Bottom of the Ninth

Sarah sat in section 214, the plastic seat molding to the contours of a life she no longer recognized. Around her, the crowd roared as a baseball arced toward the outfield—a perfect, predictable arc unlike anything in her marriage these past six months.

Mark leaned forward, beer in hand, eyes fixed on the field. He hadn't looked at her since the second inning. She couldn't remember the last time he'd really looked at her anywhere.

Her iPhone buzzed against her thigh—a familiar pattern, short then long. Hannah's emergency signal. Sarah's thumb found the device reflexively, the way it had found Mark's hand at their wedding, at their daughter's graduation, at his mother's funeral. Now her thumb hesitated.

The text appeared: "He moved the money. Cayman accounts. It's gone, Sarah. All of it."

The stadium noise swelled, then receded into a hollow roar in her ears. The bull market Mark had ridden to prosperity—the aggressive bets, the leverage, the arrogance—had finally thrown him. Or he'd jumped. She didn't know which was worse.

She watched her husband's back, the way his shoulders curved forward as he laughed at something the stranger beside him said. How many times had he assured her? "It's not speculation, Sarah. It's strategy. Bull markets don't crash, they correct."

Bullshit.

The scoreboard changed: 7-2. Their team was winning. Mark turned to high-five her, his face open, unburdened, the face of the man she'd loved enough to believe impossible things.

"Great game, right?" he said.

She looked at her iPhone screen, then at him. At the way his eyes crinkled when he smiled, the small scar above his left eyebrow from the bicycle accident when he was twelve, the faint line of gray at his temples that she'd first noticed three years ago.

"Mark," she said, and her voice sounded like someone else's voice, like it was coming from somewhere far away. "Do you remember that baseball glove you gave me when we were dating? The broken-in one?"

His smile faltered. "Sure. Rawlings. You made me promise I'd never throw it away."

"I still have it," she said. "In the back of the closet."

She stood up, the iPhone burning in her hand. The bottom of the ninth. Two outs. She had to decide whether to stay for the final pitch, whether to let this bull market run until it couldn't, or to walk away while she still could.

"I'll be right back," she said. "Just need to make a call."

She didn't look back as she climbed the concrete steps, her phone already dialing Hannah's number. The crowd cheered behind her—someone had hit a home run. She kept walking.