Under

The swimming pool at 5 AM smelled of chlorine and quiet desperation. Elena adjusted her cap, the same neon green one she'd worn every morning since the funeral. Three months of staring at the black line at the bottom of lane three, three months of forcing her arms through water that felt thicker than grief itself.

Her phone buzzed on the deck. Another message from David: "Please talk to me. I left my hat."

That stupid navy beanie. She'd found it in her closet the night he walked out, tucked behind her shoe boxes like a secret he'd forgotten. Or maybe she'd forgotten him first.

She pushed off the wall, breaststroke, her body remembering what her mind wanted to forget. The water swallowed the sound of her cell vibrating again.

Back at the apartment, the cat—Barnaby, David's parting gift—sat by his empty food bowl. His yellow eyes followed her around the kitchen like accusation. She dumped the food can, the metal sound echoing in the silence they used to fill with arguments about money, about timing, about whether they were too young to be this tired.

"You're thirty-four," her sister had said over coffee yesterday, sliding a bottle across the table. "Start taking these. Vitamin D. You look like you haven't seen the sun since winter."

She hadn't.

Now she stood in her bathroom, dry from the swim but somehow still wet, staring at her reflection. The vitamin bottle sat next to David's toothbrush, still blue with his toothpaste. The hat hung on the hook behind the door, navy wool like a question mark.

Barnaby meowed, winding between her ankles.

"I know," she said. "I'm still swimming."

She threw the hat in the trash. She took the vitamin. She called David.

"You can't come back for the hat," she said when he answered. "But you can come back for yourself. If you're ready to do the work."

The silence stretched between them like the surface of the pool before breaking.

"I'm swimming lessons," he said finally. "I mean—I want to learn. With you."

She closed her eyes, imagining them side by side in lane three, not drowning anymore.

"Tomorrow," she said. "5 AM."