What the Water Remembers

The pool hadn't been drained since the accident, and Maria wondered if the goldfish—that orange flash she'd seen surface once, gasping—was still down there in the murk. Three weeks of stagnant water, three weeks of Thomas sleeping in the guest room, his iPhone glowing like a cigarette tip under the door at 3 AM.

She dropped a handful of spinach into the blender. The sound was violent.

"You're obsessing," her sister had said over coffee that morning. "It's like you're carrying around this—" She'd gestured vaguely, searching for the word. "This BEAR of a thing. This weight."

Maria had laughed bitterly. "He TOLD me he didn't love me anymore while we were swimming. Who does that?"

The patio door slid open. Thomas stood there, backlit, holding his phone like a weapon or a shield. The morning hit his face—the lines she'd once traced with her thumb, now unfamiliar.

"I'm going back to the apartment today," he said. His voice sounded like someone else's voice. "To get the rest of my things."

The spinach sludge sat untouched on the counter.

"The pool guy comes Monday," she said.

"Maria."

"They'll drain it. Clean it. Whatever goldfish survived—they'll remove them."

"There were never any goldfish." His voice cracked. "That was the neighbors'. They escaped."

She looked at him for a long moment. Really looked. The man who had once held her in this kitchen, promised her everything, promised her always.

"I know," she said. "I never believed there were fish."

She walked past him to the sliding door, out to the pool deck. The water was green-gray, opaque. Something about it looked like memory itself—murky, full of things you couldn't quite see, things that surfaced sometimes, unexpected, before sinking back down.

Thomas's phone buzzed inside. Maria watched the water's surface, waiting for a ripple that never came.