The Measure of Seasons

The baseball diamond where Tom once played shortstop was now a parking lot. He drove past it each morning, the vitamin supplement rattling in his cup holder—a daily ritual he'd started after his divorce, as if orange gel capsules could somehow repair the years of whiskey and late-night diners.

Sheila watched him from across the pool, her arms folded along the concrete edge. They'd been meeting here for three weeks, since the funeral, since his brother's will revealed he'd left everything to her—a woman his brother had known for six months.

"You're running away again," she said, not unkindly.

Tom kicked off his shoes. "Just getting some exercise."

"Tom, we're forty-six. Neither of us is running anywhere we haven't already been."

She was right. He'd spent the last decade running—new jobs, new cities, new women who all seemed to blur together like watercolors in the rain. His brother Mark had been the one who stayed, who built something. Who'd found this woman in a bookstore and somehow, improbably, built a life.

"The vitamins," she said suddenly. "Mark took them too. Every morning with breakfast. Said he read somewhere that Vitamin D helps with depression."

Tom felt something tighten in his chest. "He never mentioned it."

"He wouldn't have." She slid into the pool with practiced grace, the water rippling around her shoulders. "Your brother was private about certain things. Like how he kept every baseball card you gave him when you were kids. Even the bent ones."

Tom sat on the edge, feet dangling in the cool water. "I haven't played in twenty years."

"No," she said softly. "But some part of you never stopped."

Later, when they lay together on her living room floor, surrounded by boxes of Mark's things, Tom found what he'd been avoiding. His old baseball glove, broken in just so, the leather still holding traces of dirt from games they'd played before everything got complicated. Beside it, a photo of the two of them, young and whole, standing on that demolished diamond.

Sheila's hand found his in the darkness. "We don't have to run anymore, Tom. We can just... be here."

The vitamin bottle sat on the nightstand, half-empty. For the first time in years, he didn't take one.