The Last Breakfast at the Resort

Maria stood at the buffet, her fork hovering over the papaya. She hadn't eaten properly since the funeral. The fruit looked artificial in its arranged perfection, too bright for a Tuesday morning in Cancun, where she was supposed to be bonding with her new team from corporate.

"You going to eat that, or just intimidate it?"

She turned. A man in a Panama hat—ridiculously affected, like something out of a Hemingway novel—stood behind her. His hair was silver at the temples, the kind of distinguished aging that suggested he'd earned every strand.

"Intimidate it," she said. "I'm good at intimidating fruit."

He laughed. Actually laughed. Not the polite chuckle she'd been getting all week from people who'd heard about David. The accident had happened three weeks ago. The company had insisted she attend the retreat—"take some time, Maria, clear your head." As if all-inclusive buffets and mandatory padel matches could fix a hole in a life.

"I'm Richard," he said. "I've been watching you from the pool. You look like someone who's counting the minutes until she can escape."

"That obvious?"

"I play baseball," he said, like it explained everything. "You learn to read people when you're managing a bunch of overgrown boys chasing balls around a diamond."

They ended up at a table away from the others. Richard had lost his wife two years ago—cancer. He told her about the first time he'd bought groceries for one, how he'd stood paralyzed in the produce aisle because she'd always chosen the papaya, checking for ripeness the way their daughter had taught her.

"I keep finding her hats," he said. "In coat pockets. In the car. Like she's still wearing them, just wandering through rooms I'm not in."

Maria felt something crack open in her chest. "David left his baseball glove on the porch. It's been there since—since it happened. I can't touch it."

The padel tournament started at noon. Maria watched from a lounge chair as Richard, who'd somehow been recruited onto a team, missed every shot. His hat blew off in the wind. He retrieved it, laughing, his hair wild, and caught her eye.

That night, she packed her bag. The retreat ended tomorrow, but she needed to go home, needed to pick up that glove, needed to figure out how to live in a world where the things you love could just—stop.

At breakfast the next morning, the papaya was gone. Seasonal, the chef said. But Richard was there, reading a newspaper, his hat on the table beside him.

He looked up. "The fruit's gone," he said. "But the coffee's still terrible."

Maria sat down across from him. "Tell me about baseball," she said.

Outside, the wind carried the sound of padel balls hitting racquets, a rhythm like a heartbeat, like something that refused, despite everything, to stop.