Iris didn’t see the woman again until later that afternoon while turning her compost pile after adding kitchen scraps to it. The pile was at the far end of the garden, a little beyond the greenhouse, half-again closer to their shared property line, so Iris could see more clearly additional scabs on the woman’s neck and the backs of her hands. She was still wearing the robe, her hair unchanged and another cigarette burning between her fingers, but a small boy now stood next to her beside the sedan’s open back door. He was dressed in ripped jeans, a T-shirt, a navy-blue nylon coat, and stared at Iris under a mass of brown curls with eyes that seemed impossibly large. His mother lifted a box of pots and pans from the back seat of the car, then shoved its door closed with her hip. She stuck the cigarette between her lips, squinted, and nodded once at Iris. A hawk called somewhere overhead. Before the woman could see the reluctant nod Iris gave her in return, she’d headed towards the trailer, but the boy saw it and raised his hand slowly in reply. Iris nodded again and watched the boy’s eyes grow even larger before he scurried inside after his mother. 
Iris stood very still in their wake. She thought the boy might be eight or nine years old. Something in his appearance seemed waifish, forlorn, and, in spite of her misgivings, her heart clenched a bit. On the small breeze, the junipers’ familiar, dusty tang gradually replaced the lingering smell of the woman’s cigarette. Off in the distance, the hawk called again, but Iris didn’t turn and try to find it in the cold, gray sky.


When she heard the pick-up rumble back in front of the trailer next door later that afternoon, Iris was in the greenhouse watering carrots and Bibb lettuce that she’d recently transferred from starter trays to a hot bed. The pick-up’s engine heaved to a stop, its door creaked open and closed, and stillness resumed. The day’s last light had already started its descent towards gloaming, so Iris couldn’t see well through the junipers, but heard the trailer’s screen door open and the woman’s plaintive voice call, “Got the sugar?” The man’s huffed ascent followed, then his footsteps stirred the thin gravel, and the screen door clapped shut again. Iris stood as still as she had earlier, this time blinking rapidly, her ankles warm from the small, propane space heater under the shelf.  She shook her head—tiny, repeated, unconscious shakes—and slowly lowered the watering can to her side.


In the days that followed, Iris observed a kind of pattern emerge next door. She’d hear the pick-up rumble off about the same time each morning and also saw the boy leave the trailer an hour or so later, his book bag straining his narrow shoulders, heading down the driveway towards the school bus stop up the road. She rarely saw the woman afterwards during the day; if she did, Iris was usually startled to find her standing on their front steps smoking and staring at her without the least bit of pretense or self-consciousness. The rare nods they exchanged were marginal and succinct. The pick-up’s rumble returned in the evenings, followed by the same sort of anxious exchange between the woman and the man. Many nights, late, Iris heard them shouting at each other in the trailer.
The boy was the one she saw most frequently. He began pausing to look over at her cabin on his way to the bus stop each morning and did the same in the afternoons when he came home. He shuffled as he walked, kicking up red dust and small stones in his path. She often saw him kneeling in the junipers separating their properties, watching her as she worked in the garden or the greenhouse. 
One afternoon while she was adjusting the garden’s drip irrigation, she turned suddenly towards where he was hiding and barked, “I can see you, you know.”
The boy didn’t speak, but seemed to retreat deeper into the bushes’ speckled shadows.
Iris gestured with her chin in his direction. “What do you want, anyway?”
The boy seemed frozen in place, his eyes like a startled doe’s. A hint of approaching snow hung in the air, and his breaths crept through the branches on short clouds. It was so still Iris could hear the trickle of the tiny creek down the ravine behind her cabin.
She said, “I don’t need trouble. From you or your folks.” She realized that her voice had lost its sharp edge, deflated somehow like the air leaving a balloon. She stood up and slipped her hands into the pouch of her sweatshirt. “All right, then,” she said. “You best get inside where it’s warm.”
The boy made no movement or reply whatsoever, so Iris walked slowly to the back deck, crossed it, and opened the kitchen door. Before going inside, she glanced at where the boy had been, but he’d disappeared. Just the empty green-gray junipers remained, bracketed by the red earth and charcoal sky.


Later that night, the regular shouting from next door erupted in earnest, reaching levels she hadn’t heard before. After a while, she heard the sudden whack of the trailer’s screen door followed by another in close succession, then the pick-up’s engine grumbling to life.
The woman shouted, “And don’t come back!”
“I won’t,” the man growled. “Count on it!”
