The Drowning Glass

The lakehouse was Sarah's idea—her attempt to save what was already dead. That first morning, while David slept off the drive, I went swimming alone. The water was shocking cold, swallowing me whole, and for a moment I considered just staying under. Not dying. Just remaining suspended in that blue silence where expectations couldn't reach me.

I surfaced gasping to find my iPhone vibrating on the dock where I'd left it. Sarah's name again. She wanted us to reconcile, wanted the three of us to pretend this weekend would fix everything. As if proximity could undo months of quiet resentment, the way David's eyes had started sliding past me at dinner, the way Sarah's emails grew longer while her voice grew quieter.

Back inside, David stood at the window holding a frayed charging cable he'd found in a drawer. 'Remember this?' he asked, and it was such a small thing to break me—that we'd once been the kind of couple who kept spare cables at vacation rentals we borrowed from friends. Now we were people who borrowed marriages from other people, hoping if we held them right, they might fit.

'There's a bear,' David said, pointing to the treeline. A black bear, thin from spring, nosed through our trash bag. 'Should we scare it off?'

'Let it eat,' I said. 'At least someone's getting fed.'

He looked at me then—really looked—for the first time in months. 'Are you happy?' he asked. Not 'are we okay' or 'do you still love me,' but that simpler, devastating question. As if he already knew the answer.

The bear dragged a pizza box into the woods. My phone buzzed again with Sarah's text: 'dinner at 7? I found that wine you liked.' The wine I'd liked three years ago, when I still knew what that meant.

'I'm going back in the water,' I said, and didn't wait for his response. This time when I submerged, I opened my eyes. The lake held me like something vast and patient, like a lover who'd stopped asking questions. Below the surface, there was only the muffled quiet and my own slow heartbeat, and for the first time in a year, I didn't want to be anywhere else.