The Last Inning

Margaret stood on the balcony of her assisted living apartment, the **orange** sunset bleeding into the horizon like a bruised peach. Below, the **baseball** diamond came alive with evening light—teenagers shagging fly balls, their shouts carrying up to her like echoes from another lifetime.

She touched the small carved **bear** on her railing—cedar, worn smooth by thirty years of her thumb rubbing its back. David had carved it during their first year of marriage, whittling away nights while she graded papers at the kitchen table. Now David was gone, and the bear remained, its simple face frozen in something like amusement.

"You're going to miss it," a voice said.

Margaret turned. Mr. Hernandez from 3B stood there, his service **dog**—a golden retriever named Buddy—sitting attentively at his side. The animal's hip jutted oddly where the cancer had eaten into the bone, but Buddy's tail still thumped a steady rhythm against the pavement.

"Miss what?"

"The game." Mr. Hernandez nodded toward the field. "My grandson's pitching. First start of the season."

Margaret hadn't watched a game since David's funeral. The ceremony had fallen on opening day, and she'd spent the evening sitting in their empty living room while the radio played from the kitchen—another loss, another inning, another season beginning without her husband.

"I don't do baseball anymore," she said.

"Yeah." Mr. Hernandez's eyes crinkled. "Me neither. Not since the stroke. But Buddy here, he doesn't know about strokes. He just knows there's a kid down there who needs someone to watch him throw."

Buddy whined softly, leaning against Margaret's leg. The dog's warmth seeped through her thin trousers, solid and undeniable.

Down on the mound, a boy in a too-large uniform wound up and threw. The batter missed. The catcher's glove popped.

"That's my boy," Mr. Hernandez said softly.

Margaret found herself gripping the bear tighter. The setting sun caught the amber waves of Buddy's fur, the same orange-gold that had burned through the windows on her wedding morning. The same light that had flooded the hospital room when David took his last breath.

She looked at the empty chair beside her. Then at Mr. Hernandez, standing with one hand on Buddy's shoulder, both of them braced against gravity and time and all the things they'd lost.

"Does he have a chair?" Margaret asked.

"There's room," Mr. Hernandez said.

Margaret sat. The first pitch of the next inning sailed high and outside, and the boy on the mound adjusted his cap, shook off the catcher, and wound up again. And somewhere in the rhythm of the game—the pop of the glove, the scratch of cleats, the familiar geometry of innings and outs—Margaret felt something loosen inside her chest.

The bear sat on the railing between them. Buddy curled at their feet. And for the first time in three years, she watched the pitch arrive.