The Last Sunday at the Club

The indoor pool at the country club was always too warm, the air heavy with chlorine and unspoken things. Elena swam laps alone, her body cutting through water that had absorbed a decade of her marriage. This was where she'd learned she was pregnant with Maya, where David had told her about the promotion that moved them to Connecticut, where she'd come when her mother died.

She surfaced at the edge of the pool, gasping. Through the glass doors, she could see him on the padel court, laughing with something—a woman, young and athletic in a way Elena hadn't been in years. They were playing mixed doubles, David's forearm flexing as he smashed the ball past his opponents. The woman touched his shoulder after the point, familiar and bright.

Elena pulled herself out of the water, her forty-three-year-old body feeling heavier than it had in the locker room mirror. She wrapped herself in a towel and sat on the bench, watching them through the glass. David was happy. He'd been happy for months now, while she'd been swimming in circles, diving deeper into her own silence.

She opened her locker and took out the Tupperware container she'd packed that morning—spinach and feta, something healthy, something that said she was still trying. But she wasn't trying anymore. She was just waiting.

"You're like the sphinx," David had told her last week, drunk and frustrated in the kitchen. "Just sitting there with your secrets and your riddles, and I'm supposed to figure out what makes you happy."

He'd gone to sleep on the couch. She'd stood in the kitchen, knowing the answer was nothing anymore. Nothing made her happy.

The padel match ended. David and the woman walked toward the clubhouse, his hand near her elbow, not touching but suggesting everything. Elena didn't move. She let her towel drop, pressed her palm against the cold glass between them, and for the first time in years, she didn't look away from what she couldn't have anymore.

Monday, she'd call the lawyer. Today, she would just swim.