The Unspooling

Mara pressed her palm against the cold window of their thirty-second floor apartment, watching the rain streak the glass like tears she couldn't cry anymore. Behind her, the television flickered with muted news—another political scandal, another catastrophe—and she thought about how they'd become like that **cable** connecting them to the world: frayed at the edges, signal cutting in and out, something that once carried everything now barely anything at all.

"You're doing that thing," Daniel said from the couch. He didn't look up from his phone.

"What thing?"

"The zombie thing. Where you're there but not there."

The word hung between them, heavier than it should have been. Three years ago, she would have laughed. Now she just turned from the window and watched him—really watched him—for what felt like the first time in months. The way his shoulders curled forward, protective. How his **hat** sat on the coffee table, a fedora he'd bought on impulse during their last trip to New Orleans, now gathering dust like a souvenir from someone he used to be.

"Remember when you bought that?" she asked, crossing to where it lay.

Daniel finally looked up, eyes narrowing. "What?"

"The hat. You said you were going to be the kind of person who wore fedoras."

"I was drunk."

"You were happy."

Something shifted in his face— annoyance or recognition, she couldn't tell anymore. "We were both drunk, Mara. On each other, on the idea of us. But people change. That's not a crime."

"No," she said, picking up the hat, turning it in her hands. "But becoming strangers in your own marriage might be."

The silence that followed was absolute. Not peaceful—the kind that could break something, or maybe already had. She thought about palm trees, how they looked so resilient but could snap in storms, how their roots stayed shallow.

"I'm tired," Daniel said finally, and she couldn't tell if he meant right now or everything.

"Me too," she said. "But I think I'd rather be tired together than alone."

He set down his phone. For the first time in months, he really looked at her. Something flickered behind his eyes—recognition, maybe. Or hope.

"Okay," he said. "Okay."