Weight of Water

The pool hadn't been cleaned in weeks. Green algae scummed the surface, like something spoiled. Elena sat on the diving board in her bathrobe, nursing the last whiskey from the bottle, watching her iPhone screen light up every few minutes with his name. She didn't answer.

Three weeks since David walked out with his baseball collection and half the furniture. He'd left her hair everywhere — in the drain, on his pillow, wound around the vacuum roller. She kept finding it, this evidence of their life together, these long dark strands that had been hers before chemotherapy made her cut it all off last year. He'd promised to stay. He'd promised bald didn't matter. Some promises were easier to break than others.

The phone lit up again. David again. Probably wanted his father's watch back, or to finalize the divorce papers. Or maybe he was drunk too, somewhere else.

She set the iPhone on the diving board beside her, screen-up like a mirror reflecting nothing. Something moved at the edge of the yard — a shadow separating itself from the treeline. A bear, drawn by the garbage cans she hadn't put out. It stood on hind legs, massive and dark against the moonlit lawn, and something in her chest cracked open.

She should be afraid. Should call animal control. Should go inside. But the bear only looked at her with wet black eyes, then dropped to all fours and ambled toward the neighbor's property.

That's when it hit her: she could just stay here. Let the divorce happen. Let the house go. Bear the weight of everything falling apart, because sometimes things had to break before they could become something else.

Elena slipped into the pool. The water shocked her cold, woke her to her skin, her body, herself. She broke the surface gasping, slicked back her hair, and for the first time in three weeks, didn't feel like she was drowning.