The Second Inning of Goodbye

Marcus sat in his car, the engine cooling, staring at the **baseball** field where his son stood in right field — the position Marcus had played at that age, before divorce and distance became the only geography they shared. His **iPhone** lit up with Sarah's name again. She'd called six times today.

He didn't answer.

The glove compartment held the **vitamin** D supplements she'd bought him last winter, claiming his seasonal affective disorder was making him impossible to live with. She wasn't wrong. But she also wasn't there, not really — not in the way that mattered. Her body occupied their bed, but her mind had been **swimming** somewhere else for months. He'd seen it in the way she checked her watch during dinner, in the texts she deleted before he could glimpse them.

His phone buzzed again. This time a text: *We need to talk.*

Marcus pressed his **palm** against the steering wheel, feeling the worn leather, the familiar groove where his thumb rested after fifteen years of driving this same route. The numbness had started there — tiny tingles he'd dismissed as carpal tunnel until they spread to his entire left side during breakfast last Tuesday.

The neurologist had used words like "progressive" and "uncertain." Marcus had used words like "not yet" and "maybe it's stress."

He watched his son throw a ball toward home plate. The boy's motion was graceful, unburdened. Marcus tried to make a fist with his left hand. The fingers refused to curl.

His phone lit up once more. Sarah's name, then a photo: the positive pregnancy test she'd been too afraid to show him, the thing that had made her distance herself, the terrifying joy she didn't know how to hold.

The evening air grew thick. Marcus understood now — the distance between them wasn't absence. It was the particular ache of trying to protect someone from the worst version of yourself.

He pressed his right palm against the window and watched his son track a fly ball against the sky, that perfect blue that held everything: endings, beginnings, and all the uncertain space between them.