Watermarks

The baseball cap sat on his father's dresser for three months after the funeral. David hadn't touched it — the sweat-stained crown, the curved brim that had shaded his father's eyes through countless Little League games. The same cap David had worn backward in his teenage rebellion years, until his father had quietly asked him to show some respect for the game.

Now David stood in his office on the forty-second floor, staring out at the corporate pyramid of glass and steel that dominated the Chicago skyline. His architectural firm had designed it. His father had never seen it completed.

"You're wearing yourself thin, David," Sarah had said that morning, her fingers tracing the dark circles under his eyes. "You haven't been to the river since—"

"Since I scattered his ashes," David finished. The Chicago Water had been his father's final request. Something about the Mississippi running south to the Gulf, about how water finds its way to where it needs to go. David had complied, but he hadn't returned.

The baseball cap still waited on the dresser.

His phone buzzed. Sarah. Again.

David pressed ignore and pressed his forehead against the cold glass. Forty-two floors up, he could see the water glinting in the distance. He thought about his father teaching him to hit a baseball in their backyard, the way old men at the park would tip their caps at them, a secret fraternity of fathers and sons. Now his father was gone, and David was alone with his pyramids — monuments to ego that would outlast them all.

He thought about the pyramid scheme his life had become: work, sleep, repeat, climbing toward an apex that kept receding. His father had never cared about apexes. He'd cared about baseball and Sunday dinners and the way water sounded against a shore.

David turned from the window. His keys were in his pocket. The baseball cap was on the dresser. The water was waiting.

Forty minutes later, he stood at the river's edge, the worn cap finally on his head, the brim pulled low. The water moved steadily south, indifferent and eternal. David didn't scatter anything this time. He simply stood there and let himself feel it — the weight, the space, the terrible quiet grace of moving forward.

His phone buzzed in his pocket. Sarah. This time, he answered.