“Mom! Mom, look at this!”

Sarah turned from the carrots she’d been cutting on the kitchen counter and succumbed to the infectious smile of her youngest son as he bounded through the back door.

“What is it, Grae?”

Adjusting his glasses further up his nose with his shoulder, Graem held his two hands up to his mother. “Look.”

“I am,” Sarah insisted, peering into the darkened hole within his cupped palms. She jolted, moving back several feet as a tiny brown nose popped out of the crevice before being sealed up hurriedly by her son’s chubby fingers.

“It’s a baby,” Graem exclaimed, his grin spreading even wider to show the many holes where his teeth should’ve been.

Sarah wiped her hands on her apron and nodded, chiding herself inwardly for not expecting something small and reptilian. You are raising two boys, you know.

Taking care to pull the anole close to his body, Graem adjusted his grip on the tiny animal tenderly, making sure he didn’t injure it. “Jack found ‘em,” he explained with a sniff, tilting his head up to gauge his mother’s reaction. “There’s a whole bunch out there.”

“I bet. You need to take him outside, though – if he gets loose in here, he’ll die. He won’t have anything to eat and he needs to be with his family, okay?”

Nodding, Graem took several steps backward, keeping his focus trained on the animal in his hands and not on the kitchen table he rear-ended. Startled, he dropped the lizard and after only a half-second of dazedness, it took off, seeking refuge along the bottoms of the cabinets. Graem fell to his knees immediately, crawling along the linoleum, slapping his hand down gently every few feet in an effort to trap the frightened animal.

Sarah stepped back quickly, a look of mild discomfort on her face. She really didn’t want to come across a dried-out carcass while doing the laundry any time soon. “Catch it, Grae,” she encouraged, moving toward the refrigerator so she could block the grating somewhat with her foot.

“I will,” he promised, continuing to crawl along the floor when finally his hand covered the anole triumphantly. “Got ‘im!”

“Okay – outside. Now.”

Graem managed to push himself to his feet using his elbows for balance and adjusted the way his navy-blue button-up had ridden up over his round belly. “Yes, ma’am. But, Mom – come see, okay? Come outside and look at ‘em. There’s gotta be thousands.”

Sparing a glance at the half-finished salad she had on the counter, Sarah decided that it couldn’t hurt to take two minutes out and look at this eighth wonder of the world that her boys had found in their very own back yard. “All right,” she agreed, reaching to untie her apron as she moved for the door.

Graem burst through the screen with a whoop and shouted at his brother as he sprinted across the back lawn, “Mom’s comin’! She’s gonna look, Jack!”

Sarah heard Jack order his brother to be quiet and she could see when she stepped onto the porch that he was crouched low near the back fence, moving the grass around softly with the aid of a narrow stick. She covered the span of the yard in hurried steps, now eager to see what had held their attention so raptly that she’d barely heard a peep from them over the past half-hour. Moving in quietly, she squatted next to her eldest son and leaned in close to see what he was pointing out.

“Right there, next to that curled-up leaf,” Jack whispered, sidling up to his mother and directing her with his hand where to spot the nest.

She let her eyes focus, trying to split the differences of the shades of browns and greens when she finally spotted two yellow eyes staring back at her. There, under the crinkled remains of one of her rose leaves, she saw a tiny body that looked exactly like the one that had just been scurrying across her kitchen floor. As soon as she saw that one, the others quickly came into view. Of course, Graem had exaggerated, but to a ten-year-old’s eyes, it really must’ve seemed like thousands of the tiny creatures.

Jack reached in slowly with the stick and moved another leaf, revealing even more of the freshly-hatched lizards. He looked over his shoulder at her and gave her an impressed smile. “Pretty neat, huh?”

Nodding, craned her neck to see a little bit better. She was amazed that they were so still, but suspected that it had something to do with a defensive mechanism – remain quiet, don’t move and maybe the predator won’t see you.

Graem sniffed again, his allergies getting the best of him on the warm summer evening. “You think they’ll stay there until Dad gets back so he can see ‘em?”

The mood suddenly shifted as Jack dropped the twig and rose to his feet. “Doubt it,” he muttered.

Sarah stood as well, reaching for Jack’s arm as she gave Graem a sympathetic smile. “Honey, I think Dad’s gonna be late again tonight, so why don’t you go inside and wash up? We’ll have to eat and then hit the road if we want to make your Cub Scout meeting on time.”

Graem let the lizard fall from his hands where it, again, shook itself from the mild blow and scurried off to be with its brothers and sisters. His face crumpled and shoulders dropped. “He promised, though.”

Not waiting for any excuses to be given, he bolted for the house, forgoing the steps as he jumped from the grass to the wood-planked porch.

Jack watched as he disappeared through the doorway and turned to his mother when she let out a heavy sigh. “It’s ‘bring your dad’ night,” he explained, hoping to lend a little more weight to Graem’s disappointment.

Sarah’s face fell even further, aggravated with herself for forgetting that that was tonight. If she had remembered, she would have called Phillip that afternoon and reminded him as well. “Oh, dear.”

Glancing back at the nest, Jack could no longer see any of the lizards. “I’ll can go and sit with him,” he offered quietly, knowing it wouldn’t be much of a consolation Graem, but that it might help a little bit.

“Sweetheart, you have your history test tomorrow.”

“I studied at lunch.”

If I were any other mother, I would seriously doubt that.

Giving him a grateful smile, Sarah pulled him into her arms and pressed him tightly against her chest. He was getting almost too tall for her to hold him this way, but he still fit in that spot just below her chin. “Thank you,” she whispered into his straw-blond locks before leaning back and giving him a kiss on his forehead.

She held back a smile at his look of mild displeasure, ignoring the low “Mo-om,” he gave her as he wiped at his face.

“I know, I know,” she sighed, wondering where all the time had gone as they made their way back to the house.

She couldn’t stop herself from leaning to her left, peering down the driveway and on into the street, hoping to see the front end of Phillip’s black Buick. The pavement was empty.

Jack had been standing on the porch, unable to see what she hadn’t, but he knew what she was doing. “Nothing?”

Sarah gave him a tight smile and shook her head as she bunched the front of her skirt in her hand and made her way up the steps. “Okay. Go wash your hands and I’ll finish up dinner.”

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