Extra Innings

The gray at David's temples had spread like frost, or maybe that was just the stadium lights catching what time had written there. He checked his iPhone for the third time in as many minutes. Still nothing from Sarah.

"She's not coming, Dad."

David looked at his son. Sixteen, with hair that refused to stay tamed, eyes that had learned to disappointment too young. The baseball field stretched green before them, the game already into the seventh inning stretch.

"She might be caught in traffic. The bridge—"

"The bridge was fine an hour ago when she texted she'd be late. Again." Leo turned back to the game, his posture closing like a book.

David felt it all then—the weight he'd been bearing since the separation, the accumulated slights and broken promises, the sheer bull of trying to hold together a family that kept fracturing. His phone buzzed.

*Can't make it. Work thing. So sorry. xo*

The emoji hit him harder than the words. A decade of marriage reduced to two letters and a kiss.

He'd met Sarah at a game like this, twenty years ago. She'd worn a baseball cap backward, hair spilling out, laughing at his terrible hot dog. They'd talked through all nine innings, then walked along the river until dawn. She'd told him she wanted three children, a house with a wraparound porch, a dog named Bear.

Now she couldn't spare two hours for the one child they'd managed to have—the one who sat beside him now, pretending to care about a bottom-of-the-seventh sacrifice bunt.

"Your mother's not coming," David said.

"I know."

Leo's voice didn't break. That was the worst part—he'd learned not to expect anything else. The bull of it was, David had done the same thing to his own father. The sins moved down the line like inherited traits, passed along with the color of your eyes or the way your hair started thinning in your thirties.

"You know," David said, "when I was your age, my dad missed my championship game. Found out later he was with another woman."

Leo turned to him, really looked at him for the first time all night. "You ever tell Mom that?"

"No. Thought I could bear it alone. Thought love meant carrying things quietly."

The stadium lights flickered. Somewhere, a baseball cracked against a bat. The crowd roared.

"You don't have to," Leo said quietly. "Just so you know."

David's throat tightened. His iPhone lit up again—Sarah asking if they wanted to reschedule for next weekend. He turned it face down on his lap.

"Let's get pizza after," he said. "The place with the arcade."

Leo's small smile was worth more than all the forwarded emails in the world. "Only if I beat you at air hockey again."

"You got lucky."

"Bull."

They laughed. It wasn't everything. It wasn't nothing. It was enough for tonight.