What the Storm Carries

The water in Emma's sister's apartment had been cut off three days ago. The eviction notice was taped crookedly to the door, but Emma had a key she'd never returned, and grief made people do things they wouldn't normally do—like break into their estranged sister's apartment to feed a goldfish.

She'd been running from this conversation for six years. Not literally running—Emma's knees ached at the thought—but running all the same. Changing cities when mutual friends mentioned Maya's name. Deleting emails unread. The kind of emotional cowardice that felt sensible in the moment and catastrophic in retrospect.

Now Maya was dead, and Emma was crouched beside a ten-gallon tank on a laminate counter, watching a single orange goldfish navigate its kingdom of plastic neon plants and gravel the color of bruised skin.

"You're probably hungry," she whispered, and the goldfish ignored her completely.

Outside, lightning shattered the sky, illuminating the apartment's barrenness. Maya had sold everything worth owning. The furniture was gone. The walls were bare. Just the tank, and the goldfish, and an eviction notice that suggested Maya had stopped caring about anything long before she'd stopped breathing.

The police said overdose. Emma's mother said suicide. Emma herself didn't say anything at all, just booked a flight and showed up with a key she'd carried through three moves and two relationships.

She'd brought fish food. She'd brought herself here, running toward the thing she'd spent six years running from, because now it was too late and timing had always been their family's particular tragedy.

The goldfish rose slowly to the surface, its mouth opening and closing in small, desperate circles.

"Yeah," Emma said, dropping flakes onto the water's surface. "I know."