Everything After the Fifth Inning

The orange light of sunset hit her iPhone screen just as the message appeared. Sarah watched it glow on the nightstand—another notification from work at 7:43 PM—and felt something hollow open in her chest. She'd become one of them: the walking dead, checking emails through dinner, through baseball games, through what used to be a life.

Mark was already asleep on the couch, the Yankees game droning on TV. They'd met at a baseball diamond ten years ago. He'd been coaching Little League, she'd been watching her nephew. Their first date had been hot dogs and Seventh Inning Stretch. Now Fifth Inning was enough to knock him out.

She picked up the phone, her thumb hovering over his banking app. He'd shown her the pyramid scheme last week—"investment opportunity," he'd called it, eyes bright with that scary intensity. The same look he'd had when he proposed. The same look he'd had when he said he wanted to try for a baby, right before he started coming home later and later.

The screen illuminated his face in sleep. Lines she'd never noticed before. A stranger's face.

Sarah opened the app. Saw the transfers. Saw the messages from someone named Crystal, someone who wasn't her, someone who'd received twelve thousand dollars of their savings in three months.

"Baby?" Mark mumbled, not opening his eyes.

She stared at him. Really looked. The hands she'd held. The body she'd known. The man who'd become a zombie to his own life—work, schemes, lies on repeat.

"Go back to sleep," she said softly.

The orange light faded to gray. She stood up, walked to the closet, and pulled down the old baseball glove she'd kept all these years. Put it on her left hand. Felt the leather, still stiff, still waiting.

Outside, the summer air was thick and sweet. She walked to the park, found an empty diamond under the lights, and threw a baseball she'd brought with her against the backstop. Threw it again and again, each pop echoing like something finally, finally breaking.