Autumn came, faster than expected. James couldn’t say exactly when he’d unlearned how to read a calendar, but it had happened at least many years before, maybe around the time he bought his first iPhone, maybe earlier, maybe later. Maybe if he’d kept a better grip on the organization of days and months he could be more precise, but that was exactly the problem, this new-ish lack of precision.

He and Jen drove out to the woods out for a walk. Since buying a camera, James had developed a habit of looking up while walking, which had led to an uptick in stumbles as his feet caught the curls of roots and half-buried rocks. He was still nimble enough not to fall, but he swore aloud, a string of curses he hoped he would never shout in front of their girls.

“What makes me so lucky then?” Jen asked, who readily deployed profanity in chatty conversation, but never in anger or frustration.

James could only shrug and smile what once had been, he thought, his affable sit-com smile, but he suspected now was the ineffectual smirk of someone who had become a stumbler.

He looked at his watch and then at the leaves. “It’s the first day of autumn,” he said, amazed it had snuck up on him, this, his favorite season, despite having watched the yellowing leaves in his own backyard for weeks, despite ferrying the memory of reading A Separate Peace with him every day of his life, despite being old enough to have once bobbed for apples and sophisticated enough (so he thought) to pronounce his preference for the autumnal landscapes of the White Mountain School over those of the better-known Hudson River. He often thought of himself as a walking incarnation of the season, and yet this year’s manifestation had stole upon him like a debt in the night.

Jen followed his gaze into the leaves backlit by a bright afternoon sun. “I think that’s tomorrow,” she said.

James tilted his head and pulled out his phone. “Huh,” he said. “You’re right. So we didn’t miss it.”

Relief fell upon him as light through broken leaves falls upon a forest floor. He felt himself warm, and he hoped all the other golden moments he feared he was missing had likewise not occurred, at least not yet.