Three years ago

The following spring was unusually dry and hot. The garden had to be watered every day to keep the flowers and vegetables from wilting, so every evening she rolled out the hose and gave all the plants a good soaking.

She watered the raised bed to the left of the patio, and the cucumbers along the back of the house, and the nasturtiums in the retaining wall he’d built along the downhill side of the yard. She watered everything except the begonias on the plant stand by the lamp on the far side of the patio.

It was an odd place for the robins to have built their nest. The narrow plant stand, lashed to the lamp post to keep it from falling over, was only about four feet high and the eight-inch pot of begonias at the top hardly seemed big enough or high enough to be a safe place to raise young birds. But the robins were very protective of their chosen spot, squawking ferociously and even sometimes swooping close to any intruding human who came too near to what was now their part of the patio.

He had crept over, though, on one of the rare occasions when both robins were away from the nest, and he stole a peek inside, catching a glimpse of three perfect little brilliant blue eggs.

The spring went on with little rain, the begonias died, and the browning grass grew knee-high around the lamp-post where he’d avoided cutting it so as not to disturb the nest. And then, finally, one day they hatched and two little lizard-like heads stretched up on their long necks, their mouths wide with hunger, their eyes still shut.

“You said there were three eggs.”

“I thought I saw three. I guess there were only two,” he said carefully. He knew he hadn’t miscounted. There had been three eggs, but he did not want to upset her. She seemed fine now, and they no longer talked about it much. But still.

Neither of them saw the first baby robin fly away. One day both of the fat and fluffy little birds were in the nest and the next day only one was left. She had to work late the following day, so he was outside, watering the tomatoes, and he looked over just in time to see it happen. The second baby robin puffed up its chest and hopped onto the side of the nest. He held his breath, watching it, and then it flew away.

She came home later and went outside to inspect the garden. “The cucumbers need a really good soaking,” she’d told him, and she wanted to double-check. He told her what he’d seen, how the last little bird had flown away and how they’d finally be able to use the whole patio and he could at long last cut the grass over by the lamp-post.

She walked over to the plant-stand where the begonias had been. It was safe now, the mother robin no longer cared if they inspected her nest. She looked inside and there, nestled in the bottom, was the third egg. Still bright blue, still undamaged. Still.

“Oh,” she said, and she shook and the dam broke and she cried like she hadn’t cried since the year before. He held her and they stood there, for a long time, by the lamp post, talking softly about the bird and about more than the bird and about all that might have been.