The truck door slammed, the screen door did the same, and the pick-up tore down their driveway. Its gears shifted quickly as it gained speed up the road until the sound of it had died away completely in the vast, still night. 
Iris rolled over on her back and stared up into the inky blackness. She pulled her comforter to her chin. A soft hiss came from the fireplace’s dying embers in the living room. There were no other sounds. She found herself making tiny shakes of her head again and biting at her lower lip. It took more than an hour for sleep to finally overtake her.
Iris was startled awake several hours later by the siren of an ambulance screaming up the driveway next door. Just as abruptly, it stopped. She hurried out from under the covers to the bedroom window where she could see its rotating light flashing through the bushes and hear the chaotic sounds of paramedics going in and out of the trailer, the clatter of a stretcher being maneuvered up the steps, and clipped phrases she could distinguish between voices over a receiver that included apparent overdose . . . unconscious . . . female—mid-thirties . . . initiating immediate transport. She covered her mouth with her fingertips and shook her head again.
The commotion continued for another handful of minutes, then the siren pierced the night again, and the ambulance roared away down the driveway and off towards Flagstaff. It took a long time for the sound of it to dissipate. Iris lowered herself onto the bed and pulled the bunched comforter over her. She glanced at the clock on her nightstand—4:36. She laid there for perhaps twenty minutes before giving up on sleep, rising, and pulling on slippers and a sweatshirt over her flannel nightgown. She went into the living room, got the fire going again, and put the kettle on for tea. Her stern reflection stared back at her in the kitchen window. 
“I didn’t move here for this,” she said to it. “I didn’t.”
It wasn’t until Iris had been seated on the couch in front of the fireplace and was halfway through her tea that she considered the boy. She stiffened, her eyebrows knitting. He must have gone with the ambulance, she thought. Or else, with all the commotion, I just didn’t hear the father come back in his truck and take him. A slow flush crawled through her, and she moved to the window that had the best view of the junipers along the property line. The faintest etch of milky light hovered low in the eastern sky and was just enough to reveal a portion of the trailer through the bushes: dark, still, silent. Iris rubbed her forehead, gave more shakes of her head, then finally kicked off her slippers and pulled on her work boots. Leaving the cabin, she shuddered at the sudden bitter chill and trotted through the thin dusting of snow that had fallen overnight towards a gap in the junipers. 
Iris passed the sedan, climbed the trailer’s steps, and pounded on the screen door, rattling its frame. No movement or sound came from inside, just the lonely, distant hoot of an owl. She peered through the door’s murky window and saw a lopsided couch with a collection of drug paraphernalia on the side where one plaid cushion was missing. No lamps, chairs, television, or pictures on the walls. She banged harder on the door; more silence replied. Iris walked around the exterior of the trailer, but was too short to see though any of the other windows, though she paused to bang on the siding several times with no response. When she returned to the front, she peered inside the sedan, which held only fast-food debris, several discarded envelopes addressed to the same woman’s name, and, on the back seat, a child’s rubber boot. Iris heaved a sigh and retraced her steps in the snow, vaguely aware of a coyote’s tinny yelp echoing off beyond the neighboring arroyo.
“That boy’s gone,” she said to herself. “But someone’s taken him. He’s safe. He has to be.”


When she was inside the cabin again, she took a long, hot shower, then turned on the radio to a news station for the background distraction it provided. She stoked the fire, fixed herself another cup of tea along with a bowl of granola, and switched between several chess matches she had going online as the morning gradually brightened, sun cresting the trees and creeping across her floorboards.
A little after nine, Iris shut down her computer and looked outside. Except in the deepest shadows, all the snow had already melted. Flecks of dust danced in the sunlight and she recognized the distinctive chip of a Western Meadowlark off towards the ravine, a sound she loved. She thought with hopeful anticipation about her temperamental Phalaenopsis orchid that had hinted at a first bloom the previous day. Iris turned off the radio, left through the back door, and crossed the path to her greenhouse.
She stopped short of its open door and frowned—she was sure she’d left it closed. And her frown deepened when warmth from the space heater greeted her as she entered. After she crouched down and closed its dial, she recoiled. The boy from next door lay sleeping on his side next to it under the latticed shelf that held her orchids. His mouth was in a perfect oval and he was wrapped in a dirty fleece blanket adorned with dinosaurs, his book bag crumpled under his head for a pillow. A dozen or so of her baby carrots had been plucked from the hot bed, their scrawny, worm-like fruit gone, only their tassels left and strewn on the ground near his face. Iris sucked in air, shook her head. Several moments passed while she watched the boy’s steady, even breathing before she reached over and shook his shoulder.
