New York City, September 29, 2016

★ A fine, cold drizzle was blowing. The boy who never wanted to wear his rain jacket accepted his rain jacket without complaint; the boy who was always willing to wear his rain jacket didn’t have it, but promised to look for it in the lost and found when he got to school. The drizzle paused, but the gray and the cold held through the morning and on into the afternoon. The chill was into the office building. At the evening pickup from the afterschool program, the rain was starting again. The missing rain jacket had never appeared.