The autumn sun shone brilliant on the still-wet leaves, flashing orange and gold against rain-slicked trunks. Crow perched on the uppermost branch of a swaying hemlock and surveyed the beauty below. He called out a greeting to a couple of relations as they winged past, and received their replies with a bobbing head. Life was good.

Doris pulled the last jar of the summer’s tomatoes from the shelf and set it on the counter. She’d have to ask Liz to get on the stepstool and bring the rest of those beans down lower where she could get at them. Robert put them up for her like he always had, with no thought that he wouldn’t be there to get them down.