The Palm Reader's Pool

The chlorine stung Eleanor's eyes as she surfaced in the apartment complex pool at midnight. She wasn't swimming—she was drowning in slow motion, letting the water hold her weight while her marriage dissolved upstairs.

"Bullshit," David had said earlier, throwing his phone onto the bed. "That palm reader didn't know what she was talking about."

The palm reader had touched Eleanor's hand and said, "You're carrying someone else's burden." She hadn't paid for the rest of the reading.

Now, in the pool, their golden retriever Baxter paced the concrete edge, whining softly. The dog always knew. Three years ago, he'd slept at the foot of the bed when David's mother died. He'd pressed his warm side against Eleanor's leg through every miscarriage. And now he wouldn't leave her alone at the edge of the water, as if he understood something David refused to see.

Eleanor pulled herself to the pool's edge, resting her chin on her crossed arms. The palm fronds above her head rustled in the desert wind, casting knife-shadows across the water. She thought about the things she'd carried: David's ambitions, his grief, his increasingly frequent nights "working late" that smelled like another woman's perfume.

The office betting pool had been on how long before she'd leave him. Eleanor had found the group chat by accident. Someone named "Jessica" had put money on "before Thanksgiving." The message was dated three months ago.

Baxter laid down beside her towel, his muzzle on his paws, watching her with liquid brown eyes.

"You're the only one who doesn't lie to me," she whispered.

Her phone buzzed on the chair. A text from David: Come to bed.

She stared at the message until the screen went dark. Then she pulled herself from the pool, water streaming from her skin like the last of something ending. Baxter stood immediately, pressing his solid warmth against her wet legs. Above them, the palm tree stood witness to nothing important at all.

"Not tonight," she said to the empty apartment, to the water, to the years of swallowing things whole. "Maybe not ever."