The Seventh Inning Stretch

The baseball stadium roared around Sarah, but she felt hollowed out, like a stadium after the final pitch. Beside her, Mark's iPhone screen glowed in the twilight—again. He'd checked it four times since the bottom of the fourth, thumb scrolling, face illuminated by that cold blue light that had become the third person in their marriage.

"Your sister?" she asked, though she already knew the answer.

"Work," he said, not looking up. "They need me on the Johnson account."

The Johnson account had needed him every night for three weeks. Sarah had started memorizing the patterns of his absences—late dinners, canceled plans, the way he'd stopped asking about her day, stopped noticing anything beyond the rectangle of glass in his palm.

A dog trotted past their row—a golden retriever with a frayed tennis ball in its mouth, searching for someone to throw. The dog paused near Sarah, tail wagging hopefully, and she felt something crack open inside her chest. This had been their dog once, before Buster died. Mark had cried for two days when they put him down. Now he couldn't even be bothered to look up from his screen.

The baseball game continued—batters swung, crowds cheered, innings passed—but Sarah felt like she was watching it all from underwater, separated by some thick, unnameable distance. She remembered when they'd bought season tickets, how excited they'd been. That felt like a different lifetime, a different version of themselves.

"Mark," she said softly.

"What?" He typed rapidly, eyes fixed downward.

She watched the dog find someone else to throw the ball, watched it bound away with simple, uncomplicated joy. "Never mind."

The seventh inning stretch came, and everyone stood. Sarah didn't. She gathered her purse, her jacket, her dignity, and walked up the steps toward the exit while Mark's iPhone lit his face, illuminating everything he was losing in its cold, artificial glow.

She didn't look back.