The Cat at Center Court

Marcus adjusted his father's fedora, the brim stiff with decades of sweat and memory. He shouldn't have worn it to the padel court, but he needed armor today.

The cat appeared every morning at 7 AM, a calico with half a tail who watched them play from the fence, as if keeping score. Marcus hated how much he'd started to depend on her presence.

"You're going to lose, Marcus."

Elena's voice cut through him. His former friend. His former everything. She hadn't changed in three years — still sharp elbows and sharper tongue, still moving like she had something to prove.

The padel ball cracked against the glass wall, a sound like bone breaking.

"Why are you here?" Marcus asked, serving into the sun so he wouldn't have to look at her.

"Sarah died." The ball stopped bouncing. "Two weeks ago."

Marcus missed the return. The cat meowed from the fence.

"I didn't know you two were still close."

"We weren't." Elena walked to the net. "But she left me something. She said I'd find you here. She said you'd be wearing that ridiculous hat."

Marcus's hand went to the fedora. His father's. Sarah's father's too. They'd been siblings, and then they weren't, and somewhere in the wreckage of that betrayal, Marcus and Elena had become casualties too.

"She wanted you to have this." Elena held out a small envelope.

The cat jumped onto the court, padding toward them, indifferent to human grief. Marcus opened it. A photograph. Three children, arms linked, somewhere that didn't exist anymore. Sarah smiled between them.

"She said we were all she had left," Elena said. "And she couldn't die knowing we hated each other."

Marcus looked at the photograph, then at Elena, then at the cat weaving between their legs, purring like a small engine trying to restart something dead.

"I don't hate you," he said. "I haven't hated you in years."

Elena's eyes filled. She wiped them angrily. "Play?"

"One set."

The cat settled in the shade, tail twitching, as they began again. The ball cracked against the glass. The fedora stayed on Marcus's head. For the first time in three years, something shifted.