The Last Summer

Mara stood at the edge of the pool, her bare feet gripping the cool concrete. The water reflected a sky bruised purple and orange, sunset bleeding into twilight like an old watercolor left out in the rain. She'd been coming to this house for seventeen years—every July since she was twenty-three, when Daniel's parents first invited her to what they called their summer retreat. Now she was forty, and the house was being sold tomorrow.

Daniel emerged from the sliding glass door, two drinks in hand. The condensation on the glasses caught what remained of the light. He'd always moved like a bull—heavy, deliberate, impossible to redirect once he chose a direction. She'd loved that about him once, his certainty, his stubborn conviction that they were building something permanent. Now she wasn't sure if it was conviction or inertia.

"The lawyer called," he said, not meeting her eyes. "Everything's signed."

"I know."

"You could still—"

"No."

Lightning split the sky, a jagged white scar that briefly illuminated the yard. The storm had been threatening all afternoon, heavy air pressing down on them, making it hard to breathe. A fat raindrop hit Mara's shoulder, then another. She didn't move.

"Do you remember," she said, "the summer we almost drowned here? When you tried to teach me to swim properly, and we both ended up coughing up chlorinated water and laughing like idiots?"

Daniel set the drinks on the glass table. "I remember you said you'd never get in the pool again if I didn't promise to stop trying to fix your stroke."

"I was wrong about that too," she said.

The rain came harder now, warm and sudden, plastering her shirt to her skin. Daniel didn't move toward her, just watched from the cover of the porch. They'd had this conversation so many times—rounds and rounds, like the betting pool their friends had created about when they'd finally marry or finally split. The pool had closed years ago; everyone had stopped caring or betting. Now there was just this: two people who'd loved each other in a thousand small ways, until they didn't, or couldn't, or something else entirely.

"Come inside, Mara," he said, but she was already stepping forward, letting the water close over her head, the storm above and the quiet below, somewhere between beginning and ending, somewhere they could still be young and the summer could still last forever.