Three Rows Back

Elena sorted the pills into the plastic organizer: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. Each compartment clicked shut with the same finality she'd felt when Mark packed his boxes three months ago. The vitamin D prescription sat in the kitchen window where the morning light caught the amber plastic—her doctor's orders for the seasonal depression that had settled like November fog.

The dog, Buster, nosed her ankle. A golden retriever mix with one ear that stood at attention and another that surrendered to gravity, he'd been Mark's idea. Their compromise. Now he was hers, along with the mortgage and the silence that filled rooms where conversation used to live.

"Walk," she said, and his tail thumped against the cabinet door.

The park near their old apartment was hosting a baseball tournament. Elena stood near the backstop watching college boys in crisp uniforms slide into dirt bases, their shouts carrying across the field like ghosts of the life she'd almost chosen. Twenty years ago, seated three rows back, Mark had bought her a lukewarm beer and explained the infield fly rule with such earnest enthusiasm that she'd laughed, really laughed, for the first time since her mother died.

She'd married him eight months later.

Buster strained at the leash, watching a foul arc toward the parking lot. The baseball landed near a couple sharing headphones, and Elena felt something unlatch inside her—not quite grief, not quite relief. Just the quiet recognition that the life she'd mourned had been ending long before Mark moved out. The vitamin bottle in her pocket was a reminder: her body had been screaming for things she'd refused to acknowledge for years.

A player on third base caught her eye. He looked like Mark might have at twenty, before mortgages and resentments and the slow erosion that came from two people wanting different things. The boy tipped his cap to someone in the stands—a girl laughing with friends, unburdened by the weight of choices not yet made.

Elena turned toward the exit, Buster trotting beside her. She'd stop at the pharmacy on the way home, and tomorrow she'd call the therapist her sister had recommended. The baseball game continued behind her, but she didn't look back.