The Vitamin Season

The doctor's voice had that practiced neutrality, the kind that delivers devastating news with all the emotional weight of a weather report. Vitamin D deficiency, she'd said, prescribing supplements as if they could fix the hollow ache in my chest where Arthur used to be.

Three months since the funeral, and I was still taking those goddamn pills, still sitting on this porch watching my neighbor's cat stalk through the overgrown garden like it owned the place. The cat—some mangy orange thing that had adopted me—kept bringing me gifts: dead leaves, twigs, once a startlingly intact baby bird. I supposed it was trying to feed me, like I'd somehow forgotten how to nourish myself.

"You look like shit," Marcus said, appearing at the fence line with a baseball glove tucked under his arm like a guilty secret. We hadn't spoken since the wake, not really.

"Feel like it too," I admitted, surprising myself.

He tossed me a baseball—worn leather, seams fraying—and for a moment, everything came back: Arthur's voice from the dugout, the summer we'd spent at every minor league game within driving distance, how he'd made me promise to keep living even when he couldn't anymore.

"Arthur left this for you," Marcus said, guessing my confusion. "Said you'd need it when you were ready."

The ball felt impossibly heavy in my hand. "I'm not ready."

"Nobody is." Marcus shrugged. "But you're still here, and you've got this cat that apparently thinks you're its personal project, and you're taking vitamins like they're fucking magical. Seems like you're trying."

I looked down at the cat, now curled on my feet, purring like a tiny engine of stubborn survival. The vitamin bottle sat on the railing beside me, absurd and hopeful.

"Play catch?" Marcus asked, already backing into position.

I threw the ball. It sailed wide, missing everything, but Marcus just laughed and chased it down.

"Again," he called out. "Like Arthur always said: you miss every base you don't run toward."

The pills wouldn't fix me. The cat couldn't replace him. But the ball game continued, and for the first time in months, I picked up my glove and walked toward home plate.