The Short Season

The vitamin bottle rattled in his pocket as he walked up the driveway—his father's heart medication, or maybe just another supplement the old man had ordered from some late-night infomercial. David hadn't been to this house in three years, not since the funeral, not since the argument about who had loved her more.

His father sat on the porch, a golden retriever curled at his feet. The dog lifted its head at David's approach, thumped its tail once, then settled back into the concrete. Same breed as the one they'd buried when David was twelve. His father had always replaced things before they were really gone.

"Caught the game last night," his father said, not looking up from his hands. He was rubbing something between his palms—a baseball, worn leather, the stitching coming undone. "Pitcher threw a no-hitter through seven. Fell apart in the eighth."

David sat on the step below him. The silence stretched, thin and wire-tight, the way it always had.

"Sarah used to hate baseball," David said. The name came out easier than he'd expected.

"She loved the seventh-inning stretch." His father's voice cracked, just slightly. "Said it was the only time grown men admitted they needed to stretch their legs."

Lightning split the sky behind them, a sudden white fracture. Neither moved. The storm had been building all afternoon, the air heavy and electric, the kind that made your skin prickle with anticipation.

"I'm selling the house," his father said. "Too big for one man. Even with the dog."

David watched his father's hands, the way his thumb traced the seam of the baseball over and over. The same hands that had taught him to hold a bat, to tie his shoes, to be gentle with the dog they'd loved and lost and replaced.

"The job in Chicago," David said. "I didn't take it."

His father finally looked up. For the first time in three years, their eyes met. Behind them, thunder arrived, low and rumbling, a long-delayed answer to the lightning flash.

"You still have that vitamin routine?" his father asked, a small, almost-smile touching his mouth.

"Every morning," David said. "Never miss a day."

The dog stood, stretched, and nudged David's hand with its wet nose. He scratched behind its ears, the way he'd done with the other one, before the cancer, before his mother got sick, before everything had become about who was grieving harder.

"Come inside," his father said, setting the baseball on the porch rail. "I made coffee. There's something I need to show you."

David stood, his joints popping. The storm broke as they reached the door, rain sudden and hard, washing dust from the porch, the baseball still sitting on the rail where his father had left it, waiting for someone to pick it up again.