What the River Takes

The water runs cold over Mara's bare shoulders, carving rivers through the soap on her skin. She stands in the shower of her ex-husband's guest bathroom—the one she still hasn't moved out of, three months after the papers were signed—and tries to remember the last time she felt clean inside.

Her hair plastered against her skull, she considers the irony of staying. Mark doesn't charge her rent. He says it's temporary, until she "finds her footing." But footing is slippery when you're forty-seven with half a savings account and a career in an industry that's slowly dying. She catches her reflection in the fogged mirror—gray roots creeping in like an invasion, another thing she hasn't bothered to manage.

"You're running out of time," Mark had told her yesterday, his voice gentle with that pity that hurts more than anger. "The market's bearish now, Mara. If you sell the house, you'll take a loss."

He's right. She knows he's right. That's the worst part.

She turns off the shower and steps out, wrapping herself in a towel that still smells faintly of the vanilla detergent she used to buy. The one they both used to use. In the bedroom, her phone lights up with a message from her sister: "Any decisions yet?"

Mara considers the question she's been avoiding: What happens when you realize the life you built isn't one you want to keep living? The answer, she's learning, is that you stand in the shower too long. You let the water run until the hot tank is empty. You postpone the inevitable.

She remembers camping with her father when she was twelve, waking to find a bear at their campsite, nosing through their cooler. He told her later that the bear had been there for twenty minutes while she slept, that he'd watched it through the mesh of the tent, heart hammering, unwilling to risk the noise of waking her. "Sometimes," he said, "you have to let the bear take what it wants. Some battles aren't worth dying for."

She never understood what he meant until now.

Mara picks up her phone and types: "I'm selling. Take the loss."

The words appear on screen, and something in her chest loosens. She towels the water from her hair and begins to pack.