His eyes snapped open and met hers. He pushed himself up on one elbow and said, “She told me to come over here.” He paused. “If anything happened to her.”
“Your mom?”
The boy nodded.
“Where’s your dad?”
His eyes narrowed. “He ain’t my dad.”
“Why didn’t you go with the ambulance?”
“I hid when I heard it coming.”
“Didn’t you call for it?”
He shook his head. “She did.” The boy adjusted his weight. “I came here after it was gone.”
“Why didn’t you stay put?”
He screwed up his face. “Got no heat. Nothing to eat.”
The tiny shakes of her head had begun. They continued while the two of them stared at each other. Several more meadowlarks chipped out in the sun-drenched brush. The boy sat up, and the blanket fell from his shoulders. He was wearing his coat, zipped askew.
Iris gave a last shake of her head and brushed away the carrot tassels. “Come on, then,” she said. “Let’s get you in the cabin and fed proper.”
The boy crawled out from under the shelf. He grabbed his book bag and blanket and followed her back to the cabin. He stopped just inside the door and Iris watched his eyes sweep its interior, take in the sprawling assortment of plants in their clay pots, his mouth opening into the same oval it had been while sleeping. His gaze settled onto the fireplace where low flames licked the logs.
Iris said, “Go on. Sit on the couch there.”
The boy did as he was told, his feet barely reaching the floor. Iris stirred the fire and added a log. The flames grew and so did the fire’s warmth. The boy inched towards it on the couch and held out his hands.
“You like oatmeal?”
He nodded. She did the same. The fire cracked loudly, and he flinched. Iris pursed her lips before going into the kitchen to make his breakfast.


She sat on the opposite end of the couch and watched him eat. She poured him a glass of milk and sliced up an apple along with the oatmeal. He ate and drank quickly with studied concentration.
Iris waited until he’d finished to say, “Don’t you have school?”
He shook his head. “Winter break. Christmas vacation.”
She watched him stare into the fire, holding his hands out to it again.
“And your mom told you to come here.”
He nodded and looked over at her with his big eyes. “Said she didn’t want me to go into the system again.”
Something inside of her dropped, then hardened. Memories.
More quietly, she said, “This happened before, then.”
The boy looked back at the fire. “Couple of times, yeah.”
Iris waited a moment before she said, “Drugs?”
He nodded again. A breeze rose suddenly rattling the dry leaves on a pair of aspens just outside the living room window. Without warning, it halted, and the room grew quiet again except for the soft crackle of the fire. The boy stared hard at it.
“You have a name?”
“Caleb.”
“I’m Iris.”
He gave a short nod, not looking at her.
“When’s the last time you had a bath?”
He shrugged.
“Well, let’s get you into one.” She looked at his dirty coat and jeans, his stained T-shirt. “You need a change of clothes.”
“Got some.” He patted the book bag next to him.
“Then go on and pick out the cleanest you got left, and I’ll wash the rest.”
He turned and regarded her with curiosity. “You’ll do that?”
Iris stood up. “Come on. I’ll show you where the bathroom is.” She hesitated. “And a room where you can put your stuff.”


While he was in the bath, she started his laundry, including the thinly-padded coat. It was hard to imagine that any of it had ever been cleaned before. Then she stood at the kitchen window and looked at the portion of the trailer she could see through the brush: silent, still, dark.
“Who knows what happened to her,” Iris whispered to herself. “She could be dead for all I know.”
Iris shook her head, then used a lowered voice to call the hospital in Flagstaff and inquire about the status of an ER patient by the name of the woman she’d seen on the envelopes. The hospital refused to give her any information because of confidentiality restrictions and the fact that she wasn’t next of kin. She tried to explain that she had the woman’s son, but got nowhere with that additional information. She ended the call, dropped the phone on the counter with a clatter, and closed her eyes. From the bathroom, she could hear the boy swishing water in the tub, quietly singing some tune she didn’t recognize.  
A little later, he came out fully dressed, his mass of curls only partly dried, and stood in front of her in the middle of the kitchen like he was awaiting inspection. The clothes he wore were only marginally cleaner than his others.
She said, “Feel better?”
He shrugged, then nodded.
“When I stumbled upon you, I was about to do some work in my greenhouse.”
Caleb hesitated before saying, “Okay.”
“You interested in plants, growing things?”
