Vitamin D and the Deep End

The prescription bottle sat on her nightstand — Vitamin D, the doctor had said, for the seasonal affective disorder. She stared at it while Mark dressed for work, his back to her, the same way it had been for three months.

"The dog needs walking," she said, not moving from the bed.

"I'm late," Mark replied, the same words he used every morning since the miscarriage. "Tonight."

Tonight never came.

She drove to the community center instead. Baseball season had started; she could hear the crack of bats from the parking lot, the echo of her father's voice from twenty years ago telling her to keep her eye on the ball. He'd been dead five years now, and she still couldn't watch the game without feeling hollow.

The pool was empty at 10 AM on a Tuesday. She swam laps, the water burning her eyes, thinking how strange it was that everyone loved swimming as children but most adults stopped altogether. What happened between then and now? When did joy become something you had to schedule, take vitamins for, manufacture?

Her phone buzzed on the pool deck. Mark: *We need to talk.*

She swam another lap, then another, until her muscles screamed. The lifeguard watched her with something like concern. She wondered what he saw — a woman in her mid-thirties, swimming alone on a weekday morning, married to a man who didn't love her anymore, trying to remember how to be whole.

Later, at the dog park, their golden retriever brought her a slobbery tennis ball. She threw it. He brought it back. Simple. Uncomplicated love.

"You're a good boy, Buster," she said, and the dog leaned against her leg, steady warmth in a world that had gone cold.

The vitamin bottle was still on her nightstand when she returned home. She took one, then sat on the edge of the bed where Mark had already fallen asleep. She looked at his sleeping form, the man she'd loved for seven years, and realized she didn't know him anymore. Or maybe he'd never really been who she thought he was.

"We need to talk," she whispered to the dark room, and for the first time in months, she meant it.