Unfinished Games

Marcus stood in the kitchen, mechanically chopping spinach. The green leaves fell like dark secrets onto the cutting board. Six months after Elena's death, he still moved through his days like a zombie—automaton of grief, hollowed out by the slow erosion of absence. Their golden retriever, Buster, nudged his leg, and Marcus found himself apologizing to the dog for the thousandth time. "I know, buddy. I know."

The baseball glove sat on the top shelf of the closet, leather worn smooth from years of summer evenings in the park. Elena had never understood his obsession with the sport—the way statistics comforted him, how the rhythm of innings made sense when nothing else did. She'd been his friend first, the person who'd held him together after his mother died, the one who convinced him that vulnerability wasn't weakness. Then she became his wife, his anchor, the reason he believed in something like forever.

Now Marcus was forty-two, learning to be a person alone again. The spinach sulked in the pan. He considered calling David—his best friend since college—but their conversations had become circular lately. David meant well, but there are only so many times you can hear "she wouldn't want you to be miserable" before you want to scream that missing someone isn't a choice.

Buster whined at the back door, and Marcus realized he was standing motionless, the spinach burning. The smell of charred greens snapped something loose inside him. He turned off the stove with hands that didn't feel like his own, then slid down to the kitchen floor, Buster pressing against his side.

"I never told her," he whispered to the dog. "I never told her that meeting her was the first time I felt real. The first time I felt like I was actually playing in the game, not just watching from the stands."

The grief hit him then—not the zombie-numbness he'd been navigating, but the raw, ugly truth. Elena had known, of course. She'd always known. That was the thing about friendship that deepens into love: you don't need to say everything out loud. But he should have said it anyway. Some innings end before you're ready. Some games get called on account of darkness, and you never get your last at-bat.

Marcus stood up eventually, scraped the burnt spinach into the trash, and called David. "I think," he said, his voice cracking, "I think I need to talk about her without falling apart. Or maybe I need to fall apart and have someone witness it."

"I'm coming over," David said. "Bring the glove. We'll play catch."

For the first time in six months, Marcus felt something like hope—a single, tentative base hit in the bottom of the ninth.