The Last Summer

Clara stood on the balcony, the humidity pressing against her skin like unwanted attention. Inside, the office party swirled with cheap champagne and forced laughter, but she needed air. Her hair—once the same copper as her mother's before the chemotherapy took it—was escaping its pins, fraying in the damp night. At forty-two, she was tired of being the person who held everything together.

An orange neon sign from the bar across the street pulsed rhythmically, casting an amber glow on her hands. She'd met David three years ago at a similar party. He'd told her she looked like someone who knew things. Now she wondered if he'd ever actually seen her, or just a projection of who he needed her to be.

A cat—skinny, battle-scarred, missing half an ear—leaped from the neighboring rooftop and landed soundlessly beside her. It regarded Clara with yellow eyes that seemed to hold ancient judgment. She reached out slowly, but it recoiled, tail twitching.

"I know," she whispered. "I don't trust me either."

Lightning split the sky without warning, illuminating the partygoers behind the glass like specimens in an aquarium. Thunder followed immediately, shaking the railing beneath her palms. The storm had been building for hours, the kind you pretend not to notice until it's already breaking.

She remembered swimming in Lake Superior with her sister the summer before the accident, how the cold water had stolen their breath, how they'd surfaced gasping and euphoristic, convinced they could touch the bottom if they just tried harder. They were wrong. Some depths wouldn't be reached.

Her phone buzzed—David, wondering where she'd gone. The cat watched her, unmoving, as she typed: I'm not coming back.

She deleted it. Then typed it again.

The rain began, sudden and hard, flattening her hair against her skull, washing away the careful architecture of who she'd been pretending to be. She let it. For the first time in three years, Clara wasn't holding anything together, and something in her chest—something tight and exhausted—finally released.