What We Swallow

The vitamin D sat on the nightstand, a small yellow tombstone. Elena's doctor had prescribed them after the diagnosis, as if sunlight in pill form could fix what was breaking inside her. Marcus watched her dry-swallow it every morning with the same grim determination she'd applied to their marriage for thirty years.

They were at the resort in Cabo because Marcus had insisted. "A second honeymoon," he'd called it, though they both knew it was more like a mercy rule in a game that had gone on too long. Elena sat by the pool in her oversized sun hat, reading the same page of her book for an hour while Marcus pretended not to watch her from behind his sunglasses.

The palm tree beside their cabana cast shadows across her face like dark fingers. She traced the lines on her own palm—those ridiculous fortune-teller markings about life and love that meant nothing. Her lifeline was short, or so the carnival psychic had told her at sixteen. She'd spent forty years proving her wrong, but now the joke was wearing thin.

"I'm going in," Elena said suddenly, standing up. Her swimsuit hung loose on a frame that had been shedding itself for months.

"The water's cold," Marcus said, because he couldn't say what he meant: *you're tired, you should rest, I'm scared.*

She stepped into the pool anyway, descending the ladder rung by rung. The water swallowed her legs, her waist, her chest. When she reached the deep end, she floated on her back, face turned toward the sun, arms spread wide. From where Marcus sat, she looked like she was offering herself to something larger than both of them.

He remembered their wedding day, how she'd placed her palm against his during the vows, the weight of her trust. He remembered how she'd held his hand through his mother's funeral, through his bankruptcy, through the miscarriage that had nearly undone them. She had been the strong one, the one who swallowed disappointment like vitamins—necessary, bitter, good for you in ways you couldn't taste.

Now she was the one dissolving.

Elena climbed out of the pool, water streaming from her like she was being reborn. She sat beside him again and took his hand, palm to palm. Her skin was cold from the water but her grip was firm.

"Tomorrow," she said, "let's skip the vitamin. Let's just sit here."

Marcus nodded, unable to speak. The palm fronds whispered above them like conspirators, and somewhere a child screamed with delight from the pool. They sat together as the sun moved across the sky, holding on to what remained.