The Bear in the Attic

Mark's father had been dead three weeks when he finally forced himself to climb the attic stairs, a contractor's trash bag in each hand. The heat hit him first – thick, stagnant air that smelled of dust and memories he'd spent twenty years avoiding.

He found the baseball first, tucked behind a water heater. A signed Spalding from '86, the leather cracked, one panel peeling like sunburned skin. His father had coached Mark's team that summer, standing at third base in a faded hat, screaming encouragement while Mark struck out, swung at air, watched the ball sail past as his father's smile faltered, just a little, each time.

"You'll get it next time," his father had said afterward, buying him ice cream, his disappointment wrapped in love, in the warmth of a hand on Mark's shoulder that Mark would later realize was the only physical affection he'd ever receive.

The hat sat on a cardboard box – blue mesh, adjustable strap, sweat stained at the crown. Mark picked it up, expecting the same wave of guilt that usually drowned him. Instead, he felt nothing. The grief had burned itself out, leaving only the charcoal of acceptance.

Then he saw the bear.

Not the teddy from childhood, but a taxidermy grizzly standing in the corner, glass eyes reflecting the attic's single bulb. His father's pride from that hunting trip to Montana, the same year Mark's mother left. His father had come back with the bear and a drinking problem, telling anyone who'd listen about the charge, the adrenaline, how he'd looked death in the face and won.

Mark had been twelve, waiting at home with a babysitter, his father's adrenaline cathartic while his mother's absence grew like a tumor.

"He couldn't bear being alone," Sarah had said at the funeral, standing too close in her black dress, smelling of gin and desperation. She'd been his father's friend, or maybe more – Mark had stopped asking. The cable guy had found them together once, or so the neighborhood whispered.

Now Mark stood before the glass-eyed bear, realizing he'd spent his whole life running from this attic, from the disappointment in his father's eyes when he quit baseball, from the empty spaces where his mother should have been, from the suspicion that his father had died more alone than anyone deserved.

He dropped the hat into the trash bag. Then the baseball. The bear would need professional removal – another expense, another phone call.

His phone vibrated. Sarah, asking if he needed help going through things. Mark stared at the screen, thumb hovering over delete. Instead, he typed: "Yes. Bring wine."

Some ghosts you exorcise alone. Others, you just learn to live with.