What the Water Takes

The fishing hat sat crooked on his head, the brim shadowing eyes that used to crinkle when he laughed. Mara watched him from the campchair, her wine forgotten in the heat. Twenty years, and she still knew the exact rhythm of his breathing when he was pretending to be calm.

"The water's rising," he said, not looking at her.

The lake was creeping up the mud bank, inch by inexorable inch. Tomorrow their campsite would be underwater. Next week, maybe their house too, if the forecasts held. But that wasn't what he meant.

She ran her fingers through her hair - still thick, still brown, unlike the silver that had colonized his temples. A fox darted through the reeds downstream, russet fur flashing like a heartbeat. Last year they'd watched kits play in this same stretch, back when they still made trips like this to save something they'd already lost.

"You packed your bags already," she said.

The fox paused, ears swiveling toward them, then vanished into the willows.

"I saw them in the hallway."

He turned then, and the hat slipped off. His hair was wet with sweat, plastered to his forehead. He looked older than he should, older than fifty, older than the man who'd promised her forever at an altar that felt like a different lifetime now.

"Mara -"

"The water doesn't care, Thomas." She set down her wine and stood. "The water just takes what it touches. It doesn't make promises. It doesn't pretend."

The fox's bark echoed across the water, sharp and lonely. She thought about all the things they'd meant to be - the children they'd planned, the life they'd built, the future they'd assumed was theirs for the taking. None of it had survived the rising tide of years and silence and incremental disappointments.

"I never stopped loving you," he said, voice cracking.

She believed him. That was the tragedy of it.

"Love isn't enough."

She walked down to the water's edge, where the mud sucked at her sandals. The lake stretched before her, dark and endless, swallowing the last light of day. Behind her, she could hear him weeping softly, a sound like rain on a roof they no longer owned.

The fox called again, closer now. She didn't turn around.