Water Under the Bridge

The water moved beneath the bridge like time itself—relentless, cold, indifferent. Mara stood at the railing, her father's old fedora pulled low against the drizzle. She'd hated this hat growing up, its smell of tobacco and regret, but now it was all she had left of him besides a voicemail she couldn't bring herself to delete.

Her iphone buzzed in her pocket—David, probably. The divorce papers would arrive tomorrow. Six months of vitamin supplements and couples therapy, and still they'd ended up strangers sharing a bed. She'd swallowed enough vitamin D capsules to kill a horse, trying to cure the darkness that had settled in her bones after the miscarriage. Some things couldn't be fixed.

"Thought I'd find you here."

She didn't turn. Elias had been her father's foreman, the only man who'd ever looked at her like she was something precious instead of something broken. He'd aged—silver in his beard, lines around eyes that had seen too much.

"The bull's gone," he said, leaning beside her. "Old Duke. Died last week."

Duke. The beast that had chased her up the apple tree when she was seven, the same bull her father had stared down with nothing but a walking stick and sheer stubbornness. "You don't run from things," he'd told her, hauling her down from the branches. "You stand your ground, or you get trampled."

She'd been running ever since.

"Your father left something for you," Elias said, pressing a rusted key into her palm. "The box by the creek. Said you'd know when to open it."

The current murmured below, carrying away last year's leaves, last year's pain. She wasn't running anymore. She wasn't the woman who'd swallowed vitamins to feel whole, who'd checked her phone for validation like a teenager.

"Thank you," she said, and meant it.

The rain fell harder, washing the dust from her skin, washing the past from her present. Somewhere downstream, the water would find the ocean. Somewhere downstream, she would find herself.