He shrugged again. “I like science and stuff.”
“Good. You can help me, then.” She took one of her thick sweatshirts from where she’d placed it on the counter. “I’m washing your coat, so put this on. It’s one of mine, but I’m not all that much taller than you.” She watched him look from the sweatshirt to her face. “Go on. Raise up those arms.”|
He did, and she slipped the sweatshirt over him and rolled up the cuffs. It fell to below his knees. She took one of her knit caps off the counter and tugged it on crooked so it covered his ears. 
“Your hair’s still damp, so that will keep your head warm. Keep you from catching a cold.” They looked at each other. “Let’s go,” she said. “Day’s not getting any longer.”
Inside the greenhouse, she switched the space heater to low because the interior had already warmed considerably. She began by checking the water trays on the shelf beneath the orchids: they were all less than a quarter full. She slid one out, and said, “Fill this. Then replace it and fill the rest.”
“What for?”
“Creates humidity.” She pinched-off a dry leaf tip. “These need that to grow.”
“Don’t you have to put water right on them?”
“Not much.” Iris poked through the straw moss she’d arranged around the orchid’s stalk. “Just enough to stay damp. These are fine right now.” She handed him the empty tray. “Use that spigot over there.”
Caleb followed her directions while Iris wiped bits of mildew from a few orchid leaves. She inspected the Phalaenopsis closely, found the bloom cresting, and turned the pot more fully towards the southern light. By then, Caleb had replaced the trays and stood watching her.
He asked, “Why you doing that?” 
“It’s getting ready to bloom.”
“Where?”
“See this bud?” She tilted one his way. “It’ll open soon into a flower.”
His big eyes widened. “Pretty?”
She nodded.
“What color?”
“Purple, mostly. Purple and a little white. Other buds will follow, a whole string of them. Hopefully.”
“If you treat them right.”
She looked at him and nodded again.
“I’d like to see that.”
“Maybe you will.”
He looked around the greenhouse. “What else can I do?”
“The bottom two rows of windows need cleaning.”
He wrinkled up his nose, and a snort-like chuckle escaped her. Iris handed him a spray bottle of apple cider vinegar mixed with water and a cloth.
“Spray and wipe. Simple.” She pointed. “I’ll be working on those hot boxes.”
He nodded. Iris moved to the other side of the greenhouse near the space heater and fiddled with her hot beds for a while, but kept glancing at the boy whose brow was furrowed into concentration with his work. As she did, a tiny smile creased her lips.


Iris got his things going in the dryer, then made them toasted cheese sandwiches and pickle chips for lunch. They sat at the dining table and ate in silence while Caleb’s eyes swept the interior until he said, “Where’d you learn so much about plants?”
Iris chewed and swallowed without haste before answering. “Began a long time ago. When I was about seventeen.”
“How?”
She breathed deeply several times, her eyes on his, then said, “My last foster mom got me started. My only good one. Before she died and I went off on my own.”
The boy had been about to take a bite of his sandwich, but lowered it to his plate. “You had foster parents, too?”
“I did.” She paused. “A bunch.”
His eyes had widened. “No kidding.”
She shook her head while he cocked his. The sound of a plane passed by outside, high overhead. Iris took her last bite of sandwich, then pushed her plate away. “How about hikes . . . you like those?”
“You mean taking walks?”
“Yep.”
“Haven’t done it much.”
“Well, I generally take one after lunch. Not too far, just down one of the trails and back. Look around, see what I can see.” She glanced outside. “Beautiful afternoon, warmed up now. How about if you and me do that?”
Caleb shrugged.
Iris reached behind her and pulled a well-worn field guide off the nearest bookcase. She began flipping through it and folding down the corners of pages. “I’ll give you this to carry. We’ll make a game out of it . . . see how many of these species you can identify as we go. I’ll put a miniature marshmallow in your hot chocolate afterwards for each one you can find.”
The boy gave a gap-toothed grin.
Iris forced her face into a frown. “You finish that meal first. Go on now. Eat up.”


The afternoon sky had turned cloudless, expansive, robin’s-egg blue, with the crisp, white light that always stirred something deep inside of her. Iris led him down the ravine and along the creek bed for the better part of a mile. He grew more excited with each item he found from the field guide. When she suggested turning around, he prodded her on so he could look for more. The light fell further in octaves, liquid shadows from the cottonwoods along the creek bed growing longer across the red earth. Iris could taste moisture on the unusually warm breeze blowing up from the south against the cooling air.
