The Last Inning

Margaret stood at the kitchen counter, mechanically chopping spinach for a salad she didn't want to eat. The clock on the microwave read 11:47 PM. David should have been home three hours ago.

On the windowsill, the goldfish—David's anniversary gift from last year—swam in endless circles around its bowl. She'd named it Consistency, a joke that had stopped being funny months ago. The fish's orange scales caught the light from the streetlamp outside, flashing like tiny warning lights.

Her phone buzzed. Another text from her sister: "You coming to the game tomorrow or what? Dad's got seats behind home plate."

Baseball. David's excuse for everything this month. Late nights? Watching the game with clients from work. Unexplained charges on the credit card? Taking clients to the game. The missed anniversary dinner? His boss had season tickets and invited him last-minute.

Margaret dropped the knife. The spinach lay in ruined green shreds.

She remembered their first date, sitting in the bleachers at a minor league stadium, sharing popcorn and talking until the grounds crew chased them out. David had told her he loved how she kept score in the margins of her program, how she appreciated the quiet tension between pitches. "You're the most patient person I've ever met," he'd said, pressing his warm hand against hers in the cooling July air.

Patient. That was certainly one word for it.

The goldfish surfaced, its mouth opening and closing in silent petition for food. Margaret watched it, thinking about momentum and inertia, about how relationships, like games, could stretch into extra innings until you forgot what you were fighting for. You just wanted it to end.

Her phone lit up again. Not her sister this time.

"Can we talk? I'm at the hotel on 5th."

Margaret looked at the spinach, at the fish, at the life she'd been waiting to begin again for three years. Some innings, she realized, you had to call for yourself.

She picked up her keys, left the salad unfinished, and walked out the door.