Portrait of a Backup (Short Story‪)‬

Mornings His wife moves toward the honeysuckle vine with a pair of enormous shears. She has been in the garden since daybreak, left him oatmeal on the stove. He watches her from the bay windows; in the six weeks since they left Miami, she has spent every morning planting tropical shrubs: brunfelsia and tree ferns and lancepods and orange blossoms. Last week the man at the nursery told her: Those plants won't grow here in Dallas. She drove home and dug deep holes for sabal palms.