The Last Sunset

Maria stood on the balcony of suite 412, nursing her third **orange** juice of the morning. The pulp stuck to her teeth, bitter and unfinished—much like this marriage. Inside, David was packing. The zipper of his suitcase sang like a dying animal.

"You could help," he said, not looking at her.

"I could." She set down the glass. "I'm watching the sunset."

"It's 9 AM."

"Exactly."

They'd come to Cabo to save what couldn't be saved. Eighteen years of marriage, twelve of therapy, two children away at college, and now this—finality served with a garnish of tropical despair. David had met someone. Maria had met someone else, though she hadn't told him yet. Tit for tat, though theirs was more like tit for never-was.

She opened her **palm**, studying the lifeline her sister had read at her wedding. She'd promised Maria forty happy children and a husband who worshipped the ground she walked on. Instead: fertility treatments that failed, a husband who worshipped his law partners, and a line on her hand that seemed shorter every year.

"I'm going for a swim," David announced.

"You don't swim."

"I'm **swimming**, Maria. Metaphorically. In debt. In lies. In this life we built that neither of us wanted."

She watched him walk to the ocean fully dressed—blazer, slacks, leather shoes that would surely be ruined. The hotel staff stared. A mother shielded her child's eyes. But David kept walking until the water reached his waist, then his chest, then his shoulders.

Maria waited for him to drown. She wanted him to drown. She wanted him to turn back. She wanted him to disappear.

He did none of those things. He stood there, suspended in the gray water, while the real sunrise began behind him—actual oranges and pinks this time, painting the sky like a bruise healing itself.

"Well," she said to no one, finishing her juice. "Well."