What We Carry

The rain started just as Marcus's serve hit the net—again. At forty-seven, his lower back shouldn't protest this much. His **padel** partner, Elena—twenty years his junior, inherited her father's weekly court time when he moved to assisted living—didn't say anything. She just collected the ball with the patience of someone who'd seen worse performances on this court.

"You're distracted," she said, not unkindly.

Marcus didn't answer. How could he explain that his ex-wife's voicemail still sat unheard in his pocket? That their daughter's wedding—her mother's third marriage—was six weeks away, and the invitation had arrived like a **lightning** strike he kept refusing to ground? Some things required more than a racquet and a rubber surface.

They played on. The rhythm should have been meditative: the squeak of rubber on artificial grass, the hollow thwack of the ball against glass walls, the satisfied grunt of a well-placed shot. Instead, Marcus felt like he was moving through deep water, every gesture bearing something heavier than inertia or age or the three whiskeys he'd had last night, staring at his ceiling.

A cat appeared near the chain-link fence—gaunt, orange-striped, watching them with unnerving stillness. Marcus stopped mid-serve.

"That's new."

"He's been here three weeks," Elena said, stretching her hamstring. "Someone feeds him. Not me."

"You should."

"I don't need another living thing that will outlast my enthusiasm." She smiled, but it didn't reach her eyes. "Unlike some people I could name."

Marcus served again. This time, the ball cleared the net, kissed the sideline. A clean winner. But as they walked to shake hands at the net, the cat moved—pawing deliberately at something near the fence line.

A kitten. Half its size, mewling softly, barely mobile.

"Jesus," Elena said. She'd gone completely still. "I didn't know."

"Maybe she's hiding them." Marcus thought of all the things people kept tucked away: second families in adjacent suburbs, secret diagnoses in locked drawers, the particular architecture of regret that builds over decades of small compromises. "You have to **bear** witness to something before you can decide what it means."

The rain began in earnest then, fat drops flattening his salt-and-pepper hair, plastering Elena's shirt to her shoulders. They stood there a long moment, watching the cat curl protectively around her kitten, neither moving toward the shelter of the overhang.

"You know what's funny," Elena said, not laughing at all. "I cancelled my dinner plans tonight. Told myself I was too tired for other people's problems."

Marcus checked his phone—seven missed calls, all from his ex, and a single text from his daughter: *Dad, please come.*

"Yeah," he said, pocketing the phone. "Me too."

The cat watched them through the rain, utterly unimpressed by human indecision, tending her small future with an efficiency Marcus couldn't remember ever possessing.