made her look up to see Bram approaching from around the side of the house. “Oh!” she said. “You surprised me.” “It’s Tuesday. I brought down the garbage.” “Thanks for remembering. Guess what I just saw—a hummingbird.” “Is that who you were talking to?” “Not exactly. I was more talking to myself.” “I talk to myself a lot,” Bram said. “Do you? I’ve never heard you.” “It wouldn’t be talking to myself if you were there.” Gwendolyn chuckled. “Good point.” Giving the hose a tug, she pulled it over to the vegetable garden. “Whoa,” Bram said, looking upwards. “What are those? Are they bats?” Gwendolyn turned to where he was pointing as a series of small, dark forms darted across a navy sky. “I think they are.”
“That’s crazy. Why haven’t I seen them before?” “Maybe you needed to be out here at just this time, when it’s dark enough for the bats to come out, but still light enough to see.” They stood for a moment, gazing upward. “Did you know that a moth’s sense of smell is so acute that it can detect individual molecules?” Bram asked. “And birds can see colors over four wavelengths of light compared to human retinas, which can only detect three?” “I didn’t know that,”
Gwendolyn said. She was tempted to reach over and brush Bram’s bangs from his forehead as she might have done when he was small, but she turned on the hose instead, so the words— when you are gone, I will no longer know your thoughts in my every day—would stay inside her. Bram went inside, and Gwendolyn soon followed. She used to enjoy lingering in the yard, watching the light drain from the sky, but recently, just being outside put her on edge. If she turned her head too quickly or blinked in the sun, she might think she saw the faces fading in or out in a distant tree, but the only place she actually saw them, after that first incident in town, was the plum tree. With every day that passed she became more anxious and irritable. She snapped at Gus for leaving his lacrosse stick in the hallway, and at Frank for not putting away his clothes, simple, everyday tasks becoming shabby and dull until eventually, like a long awaited rain, the leaves would start to