for her. Wednesdays, the best day of the week—her day—she’d wave to him from a window as he wheeled the mower from the garage, and sometimes, lots of times, come out of the house when he was done and cleaning up—she didn’t leave the money under the mat like the others, but put it in his hand—and maybe sit for a spell with cold glasses of tea on the patio, telling him things about her life, but asking him about his, too. They’d talk like real people, sitting in the shade. Mr. Carter, she’d tell him, you’re a godsend. Mr. Carter, I don’t know how I ever got one thing done without you. You’re the piece of the puzzle that was missing.
He loved her. It was true. That was the mystery, the sad and sorrowful mystery of it all. As he lay now in the dark and cold, he felt the tears coming, rising all the way from his gut. How could anybody ever say he’d done anything to Mrs. Wood when he’d loved her like he did? Because he knew. Knew that even though she smiled and laughed and went about her business, shopping and playing her tennis and taking trips to the salon, inside of her was an empty place, he’d seen it that first day in the car, and his heart went out to this, like he could fill it for her just by wanting to. The days when she didn’t come out to the yard, more and more as time went by, he’d catch sight of her, sometimes, sitting on the sofa for hours, letting the baby just cry and cry because she was wet or hungry, but not moving a muscle: it was like all the air had gone out of her. Some days he didn’t see her at all, and he guessed she was deep in the house somewhere, being sad. He’d do extra things on those days, trimming the hedges just so, or picking weeds out of the walk, hoping if he waited long enough she’d come out with the tea. The tea meant she was all right, that she’d gotten through another day of feeling awful like she did.
And then that afternoon in the yard—that terrible afternoon—he found the older girl, Haley, alone. It was December, the air raw with dampness, the pool full of winter leaves; the little girl, who was in kindergarten, was wearing her blue school shorts and a collared blouse but nothing else, not even shoes, and sitting on the patio. She was holding a doll, a Barbie. Didn’t she have school today? Carter asked, and she shook her head, not looking at him. Was her mama around? Daddy’s in Mexico, the girl stated, and shivered in the cold. With his girlfriend. Her mama wouldn’t get out of bed.
He tried the door but it was locked, and rang the bell and then he called up to the windows, but no one answered. He didn’t know what to make of the little girl, outside alone like that, but there was lots he didn’t know about people like the Woods, not everything they did made sense to him. All he had was his dirty old sweater to give the girl, but she took it, wrapping it around herself like a blanket. He got to work on the lawn, thinking maybe the noise of the mower would wake up Mrs. Wood and she’d remember her little girl was outside alone by the pool, that she’d accidentally locked the door somehow. Mr. Carter, I don’t know how it happened, I fell asleep somehow, thank God you were here.
He finished the lawn, the girl watching him silently with her doll, and got the skimmer from the garage to clean the pool. That was when he found it, along the edge of the path: a baby toad. Weren’t no bigger than a penny. He was lucky he’d missed it with the mower. He bent to pick it up; it weighed nothing in his hand. If he hadn’t been looking at it with his own eyes he’d have said his hand was empty, that’s how light it was. Maybe it was the girl watching him from the patio, or else Mrs. Wood sleeping behind him in the house; but it seemed, right then, like the toad could set things right somehow, this tiny thing in the grass.
—C’mere, he said to the girl. C’mere, I’ve got something to show you. Just a little baby of a