The Long Drift

The alarm chirped at 5:03 AM, as it had every morning for seventeen years. Sarah lay there, listening to David's even breathing, his back turned to hers. Somewhere between the mortgage refinancing and his mother's funeral, they'd become strangers who shared a bed.

She rose quietly, pulled her running shoes from the closet, and slipped out into the predawn gray. Her feet found their rhythm on the pavement, each step a small rebellion against the life she'd somehow accumulated without noticing. She'd started running two years ago, when David stopped looking at her across the dinner table.

Back home, the house was still sleeping. She moved through the rooms like a ghost, her fingers trailing over surfaces she'd dusted a thousand times. In the kitchen, she swallowed her vitamin with tap water, standing at the window where she could see her reflection in the glass—thirty-nine years old, fit and empty in equal measure.

The man from the cable company came at 9 AM. "Just need to check the line," he said, smiling too familiarly. Sarah let him in, watched his competent hands work while her own hung useless at her sides. His name was Marcus. He was twenty-six, with shoulders that belonged to someone who still had things to prove.

"Your husband's a lucky man," Marcus said, testing the connection.

Sarah almost laughed. Instead she said, "Could you hand me that hat?" pointing to David's old fedora on the shelf, untouched since their anniversary party three years ago.

Marcus paused. "You don't wear it."

"No. I don't."

He didn't push. That was the problem with men Marcus's age—they didn't push, they just waited.

After he left, Sarah found David in his study, staring at his computer screen. "Cable's fixed," she said.

"Good." He didn't turn around.

She stood there waiting, a soap bubble suspended in air. "David?"

"What."

"Do you remember when we used to talk?"

Finally, he swiveled his chair. His eyes were tired eyes, eyes that had seen too many of the same days. "We talk every night, Sarah. About the bills, about your mother, about whether we need a new water heater. That's what married people do. They handle things."

"That's not what I mean."

"It's what there is."

Sarah walked to the window, watched the sunlight move across the lawn. She could call Marcus. She could start running marathons. She could buy a ticket to somewhere she'd never been. Instead she stood there, thirty-nine and afraid of change, while her husband typed an email she'd never read.

"What do you want from me?" David asked, something like desperation in his voice.

She turned back to him. "I don't know anymore."

Neither of them moved. The house settled around them, patient and permanent. Somewhere distant, a siren wailed.Outside, the neighbor's sprinklers rhythmically watered a lawn nobody walked on. Sarah stayed where she was, and so did David, and somehow that was the saddest part of all.