In spring the ground was a carpet of green. “Don’t walk on the flowers,” said his mother, and he didn’t; didn’t mean to. In summer the brown grass needled his feet. “But I did wear shoes.” He picked the spikes from his toes, left them loose in the carpet. “Not me,” he said. Fall’s leaves were red and gold like fragile dreams, and slippery. He wasn’t running, he told her, when he fell to the ground. And now a blanket of winter’s white lies heavy, smothering sound. The boy shivers, but didn’t build snowmen without his coat on. “Honest, Mom.”