The Goldfish at the Edge of Everything

The pool shimmered like liquid mercury under the August heat, its surface broken only by the solitary goldfish that had somehow survived three weeks of neglect. Sarah stood at the edge, her oversized sun hat casting a shadow across her face as she watched the fish make lazy circles in the shallow end.

"You're going to burn," Ethan called from the deck chair, not looking up from his phone.

"Let me burn," she whispered to no one.

Their dog, Buster, an aging golden retriever who'd belonged to Ethan's mother, lay panting in the shade. The animal had become a metaphor for their marriage — loyal, patient, slowly deteriorating under the weight of accumulated disappointments.

The lightning storm that had threatened all afternoon finally broke. Sarah counted the seconds between flash and thunder. One thousand one, one thousand two. Three miles away. The same distance she felt from the woman she'd been when she'd said "I do" in that Vegas chapel five years ago.

"You know," Ethan said, setting down his phone, "my mother left us that house in her will. We should sell it."

"It's not on the market yet," she replied, watching the goldfish suddenly dart beneath the pool drain. "And neither am I."

The words hung there as thunder rattled the deck chair. Ethan finally looked at her, really looked at her, as if seeing her for the first time in years.

"What did you say?"

She took off her hat, letting her hair fall loose around her shoulders. The goldfish broke the surface, gasping. Sarah reached into the water, cupped the fish in her hands, and carried it to the neighbor's pond across the fence.

"I said," she told him when she returned, rain beginning to fall around them, "that some things can't stay in the same water forever and expect to survive."

Buster lifted his head and whined as the sky opened up, lightning illuminating everything — the dying pool, the comfortable house, the life she was leaving behind. She walked toward her car, leaving her hat on the deck chair. Some things, she realized, you just don't take with you.