A surprise spring snow. Enough for the neighborhood kids to get bundled up and mittened, for parents to get out sleds and plastic saucers. Morton watches from the window as they gather at the top of the hill.

The kids slide past, scramble back up to do it again. Morton waves, knows they don’t see him.

He remembers the big snow. Still a record: the forecast said three-to-five inches; two feet fell.

His office, the schools, closed for days. His wife made sausage soup with home-grown carrots and Cubanelle peppers. Morton braved the sidewalk in his gardening boots to get milk and red wine at the corner grocery. Their boy scattered sunflower seeds for sparrows. When the power went out for an evening, they ate doughnuts for dinner and roasted marshmallows over a candle flame.

After the snow settled, packed hard, Morton got the sled from the garage, waxed the runners. At first their boy worried, watched from behind as the other kids left him. “Too fast,” he said. “You can ride on my back,” Morton said. They stayed out until dark.

Inside, the house smelled of spiced apple cider, hot and steaming on the stove. Morton’s wife filled mugs from a ladle, splashed in bourbon after their boy went to bed. They got drunk, fell asleep laughing.

His wife is gone now. A tumor she called “my uninvited guest who stayed too long.” Their boy builds rooftop gardens in cities on the other side of the world.

The day descends to dusk. Morton warms rice for dinner, remembers to stir in saffron like his wife always did, eats watching the news for the weather. They say the snow will last the night, melt away tomorrow.

He opens the window, feels the cold against his face. The kids go faster and faster in the fading light. Their boy will wake soon. He listens to the laughter, leans out and waves again.

Scott Ragland has an MFA in Creative Writing (fiction) from UNC Greensboro. Before taking a writing hiatus, he had several stories published, most notably in Writers’ Forum, Beloit Fiction Journal, and The Quarterly. More recently, his flashes have appeared in Ambit, The Common (online), Fiction International, Cherry Tree, CutBank (online), the minnesota review, Brilliant Flash Fiction, Cutthroat, Bacopa Literary Review, The MacGuffin, and Allium, among others. He is a 2024 Pushcart Prize nominee and has served as a flash reader/editorial assistant for CRAFT. He lives in Carrboro, N.C., with his wife Ann, two dogs, and a cat.