The Ninth Inning

Eliot sat alone in Section 204, the plastic bench warm beneath him despite the October chill. The minor league stadium was half-empty, scattered with couples and fathers explaining baseball to restless sons. He shouldn't have come. Sarah would have hated that he was here instead of at her sister's baby shower, but God, she'd been gone six months and he still couldn't breathe right.

The team mascot—a grinning goldfish with an oversized head—danced on the dugout. Sarah had bought him a real goldfish once, early in their marriage. They'd named it Captain. It had lasted three years before she found it floating on a Tuesday morning. She'd cried into his shoulder for twenty minutes. That was the year before the cancer.

"Mind if I sit?" A woman with wild copper hair, the color of a perfect orange sunset, gestured to the empty seat beside him. She held two plastic cups of beer.

Eliot shrugged. "Free country."

She sat, passed him a cup. "You look like a man who's been sitting here since opening pitch, waiting for something to happen."

"Just needed to be somewhere," Eliot said.

"Same." She pointed toward left field. "There's a fox down there."

A red fox, sleek and improbable, trotted along the warning track, paused near the foul pole, and looked up at them as if considering the standings.

"That's something," Eliot said.

"My husband used to bring me here," the woman said, her voice even. "Before he decided his secretary was more interesting than ten years of marriage."

Eliot turned to her. "I'm sorry."

"I'm not. Turns out, I like my own company." She smiled, something genuine and worn at the edges. "You?"

"Wife died. Cancer. Six months."

"Oh," she said softly. "That's worse. That's—you don't get to be angry. You just get to be empty."

The sky darkened. Storm coming. The first bolt of lightning cracked somewhere west of the stadium, a white scar through the clouds. The crowd flinched.

"I should go," Eliot said, standing.

"Stay," she said. "The game's almost over. Nobody's leaving. We'll wait it out."

He sat. The fox disappeared into the shadows beneath the bleachers. The scoreboard flickered. Somewhere beyond the outfield lights, the storm was breaking open.

"I'm Mara," she said.

"Eliot."

They watched the final inning in silence as the first raindrops fell, cold and scattered, like punctuation marks at the end of a sentence they weren't ready to finish.