What the Goldfish Remember

The bull of it was, Marcus never actually apologized. Not in words. Instead, he bought a house with a pool—the kind of inground monstrosity that cost more than their first home together—while Elena was at her mother's funeral.

She'd learned about the pool three months later, standing in their kitchen, holding a dead goldfish by the tail. One of five. The filtration system had failed while Marcus was supposedly "working late" in their new pool house.

"You forgot," she said, the fish's orange scales dull against her palm. "You forgot to feed them. You forgot to check the filter. You forgot you had a wife who just needed you to show up."

Marcus shrugged, that familiar stubborn set to his shoulders—the bull-headed refusal to be wrong that had charmed her once, now calcified into something cruel. "They're just fish, El. They live like, what? Two years?"

"Seven years," she said. "We got them when we got engaged. Seven years, Marcus."

That was the afternoon she decided to leave. Not because of the pool, or the deception, or even the dead fish staring up at her with clouded eyes. It was the way he looked at her—like she was being unreasonable. Like grief was an inconvenience he couldn't be bothered to accommodate.

She'd stayed at a hotel that night, then another, and now she was back for the last of her things. The realtor would list the house next week. Marcus had moved to the pool house, though she suspected he'd barely unpacked.

The pool glimmered through the sliding doors, blue and perfect and entirely empty. She thought about diving in—just to feel something, to break something—but instead she walked to the fish tank where the last goldfish, the one she'd rescued, swam in lazy circles.

"You," she whispered, tapping the glass. "You're the only one who remembers."

The fish surfaced, mouth opening and closing at the water's surface.

She scooped him into a jar. Marcus could keep his pool and his stubborn pride and his house built on convenient forgetfulness. She was taking the only thing that still remembered them as they used to be.