Extra Innings

The baseball sat on his dresser for three years, gathering dust like unresolved grief. His father's glove—raw leather, cracked palm, still holding the shape of a final catch neither of them knew would be the last. David picked it up now, fingers tracing the lacing his father had replaced after that championship game, back when David was twelve and believed in forever.

His apartment was quiet except for the rhythmic thumping of his elderly dog's tail against the floorboards. Barnaby was sixteen now, hips failing, eyes clouding with the same milky haze that had stolen David's father's vision in those final months. The dog raised his head, sniffed the air, and let out a soft whine—recognizing the scent.

"You remember, too, don't you?" David whispered.

The orange crate sat in the corner, half-filled with his father's things. He'd been meaning to sort through it for months. Now, with the spring sun streaming through windows that hadn't been washed since last season, he finally opened it. Old photographs. A pocket watch. Letters his mother had written but never sent.

And there, curled around a faded newspaper clipping: his father's cat collar. Marmalade, the orange tabby who'd slept at the foot of his father's bed through two marriages, three layoffs, and the cancer diagnosis that had arrived like a curveball he never saw coming. The cat had died two weeks before his father, as if she couldn't bear to watch him go alone.

Barnaby hobbled over and nudged David's hand with his wet nose. The dog had been a gift from his father in those last months—something to care for, something alive in a house filling with the quiet anticipation of death. "He'll need someone when I'm gone," his father had said, pressing the puppy into David's hands. "Take care of each other."

David slipped the baseball into his father's glove, squeezed it once, and placed them both in the orange crate with the collar and letters. Barnaby settled beside him, head resting on David's foot, breathing slow and steady.

Outside, kids shouted as they played baseball in the park. David closed his eyes and listened. Extra innings, he thought. We're all just playing extra innings.