The Seventh Inning

The playoffs were on the bar television, but Marcus couldn't focus. His hands were shaking, just slightly, as he tore at the spinach leaves in his salad. He'd ordered it because Rachel used to say it made his breath smell like earth, like something real. Now he was eating alone at the same restaurant where he'd told her he wanted a divorce three months ago.

Outside the window, a dog limped through the rain-slicked street—a golden retriever, ribs showing through matted fur. It reminded him of the childhood dog he'd begged for, the one his father finally relented and bought after Marcus made the traveling baseball team at twelve. Buster, they'd called him. The dog that had slept at the foot of his bed through his parents' shouting matches, through his mother's slow withdrawal into prescription pills, through the years when baseball was the only language his father knew how to speak.

His father was in a memory care facility now. Marcus visited on Sundays, sat while the old man told stories about games he'd never attended, players who'd never existed. Last week, his father had looked at him with sudden clarity and asked, "Did I ever tell you I was sorry about the dog?"

Marcus hadn't known what he meant. The dog had lived to seventeen. Had died in Marcus's arms during his sophomore year of college.

The dog outside stopped and looked through the restaurant window, directly at him. Something in its eyes felt familiar. Marcus set down his fork, left money on the table, and walked out into the rain.

He didn't have a leash. He didn't have a home that allowed pets anymore—Rachel had kept the house, kept everything that made a life resemble a life. But he knelt anyway in his good suit, in the pouring rain, and held out his hand.

The dog didn't run away.