The Season of Orange Suns

Margaret sat on her porch with Buster, her golden retriever, resting his graying muzzle on her slippered feet. The autumn sun painted the sky in shades of tangerine and apricot—the color of orange sherbet she and Arthur used to share at the county fair, back when rides cost a quarter and conversations lasted until dusk.

At ninety-two, Margaret had learned that the best stories were the ones you almost forgot. Like the summer of 1951, when she and Arthur, both twelve and inseparable, played baseball in the empty lot behind Miller's General Store. Arthur could hit the ball farther than anyone, but Margaret could catch anything that came her way. They'd been friends since kindergarten, bound by something neither could name then but both understood now.

"Remember when we thought we were spies?" Arthur had asked during his final hospital visit, his voice thin as tissue paper. They'd spent an entire summer wearing fedoras from the thrift shop, whispering codes behind the oak tree, convinced the neighbor's new fence was a cover for something nefarious. It wasn't, of course. But the pretending had been magic enough.

Now Buster stirred, whining softly. Margaret stroked his head. "I know, old friend," she whispered. "I miss him too."

She watched an orange leaf drift from the maple tree Arthur had planted for her fiftieth birthday. Fifty years of friendship, married to different people, loving different lives, yet always returning to each other. That's what nobody tells you about growing old—how the people who know your beginning become the ones who help you make sense of your ending.

Margaret closed her eyes, and for a moment, she was twelve again, baseball glove in hand, Arthur laughing as he rounded third base, the whole world ahead of them, luminous and ripe as an orange, ready to be peeled.

"Catch, Maggie!" he'd called. And she always had.