The Seventh Inning

Margaret found the gray hair three weeks after David left the bedroom and moved into the guest room. She plucked it from her temple and held it up to the bathroom mirror, a single silver thread in a field of chestnut. She was forty-two, not ancient, but there it was—evidence of time passing, of things ending.

That evening, David's phone lit up the kitchen with a notification: *Baseball cancelled.* She knew what that meant. He'd be in the home office, working late again. Their marriage had become a series of cancelled games, rain delays, and extra innings that neither of them wanted to play.

She found him there, surrounded by spreadsheets, his palm resting flat against the desk as if bracing for a blow. He didn't look up when she entered.

"Remember when you used to take me to games?" she asked, leaning against the doorframe.

David's hand flexed against the desk. "That was twenty years ago, Margaret."

"The player's strike," she continued, though she knew he was thinking of the years between then and now—the miscarriage, her mother's death, his promotion that required more travel than either of them had anticipated. The way they'd stopped touching each other's palms across the dinner table, stopped finding gray hairs together, stopped being on each other's team.

"I sold the tickets," David said, finally looking at her. His eyes were tired. "For next month's game. We don't have to go."

Margaret crossed the room and placed her hand in his open palm, something she hadn't done in months. His skin was warm, calloused from years of gripping steering wheels and baseball bats, from holding her hand through funerals and graduations they'd somehow survived together.

"We'll go," she said. "Sit behind home plate. Eat overpriced hot dogs. And when they announce the seventh inning stretch, we'll decide if we want to stay for the eighth."

David's thumb pressed against hers, almost imperceptibly. "Okay," he said.

Margaret tucked the gray hair into her pocket. It could wait. They had seven innings left to figure out the rest.