We thought the deer were lovely until they discovered my husband’s tomatoes. He works so hard, planting and replanting the seedlings, chasing the sun across our backyard. Morning and night, he waters them through a relentless heat wave.
He’s been out of work for a while now, sending off applications, smiling through interviews, even writing thank-you notes to people who never write back.
I tell myself he’s okay, until I catch him out there in the withering dusk, spraying the hose into the air like warning shots.
Keep back, he shouts. Keep back from my tomatoes.
Or else, he says.
Or else.
And then he can’t think of what comes next.
