The Last Game

The padel court echoed with the hollow thwack of ball against glass—my wife's favorite sound, before she became the woman who sits in our bedroom staring at walls, her beautiful red hair now matted and unrecognizable. The doctors called it frontotemporal dementia. I called it living with a stranger wearing Maria's skin.

"You've got that zombie look again," Raul said, bouncing the ball between his racquet and the concrete. "Third time this week."

I caught the ball, gripping it hard enough to feel the seams bite into my palm. "She didn't recognize me this morning."

Raul served, and I missed entirely. The ball bounced past me, mocking my distraction.

"Your dad's baseball glove still in the garage?" Raul asked suddenly, leaning against his racquet. "The one with your initials burned inside?"

"Why?"

"Because you're grieving, Javier. You've been grieving for three years, and she's still sitting in that chair, breathing, maybe even happy in her own world. But you?" He shook his head. "You're the zombie now."

Something in me snapped. I stormed off the court, drove home, and dug through boxes until I found it—my father's old baseball glove, worn soft as butter, smelling of cedar and summer evenings at the park. I carried it into Maria's room, sat beside her chair, and slipped it onto my left hand.

"Remember?" I whispered, taking her hand—her hair brushing my arm like silk, even unwashed. "We met at that baseball game. 2018. You spilled beer on my shoes."

Maria turned slowly, her eyes focusing on the glove. For three years, she'd been gone, but something flickered behind those eyes. She reached out, her fingers tracing the burned initials inside the wrist: J.R.

"Baseball," she whispered, her voice rusty from disuse. "Javier."

I wept into her shoulder, her hair tangling in my tears, feeling more alive in that moment than I had in a thousand days of padel and pretense. The zombie was gone. Both of us.