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to Caleb. “I should buy you a snowsuit and decent pair of snow boots. Your blue jacket is too lightweight.”
    â€œSure. A butterfly, Mom. Look!”
    Aunt Judith put her book down. She beamed at the butterfly. I watched her animated facial expressions while she spoke with Caleb, who sat motionless and allowed the monarch to alight on his knee.
    â€œHe thinks you’re a flower,” I chuckled and poured myself a lemonade.
    Caleb giggled. “Am not.” Laying his forefinger beside the butterfly did not startle the insect away.
    â€œHe knows you’re not a flower,” said Judith. “He stopped by to share a secret with you.”
    I selected the chair closest to him and watched the delicate wings sway back and forth.
    Caleb tilted his head. “I wanna keep him in a box.”
    â€œYou wouldn’t like it if he kept you in a box. Let him fly with his friends, sweetie. He’ll visit again next summer. I promise. Give him a name, then you can say hello when you see him again.”
    Caleb groaned a little when he jiggled his knee and the butterfly flitted around the flowers growing in large pots placed around the veranda.
    â€œI wanna call him Woody,” said Caleb.
    â€œWoody is a good name.”
    The butterfly flew a short distance and landed on the railing. It remained there minutes after Caleb joined us at the table. Despite my protests, he gobbled his lunch to play on the tire swing my brother had rehung with new heavy rope on the limb of the largest shade tree.
    Aunt Judith trailed along and readied herself behind the swing to give him pushes. Her gesture seemed harmless enough that I brushed off the urge to run out into the yard and give him pushes instead.
    â€œI’m glad Rick hung the tire far enough away from that wrought-iron bench. Caleb likes high pushes. Anybody sitting on the bench might get kicked.”
    Mom chuckled. “I guess the paint is dry now. I had it repainted yesterday. When I came home from Rick’s on Labor Day, the bench was covered with mud. The white paint was stained, as if somebody wearing filthy clothes had sat there all day and let the mud soak in.”
    â€œA stray cat.”
    Mom scowled. “Too big a stain for a cat.”
    â€œI hope you’re not thinking prowler.”
    She shrugged.
    I recalled the man on the motorcycle watching from the end of the driveway. “You need an alarm.”
    â€œI have good locks.”
    â€œNot good enough. You need an alarm system, Mom. I’m surprised you don’t already have one.”
    â€œI’ll think about it. Would you look at Caleb? Adjusting already, and Judith loves him so. We’re happy you’re here.”
    My aunt had been married only a few years before her husband, Steven, died. They never had children. She was a quiet person when I was little and she treated me better.
    Mom leaned forward in her chair. “You’re staring.”
    â€œThe flagstone under the bench. It’s lopsided.”
    â€œRick calls it upheaving from the freeze-thaw cycles.”
    â€œHave the landscaper fix it before somebody trips.”
    â€œThey’ve tried. The stones keep lifting up.” Mom shrugged. “We step around them. I want the stone taken out and sod put down. Maybe in the spring.”
    â€œIt is a nice place to sit.”
    â€œYour dad loved that patio. Remember how he put in before you left for Tennessee?”
    Remembering well, I nodded.
    â€œHe hoped we would read out there, and sometimes I do, except the ground isn’t suitable for flagstone.”
    â€œUpheaving makes little sense when the flagstone on the larger patio below the veranda is level. It’s the same yard. These stones lay flat.”
    Mother stood up and peered over the veranda railing with me. “Maybe the difference is because the smaller patio is round and this one is rectangular.” She amused herself at the silly deduction, while gesturing to the