His wife was looking up at the night sky, humming some song he couldn’t quite recollect the name of. She had on the same clothes she’d had on that morning—short sleeves and baggy slacks.

     "Aren’t you cold, honey," Bernard pestered his wife, "without a sweater?"

     "Nah. I’m fine." She sat there and stared around them.

     "It doesn’t look the same," she said, "with no houses."

     "No, it doesn’t. I miss everyone, don’t you?"

     "Sometimes." She leaned back and let out a small moan.

     In the moonlight, she somehow looked younger to him.

     "Is your arm hurting again?"

     "No, not too much tonight. I’m just tired. I could sleep for days."

     Bernard felt the worry nibbling at him again. There was something he kept trying to remember, but couldn’t. Something bad. He wondered what was happening with his memory lately. There seemed to be gaps he couldn’t fill. Some hours, days that were fuzzy.

     The night had spawned a creeping gray mist that settled over their front yard, a blanket spotted with twinkling fireflies. Strange, Bernard was thinking, that there were fireflies in October.

      "You know, I haven’t been myself really," his wife was saying in a soft voice, "since the accident."

     "What accident?" Bernard felt another nibble as the fireflies made patterns in the thin fog. So pretty. Blink. Blink. Blink. He’d always loved fireflies; used to chase them when he was a kid, but he’d never trap them in bottles. That had seemed too cruel. He’d catch them, gently hold them for a few seconds, and then let them go.