Sloan had known. Sloan had seen the photograph on Eleanor’s mantel every Sunday dinner for two years. Sloan had asked once, sweetly, whether Eleanor ever thought about downsizing, about a condo, about freeing up capital. Eleanor had answered with a look. Sloan had smiled as if the look were charming.
The bump of the hip had not been charming.
Eleanor finished the iced tea. She went inside, locked the French doors, and left the photograph and the watch where they were. Overnight the pool lights would come on automatically. The gold would shine up through the water like something a diver might claim. No diver came.
She slept in fragments. In one fragment she was thirty again, counting twenties on a kitchen table while Harrison slept in a borrowed crib. In another she was at the pool’s edge watching Sloan’s mouth form the word bitter, and she woke with her own reply already finished in her throat. At 3:17 she rose and drank water from the bathroom tap and stood in the dark hallway listening to the house tick and settle. Houses spoke if you had paid enough to learn their language. This one said: still here. Eleanor said back, without sound: I know.
Morning arrived with the smell of chlorine and cut grass. Eleanor made coffee. She stood at the kitchen window in a robe the color of old ivory and watched a single leaf drift across the pool’s surface. Below it, unmoved, the frame and the watch kept their vigil.
Her phone lit with Harrison’s name at 8:14. She let it ring out. At 8:22 it lit again. At 8:31 a text: Ma please. At 9:03: She wants the watch. I’ll pay for a diver. At 9:40: Can I come by.
Eleanor typed: After you bring the money you borrowed in March. Then she deleted it. She typed: Not today. She sent that.