He saw her for the final time just after sunrise,
when autumn's cool morning
betrayed the heat that would manifest by midday.

She'd seemed uncharacteristically distracted–
diverted from her typical high focus–
as she lifted her broad-rimmed straw hat
from the peg beside the kitchen door,
as she walked across the porch,
hesitating
(and she rarely hesitated)
so she might look, not just over her beloved garden,
but beyond the neat rows of vegetables and sunflowers
toward the stand of cottonwoods that bordered the property
and outlined the meandering, dark water
he never dared to follow.

Down the steps and a few feet into the garden,
she stopped and stooped among the zucchini,
searching and picking its green fruit.

The familiarity of this eased him,
and he turned away from the window,
and back to his cereal,
his mug of coffee,
the empty morning paper.

Morning has its sounds–
crows cawing, 
fluid birdsong,
traffic on the Interstate a half-mile east,
the clicking of the hall clock,
the occasional hum of the breeze through the porch screen,
the creak of the memories
of a home eight times his age.

So when all sound ceased,
he noticed.

Something is wrong, he thought.

He rose and exited the kitchen,
heading to the garden,
and found only the gathering of fresh-picked zucchini,
neatly parallel to each other,
and beside that,
her hat.

It had begun.

Text and image © 2012 by Dirk deVries. All rights reserved.