The Things We Keep

Elena stood in the doorway of Mark's study, the room smelling of old paper and the cheap cologne he'd worn until the end. The divorce had been final six months ago. The cancer, three weeks.

She was here for the dog. Buster, a golden retriever with anxiety issues and a selective appetite, now sat in her Subaru. Mark had promised to take him, then got sick, then died. It was typical of him—well-intentioned, ultimately unreliable.

Elena's hair, still wet from the morning shower, stuck to her neck in the humid June air. She'd cut it short after the diagnosis, something sharp and different. Mark hadn't seen it. He'd been too busy dying to notice much of anything.

On his desk, beside the hospice pamphlets and unpaid bills, sat a baseball in a plastic cube. A little league trophy from 1992—most improved player, the engraving read. Elena had bought it for him at a thrift store during their first year together, a joke about his athletic ineptitude. He'd kept it through three moves, across twenty years.

She remembered the night she gave it to him, how they'd laughed until they cried on that terrible futon, how she'd known she would marry him before he even asked. She remembered the night he told her about the tumor, how he'd held her like he used to, the baseball trophy gathering dust on the shelf behind him.

Buster barked from the car, a sound like something breaking.

Elena picked up the baseball. The cube was clouded with age, the ball inside scuffed from imaginary games. She'd hated baseball. Mark had watched it every Sunday, shouting at the television while she read nearby, pretending to be annoyed, actually grateful for the routine of it.

She slipped the baseball into her pocket. It wasn't stealing—Mark's sister had told her to take whatever she wanted. Most of it was going to Goodwill anyway.

Her hair caught on something as she turned—a loose nail, a splinter, some last sharp edge of him. She pulled it free, leaving a few strands behind on the doorframe. Let him keep them.

Buster was whining now. Outside, the sky was bruising purple at the edges. Tomorrow she would take the dog to the vet, sell the house, maybe date again. Maybe not. But for now, she had this room, this last afternoon of saying goodbye to the man who'd broken her heart twice—once by leaving, once by leaving too soon.

The baseball weighed heavy in her pocket. A good heavy. Like something she could build on.