What the Water Hides

The backyard pool shimmered like something you could fall into and never climb out of. Elena stood at the shallow end, nursing her third gin and tonic, watching Mark laugh with David by the patio table. David's Golden Retriever, Buster, paddled happily through the water, unaware that he was the only one actually enjoying himself.

"You coming in?" Mark called, already shirtless, his chest pale against the desert sun.

"In a minute," Elena said, but she wasn't going in. She couldn't stop staring at the long dark hair wound around Mark's shoulder blade, just below his collar. Elena's hair had been pixie-short for six years.

The hair belonged to someone from the office. Probably that new analyst with the laugh like wind chimes. The one Mark mentioned three times last week, and four times the week before.

Buster shook himself wet beside her, spraying water across her dress. The dog nudged her hand with that terrible, uncomplicated affection animals gave so freely. She knelt to pet him, burying her fingers in his wet fur, and something cracked open in her chest.

"You're a good boy," she whispered. "Better than most people I know."

She'd been swimming upstream for three years in this relationship, against every instinct, every raised eyebrow from her friends, every time she came home to an empty house and a cold stove while Mark worked late again. She thought she was building something. Instead, she'd been drowning slowly, pretending she could breathe underwater.

David caught her eye from across the pool. His expression was pitying, which was somehow worse than anything else. He knew. They all knew.

The friend who'd warned her about Mark six months ago sat beside David now, nursing a soda she hadn't touched. "I told you," her eyes said. "I tried to tell you."

Elena stood, her dress dripping wet where Buster had shaken himself on her. She set down her glass and walked toward the house, past Mark, past the hair that wasn't hers, past the future she'd been carefully constructing like a house of cards in a windstorm.

"Elena?" Mark called, finally noticing. "Where are you going?"

She didn't turn around. Some things, once you see them clearly underwater, you can never unsee.