Struck Out

The lightning flashed again, illuminating the dust motes dancing in the stale air of our bedroom. Mark was asleep, his breathing rhythmic and infuriatingly peaceful. I watched the shadows stretch across his face—the face I'd loved for twelve years, the face that now felt like a stranger's.

I reached for the baseball on his nightstand. The one his father had given him the day before the accident, signed by some minor league player whose name neither of us could remember. Mark kept it there like a talisman, as if the scuffed leather could somehow bridge the gap between then and now, between the man he was and the man he'd become.

Barnaby—our cat, though really he was Mark's cat now—curled against my ankles, purring despite the storm rattling the windowpane. Animals were like that. They didn't hold grudges. They didn't remember the things you said when you'd had too much wine and your marriage was collapsing like a poorly pitched tent.

The second lightning strike was closer. The room brightened, and for a moment I saw everything with terrible clarity: the baseball glove gathering mold in the closet, the photos of our son that Mark couldn't look at anymore, the empty space where our daughter's laughter used to be. College does that. It takes your children and gives you back silence in exchange.

I thought about packing. About leaving while Mark slept and the storm provided cover. But then Barnaby shifted, pressing his warm weight into the arch of my foot, and I remembered how Mark had rescued him from that drainage pipe eight years ago. How he'd come home soaked to the bone, grinning like a fool, holding this mewling bundle of gray fur that would become the one constant in a life that kept changing.

The rain intensified, drumming against the roof like applause. I set the baseball back on the nightstand. My hand brushed against Mark's, and he stirred, reaching for me in that automatic way of muscle memory and long habit.

"Storm's bad," he mumbled, eyes still closed.

"Yeah," I said. "But it'll pass."

His fingers found mine, and I let him hold them. Outside, the lightning splintered the sky again. Inside, something small and fragile opened up inside me, not quite forgiveness, but something like it. Not quite love, but close enough for now.

Barnaby purred louder, and the rain kept falling.