The Seventh Inning Stretch

Margaret found the baseball in his sock drawer, wrapped in orange tissue paper that had yellowed with age. Her fingers trembled as she unwrapped it, the leather smooth against her skin, the stitching imperfect—his hands had never been steady, even before the tremors of Parkinson's took them.

Three years since David died. Three years of mornings waking to the empty side of the bed, of evenings pouring wine for one, of their golden retriever Buster resting his gray-muzzled head on her knee whenever the silence grew too thick. Buster was fourteen now, his once-glossy coat dull, his hips failing. Another thing they were losing together.

She turned the baseball over in her hands. On one side, in faded blue ink: "To my Margaret, my favorite catch. Summer 1978."

The summer they'd met. She'd been wearing that orange sundress, the one that made her hair look like spun copper in the sunlight. He'd been playing catch with his friends near the lake when he'd spotted her. Their eyes had met across the diamond, and something had shifted—irrevocably, wonderfully.

They'd spent forty-four years together. Not enough. Never enough.

Buster whined softly from the doorway, his rheumy eyes fixed on her. She set the baseball down on the nightstand and went to him, kneeling to stroke his soft ears. His heart beat against her palm, steady and persistent. Life went on, even when you wanted it to stop. Even when you weren't sure you wanted it to.

"You ready for dinner, old man?" she whispered.

He thumped his tail against the floorboards—thump, thump, thump. A slow rhythm, but there.

Margaret rose, her knees cracking. Outside, the setting sun painted the kitchen in shades of tangerine and gold. She'd have an orange with dinner, she decided. Something sweet to cut through the bitterness that always seemed to rise this time of day.

The baseball sat on the nightstand, a small planet of memory. She'd leave it there. Let it be part of the constellation now, along with everything else—the good and the bad, the beautiful and the brutal. All of it theirs. All of it still here, in the space between what was lost and what remained.