldn't block him—not yet. The lawyers had warned her about documentation, about building a paper trail of his instability. Each message was another brick in the wall between them.

A stray **cat** wound through the lounge chairs below, its ribs visible beneath matted fur. She'd seen it yesterday, leaving a dead lizard at the feet of a couple eating breakfast. The woman had screamed. The man had laughed, sharp and surprised, before composing himself. That's what love was, Mara thought—something wild that couldn't be domesticated, no matter how much you fed it.

She pressed her **palm** against the sliding glass door, feeling the vibration of her own hand. David's hands had always been rough, calloused from his work as a carpenter. He'd built their bookshelves, their bed frame, the crib they'd never used. His hands could create anything but trust.

The pool below was empty except for one figure—a woman in her sixths, **swimming** slow laps with an economy of motion that spoke of decades spent in water. Mara watched her slice through the blue, forward and back, never arriving anywhere but still moving. That's what she was doing now. Swimming through the wreckage of half a life together, trying not to drown in what she'd lost and what she'd never had.

Her phone lit up again. Not David this time. Her mother, with a timing that had always been either supernatural or suffocating, depending on the day. *Come home, sweetie. We can figure out the money.*

Mara stood up. The **orange** light was nearly gone, the sky bruising purple. She packed her bag, left the key card on the counter, and walked out. The elevator mirror showed her someone she almost recognized—someone who could learn to be whole again, eventually.