The Score We Keep

Maria sliced through the papaya with surgical precision, the orange flesh yielding to her knife like a confession. The tropical sweetness filled the kitchen—her mother's breakfast, now hers, though Elena had always preferred bagels. The papaya seeds scattered like dark thoughts across the cutting board.

"You're still going, aren't you?" Elena stood in the doorway, already dressed in her tennis whites. "The padel tournament?"

"It's the finals." Maria didn't look up. "You know I've been training all spring."

"I know." Elena's voice was flat. "I also know what today is."

The papaya's scent suddenly cloyed. Maria knew exactly what today was. Three years since Thomas's funeral. Since they'd scattered his ashes at that baseball field where he'd coached little league for two decades. Since she and Elena had found themselves alone together in this house, bound by grief and circumstance, leaning into each other when the nights got too long.

Thomas had loved baseball with a religious fervor. Maria had learned the sport's rhythms through osmosis—the crack of the bat, the seventh-inning stretch, the way he'd explain pitching strategies to anyone who'd listen. Elena had just nodded along, patient but bored. Some things about their brother never quite reached them both.

"I'll be back by four," Maria said. "The match shouldn't run long."

"That's what you said last weekend." Elena stepped closer, the smell of her jasmine perfume competing with the papaya. "When you went for drinks with your padel team. You didn't come back until midnight."

"We were celebrating."

"You were avoiding."

Maria set down the knife. The kitchen clock ticked between them.

"I'm not avoiding anything," Maria said quietly. "I'm just living, Elena. Thomas wouldn't want us to—"

"Don't." Elena's voice cracked. "Don't tell me what he'd want. You think playing padel with strangers is honoring him? You think forgetting what day it is—"

"I haven't forgotten!" Maria's shout startled them both. "I remember everything. I remember him teaching me to swing a bat when I was seven. I remember how he laughed when I missed the ball and fell on my ass. I remember exactly how his voice sounded." She pressed her palm to the counter. "I also remember him telling me, before he died, that he worried about us. That we were too comfortable being alone together."

Elena went still. "He said that?"

"He said we needed lives. He made me promise I'd try new things. Padel is new things."

The silence stretched, fragile as thin ice. Elena picked up a piece of papaya, contemplative.

"I could come watch," she said. "If you want."

Maria met her eyes. Something shifted between them—recognition, perhaps. They were both trying. They were both failing. They were both still here.

"I'd like that," Maria said. "But we're going to the field after. Both of us. We'll sit on the bleachers and remember everything."

Elena nodded, swallowing the papaya. "Deal. But you're buying dinner afterward. Something normal. Not this tropical fruit nonsense."

Maria laughed, startled and genuine. "Padel. Baseball. Papaya. We really are a mess, aren't we?"

"Yeah," Elena said, heading for the door. "But at least we're a mess together."