Season's End

The cardboard box sat on her dining table, already half-full with my life reduced to artifacts. Sarah watched from the kitchen doorway, arms crossed, as I reached for the **baseball** cap on the counter—worn navy fabric with a curved brim, sweat-stained from three summers of little league coaching. Our son's team, before the divorce, before everything.

"You want this?" I asked, holding it up.

She shrugged. "Ethan doesn't wear it anymore."

Neither of us mentioned the funeral. Three weeks ago, and we were still dancing around each other like strangers with shared history. I dropped the cap into the box.

On the counter next to it sat a bowl of fruit—**papaya** ripening too fast in the autumn heat, its skin yellowing like bruised flesh. She'd always bought them for him. Papaya for his digestion, she'd said, those last months when food was almost all he could keep down. Now they rotted on the counter, unwanted.

"There's water in the fridge," she said, noticing my dry mouth. "Or tap, if you'd rather."

I filled a glass from the sink, watching my reflection in the window. My **hair** had started graying at the temples this year—grief's slow creep, or just forty-two catching up with me. In the glass, water ripled, distorting my face into someone I barely recognized.

"Your mother called," Sarah said suddenly. "She wants us to come for Thanksgiving. Said she'd make that **orange** glazed ham."

"We're not a 'we' anymore, Sarah."

"She knows. She said she'd set an extra place anyway. For Ethan."

The silence stretched between us, filled with everything we couldn't say. I finished my water and set the glass down carefully.

"I should go."

"Okay."

I lifted the box, heavier than it should have been. At the door, I turned back. The papaya bowl caught the late afternoon light, glowing like something alive.

"You should throw those out," I said.

"I know," she said. "I keep meaning to."

I walked to my car, baseball cap tucked into the box, knowing next week I'd find the papaya still there, and the week after, until she finally let them rot completely or found someone new who would eat them.