The Riddle of Deep Water

The chlorinated water swallowed Maria's screams as she pushed off the pool wall, her iphone lying poolside like a dormant promise she couldn't bring herself to keep. Three missed calls from David. She swam harder, lap after lap, trying to outpace the hollowed-out feeling that had been living inside her for months.

At work, she moved like a zombie through meetings where bullish men shouted over each other, their egos clashing in conference rooms that smelled of stale coffee and desperation. Her boss, Chen, was particularly bullish that day—his voice rose as he demanded the quarterly reports, his forehead glistening with sweat that reminded Maria unpleasantly of how David looked during their last conversation, the one where he'd stared at her with sphinx-like inscrutability and said, "I don't know who you are anymore."

The words had lingered, heavy and accusing, like smoke.

Now, in the water, Maria felt something approaching peace. Her body remembered the rhythm even when her mind couldn't hold onto anything solid. Swimming had always been her escape, since she was a girl growing up in Arizona where the heat pressed down like a physical weight and the public pool was the only place where the world made sense.

She surfaced, gasping, and saw David's message glowing on her iphone screen: "I met someone."

The words hit her like cold water. She tread water for a long moment, watching the phone's light pulse against the concrete, feeling something crack open inside her—something that had been frozen since long before the marriage began to fail. A riddle she'd been avoiding answering: What happens when you stop running?

Maria swam to the edge, pulled herself out of the pool, and picked up the phone. Her hands were steady. For the first time in months, she didn't feel like a zombie walking through someone else's life. She felt like she was finally, painfully, beginning her own.