By the time they returned back up the path to the cabin, he’d identified everything in the turned-down pages and the sun was just visible above heavy-bellied clouds hung low over the western ridge. While Caleb stopped in the greenhouse to check on the orchid’s bloom, she watched a distant line of birds scratch the upper edge of the clouds heading south. Geese, she guessed. Iris looked over at the trailer, which stood unchanged, silent and dark through the stand of junipers, and a kind of hollowness filled her.
She heard the boy leave the greenhouse. She turned and asked, “Anything?”
He shook his head. “Not really. Few new buds starting to open, but no flowers yet.”
“Be patient. They’ll come.” She walked over to him. “Let’s go. Time for grub.”
She reheated stew and biscuits for dinner while he watered her houseplants. Iris stopped filling the kettle for his hot chocolate and shook her head when she heard him humming as he worked. How can he do that, she thought, with the life he’s led? With his mother wherever she is, how can he sing in the tub? How is that possible?
She had tea with their meal while he lingered over his hot chocolate, counting each marshmallow before he slurped it down. Afterwards, he dried the dishes she washed and helped her put them away. Complete darkness had surrounded the cabin, the lamplight within soft and warm with the roaring fire. 
Iris hung his dish towel over the edge of the drying rack and put her hands on her hips. “So,” she said. “I always sit by the fire and read after dinner. You have any books in that bag of yours.”
He shook his head.
“You like reading?”
He lowered his eyes. “I’m not very good at it.”
“That’s all right. I’ll read to you. I think I have a few books stored away from when I was your age. About a boy like you named Tom Swift who likes science and has a flying ship. That sound okay?”
“Sure.”
He sat close to her on the couch, completely still and silent, while she read. From the corner of her eye, she saw his forehead wrinkle over troublesome passages, then ease again when they resolved themselves. After a half an hour, she felt the side of his head lower against her upper arm. In another ten minutes, his breathing had steadied and deepened into sleep. Iris stopped reading, set the book in her lap, watched the fire, and listened to his puffed snores. She thought more about his circumstances, his mother, the man who’d driven away. She thought about her own life—the entirety of it, the things that had brought her to that moment in that place.
When the fire had almost burned out, Iris heard the first mumble of thunder off to the south. By the sound of it, she estimated that any precipitation was at least an hour away, if it came at all. A winter thunderstorm was pretty rare at their elevation, but when she’d gone outside earlier for more firewood, she’d been struck by the sudden slide in temperature and the heavier taste of moisture in the air. 
Iris waited for the last flicker of flame before she rose and carried Caleb into the spare bedroom. He didn’t awaken when she lay him on the futon or slid a pillow under his head, took off his sneakers, and tucked three heavy woolen blankets around him. She stood in the doorway watching him sleep for several more minutes, letting her thoughts tumble over themselves, before leaving the door open and getting into her nightgown.
Iris lay propped in bed and tried without success to concentrate on a horticulture magazine before setting it on her nightstand and turning off the lamp. Claps of thunder had grown steadily closer and occasional flashes of lightning began blinking through the thin, muslin curtains over her window. She listened and watched.
An enormous lightning flash eventually illuminated the entire room, and a loud clap of thunder followed with its barrel roll. A moment later, she heard Caleb’s footsteps scampering down the hall into her room. She could distinguish his figure in the darkness at her bedside, but not his face. 
She said, “It’s nothing. Just rain coming.”
“I’m scared.”
In another, longer flash of lightning, she saw his enormous eyes stretch wide and his body jerk at the roll of thunder that followed. 
“Here,” she said, and pulled back her covers. 
Iris scooted over in bed and he clambered into the warm space she’d left. The first few drops splattered the rooftop. Iris pulled the comforter up over him and smoothed his curls.
“Shh,” she said. “You’re fine.”
The rain fell harder, peppering the roof, and the sudden dusty smell of it off the red dirt stirred the back of her nose. Iris continued to gently stroke the boy’s head as the thunder and lightning crept off to the north. The rain fell steadily for another forty minutes, then stopped as if a faucet had been turned off. By then, Caleb had long been asleep, his purr-like snores ruffling the darkness. Iris let her hand fall from his head to his shoulder. She left it there while she fell asleep, too.


Iris awoke first to a meadowlark, then to the sound of a car door opening and closing next door. Her eyes opened to dawn’s muffled, gray light leaking through the curtains. She looked over at Caleb; he lay facing her, curled in a ball, snoring softly through his nose. She inched out of bed, but the boy didn’t stir. She pulled her sweatshirt over her nightgown and tiptoed to the living room window. Through the junipers, she saw a taxi idling in front of the trailer. Her heart tightened in her chest.
