The Hat on the Casket

The baseball cap lay on the closed casket, navy blue with a faded Yankees logo. It was the same hat Matt had worn the day we stopped being friends.

I stood at the back of the funeral home, nursing lukewarm coffee while watching strangers approach the casket like mourners at a shrine. Most of them didn't know Matt the way I had—didn't know about the baseball scholarship he'd thrown away, the marriage he'd sabotaged, the way his charm could curdle into cruelty in seconds.

We'd been best friends since Little League, playing baseball every summer until that night at O'Malley's. Matt had been drinking since noon, his hat pulled low over his eyes. When I told him I was taking the job in Chicago—that I was tired of enabling him—he'd thrown his pint glass at my head.

"You're just like the rest," he'd spat. "You think you're better than me."

I hadn't spoken to him in three years. Not until his sister called last week, voice cracking, to tell me the liver had finally given out.

Now I approached the casket, footsteps echoing in the hushed room. I picked up the hat, running my thumb over the frayed brim. Matt had left it with me that night—forgotten it on my barstool. I'd kept it all these years, waiting for an apology that never came.

His mother caught my eye from the front pew. She smiled sadly, mistaking my presence for devotion instead of guilt. I nodded back, throat tight.

I set the hat back on the polished wood and walked out without signing the guest book. Some friendships don't deserve closure. Some things are better left broken.