The Final Inning

The cable had been flickering for weeks—much like our marriage, David thought, staring at the pixelated baseball game. The Mets were down by three in the eighth, and the kept freezing at the worst moments. Just like Sarah. Just like everything lately.

He'd spent the morning arguing with the cable company, pressing buttons to automated voices, waiting on hold until his ear grew warm against the phone. All this to watch a game that didn't matter, in a house that increasingly felt like someone else's.

Mittens, Sarah's cat—who was now his cat, apparently—jumped onto the coffee table and knocked over his beer. The liquid seeped into the coaster, then onto the wood. David didn't move to stop it. Let it ruin something else. Let it all ruin.

"She's not coming back," his sister had said earlier that day. "You need to accept that."

But how do you accept that the person who promised to hold you through sickness and health simply... stopped? Stopped caring, stopped trying, stopped being the person you thought you married. It happened in increments, small concessions that accumulated like losses in a long season, until the record was too lopsided to recover from.

The baseball player on screen swung at a pitch outside the zone. Strike three. The crowd groaned.

David looked at the cat, now licking itself with that maddening indifference. Mittens had been Sarah's emotional support animal during her mother's illness. Now the cat was just another reminder of the woman who'd packed her things in January and moved to Seattle for a job she'd never mentioned applying for.

He got up to find a towel for the spilled beer. The cable went black completely, then came back with a message: SIGNAL LOST. PLEASE CONTACT YOUR PROVIDER.

David laughed, a dry humorless sound that cracked in his throat. He turned off the television. The room was suddenly silent except for the cat's rhythmic purring, the two of them alone in the gathering dark, waiting for something—anything—to reconnect.

Outside, spring rain began to fall. The season would go on without him, inning after inning, loss after loss, until eventually, somewhere, someone would win.