Iris didn’t bother tying her work boots. She closed her front door quietly behind her and hurried through the gap in the bushes. The exhaust from the taxi bounced off the red gravel. The driver didn’t even glance up from his cell phone when she passed it and climbed the steps to the trailer. The screen door was closed but the inner one was open, and Caleb’s mother sat staring open-mouthed at Iris from where she perched on the edge of the couch. One of her hands clutched an open duffel bag stuffed with clothes, and the other held a toiletry kit suspended above it. 
Iris opened the screen door and stepped inside. The interior was cold, dank. The woman’s eyes held hers for a long, breathless moment until she finally asked, “Is he with you?”
Iris nodded.
The woman’s shoulders fell in a combination of relief and resignation. She continued staring directly at Iris, but had begun to weep, her face caving into itself. She dropped the toiletry kit into the bag, balled her hand into a fist, and brought it to her lips. A corner of one of the scabs on her face had opened: a tiny smudge of red in the flat, dull light. 
Iris watched the woman cry while the taxi idled outside and the same meadowlark chipped twice more at intervals. The woman squeezed her eyes shut, opened them again, then said, “I’m sick, you know.” She wiped snot from the end of her nose. “I need help, and I’m going to a place where I can get it.” She sniffed loudly. “And this time I’m going to make it work.” She set her jaw, though her brimming eyes seemed to plead. “It’s going to take time, though. A month, maybe more.”
Iris nodded again.
“I can’t pay you.” The woman’s voice had become almost a whisper. “I got no money.”
Iris said, “Doesn’t matter.” They looked at each other until Iris stepped back, held the screen door open, and said, “Go.”
The woman nodded slowly and looked away. She used the back of her hand to swipe at her face again, then jerked the bag’s zipper closed, stood, and pushed past Iris outside. She got into the taxi and didn’t look back at Iris as the driver made a three-point turn, drove down the driveway, and turned onto the road. The sun was just cresting the treetops there, steam rising off the wet pavement at the driveway’s end. The air held a fresh, after-rain smell. Iris waited a few moments before closing the trailer’s doors and descending the steps.
When she came through the gap in the junipers, she saw the greenhouse’s door ajar. Inside it, Caleb stood with his back to her bent over the orchid shelf. She stopped still in her tracks, swallowed, then approached slowly and eased inside. He’d pulled on the sweatshirt he’d borrowed from her, but wore only socks on his feet, and his head was tilted over the Phalaenopsis’s new blooms. He was delicately fingering the largest one, which had unfolded completely into a burst of purple.    
He turned to her without surprise and said, “They are pretty. Even prettier than I thought they’d be.”
There was sleep at the corners of his eyes and something else there, too. She said, “Your mom came back.”
His even gaze remained. “I saw.”
Iris nodded. “She’s going where she can get some help.”
“Rehab.” The boy’s small lips tightened into a practiced dash.
“That’s right.” Iris paused. “For now, you’ll stay with me.”His mouth loosened. His eyes brightened. He nodded, too, then turned and poked his finger down through moss around the orchid’s stalk. He said, “I think this needs water.”
Another blanket of mist was rising off the garden in the gathering sunlight. Iris lifted the watering can from the shelf next to her and gave it a shake. It made a slight, sloshing sound. 
She said, “Plenty in here. Don’t overdo.”
Caleb nodded again, his forehead furrowing. She handed him the watering can and watched him concentrate as he tipped it over the pot’s rim, a fraction of an inch at a time. Iris allowed herself a small smile. 
She asked, “You ever play chess?” 
He shook his head, but kept his attention on his task.
“Maybe I can teach you later.”
“Okay,” the boy said. “Sure.” 
He used his finger to test the orchid’s soil beneath its bed of moss, nodded once more, and set the watering can aside into a rhombus of sun. He sighed. The meadowlark chipped again. From off in another direction, a second one answered it.

William Cass has had over 250 short stories accepted for publication in a variety of literary magazines such as december, Briar Cliff Review, and Zone 3. He was a finalist in short fiction and novella competitions at Glimmer Train and Black Hill Press, and won writing contests at Terrain.org and The Examined Life Journal. He has received one Best Small Fictions nomination, three Pushcart nominations, and his short story collection, Something Like Hope & Other Stories, was recently released by Wising Up Press. He lives in San Diego, California.