Supplements and Storms

Marcus stood on the production line, watching thousands of tiny yellow pills rattle into plastic bottles—vitamin D3, the sunshine supplement, packaged for people who never saw the light of day. His daughter Maya played baseball now, twelve years old and already throwing harder than he ever had at her age. Her games were the only thing that made the fluorescent factory lights bearable.

The divorce papers had arrived yesterday. Sarah was keeping the house. Marcus would get every other weekend, the Wednesday night dinners, the carefully measured portions of parenthood.

"You're missing it," his supervisor said, pointing to the conveyor belt jamming. Marcus fixed it without thinking, his body moving through motions his mind had already abandoned.

That evening, a storm rolled in—thunderheads bruising the sky purple and green. Maya's championship game had been called, then resumed, then called again. She texted him: *Dad, don't come. It's gross.*

He went anyway.

The field was empty when he arrived, rain already sheeting down in diagonal waves. Then he saw her—alone in the dugout, still in her uniform, cleats resting on the bench.

"I told you not to come," she said, not looking at him.

"I brought Gatorade."

She laughed, that sound that always broke something loose in his chest. "You're such a dad."

Lightning fractured the sky, a white wound that left afterimages burned on Marcus's retinas. In that flash, he saw her clearly—not the little girl who used to fit in one arm, but someone growing away from him, someone who would eventually disappear entirely into a life he wouldn't be part of.

"Mom says you're moving into an apartment," Maya said.

"Yeah."

"Will I have my own room?"

"Of course."

Another lightning strike, closer this time. The air tasted of ozone and wet dirt. Maya hugged her knees to her chest.

"I don't want you to move out, Dad."

Marcus didn't know what to say. He sat beside her on the bench, both of them watching the rain drowning the infield, the pitcher's mound disappearing under rising water.

"Sometimes things change," he said finally. "And sometimes they don't. I'll still come to your games. I'll still bring Gatorade."

She leaned into him, smelling of wet hair and sweat and something distinctly his daughter. "Even when I'm old and terrible at baseball?"

"Especially then."

The storm lasted another hour. They sat through it together as lightning kept stitching the sky back together, white-hot and fleeting, while Marcus wondered how many more seasons he'd get before she grew out of needing him to be there at all.