The Ninth Inning of Goodbye

The orange sunset bled across the horizon as Mara sat on her balcony, her iphone vibrating with yet another ignored call from work. She scratched behind the ears of her aging cat, Barnaby, who purred with the rumble of a small engine—a stark contrast to the storm raging inside her chest.

"Three years," she whispered to the empty air. "Three years chasing quarterly targets like a dog chasing parked cars."

Below, the neighborhood kids played baseball, their laughter carrying up on the evening breeze. The crack of the bat against ball transported her back to that night—Jeremy's company softball game, where she'd first glimpsed the cracks in their marriage. He'd spent seven innings talking about his promotion, his portfolio, his ascent, while she'd sat in the bleeder seats nursing a warm beer, wondering when she'd become a prop in his success story.

Her phone chimed again. A text this time: *We need to discuss your departure package. Can we meet tomorrow?*

The corporate equivalent of *it's not you, it's me.*

She remembered the bull-headed way Jeremy had defended his affair with his assistant. "It's not about emotion, Mara—it's about networking. You wouldn't understand the optics."

Barnaby shifted, his weight pressing against her thigh like a living anchor. At least someone stayed.

The baseball game below had reached its final inning. A kid hit a towering pop fly that seemed to hang suspended in time—a moment of perfect, impossible stillness before gravity asserted its claim. Mara watched it descend, caught cleanly by a fielder who raised his glove in triumph.

Some things ended cleanly. Some things required a full count, two outs, bottom of the ninth.

She typed her response: *Tomorrow works. 10am. Bring the paperwork.*

The orange light had faded to purple, the first stars appearing like punctuation marks at the end of a very long sentence. Mara breathed in the evening air, finally ready to begin whatever came next.