Leaves by Michael Baron Page A

game was already lost at that point, but Maxwell played the rest of it aggressively, laughing out loud when Tyler’s three kings backed down and captured his final piece.
    â€œNice game,” Maxwell said proudly.
    â€œThanks,” Tyler said, beaming. He wondered at that moment if the kid knew that Maxwell had been going easy on him. He also wondered if the kid knew that those days were through.
    Over the next few months, they played checkers nearly every afternoon. Maxwell won more often than he lost, but he never won easily. That Christmas, Maxwell found a handmade wooden checkerboard with brass pieces at one of the local craft shops and bought it for Tyler. It was a ridiculously elaborate gift – much more expensive than anything he got for his sisters – but he got it with the money he’d earned doing small tasks around the inn and the expression on Tyler’s face when he opened it was priceless.
    They continued playing until Maxwell went off to Penn and even picked up the game the first few times Maxwell came back during breaks. Eventually, they both had other things going on when Maxwell was around, and the checkerboard became an accent piece in Tyler’s room, covered over with CD cases and photography books.
    Maxwell hadn’t thought about those games with Tyler in years. He wondered if Tyler even remembered they used to do that together and what it had meant to both of them.
    Finally Maxwell moved from the spot in the bathroom where he’d stood fixed. He noticed that the floor was back to normal, the checkerboard some three-in-the-morning illusion.
    He really needed to stop drinking coffee of any kind at night.

**^^^**

    A year after Janice died, Corrina was in a store with Ryan, who was fourteen at the time. Within Ryan’s earshot, the elderly sales clerk helping them said, “Your son is so handsome.” Corrina smiled and said, “He is, isn’t he?” When she glanced over to toss Ryan a teasing look, though, the expression of reproach on his face was unmistakable. It said, “I am not your son.” It chilled Corrina to see it. She’d never presumed to be his mother and certainly never as much as suggested she could replace Janice. She simply agreed with the sales clerk because it was such a non-moment and it didn’t seem necessary to explain that Ryan was her stepson. Watching Ryan appear so appalled at the notion made an indelible impression on her. She would never make a mistake like that again.
    Her relationship with Gardner’s son had been mostly cordial, but it rarely extended beyond that point. Ryan was three when his parents split up, four when she and Gardner started dating, and five when they got married. Janice moved him to Concord, Massachusetts, and Corrina and Gardner saw Ryan only once a month and three weeks in the summer after that. He was cute, bright, and likable, but Corrina felt that in many ways she’d never gotten to know him. The visits were too brief, and when he was here he was too removed from his normal life to be the kid he really was.
    Then Janice died suddenly. All at once this teenaged boy only seventeen years her junior was dropped into her household. He was filled with grief, adolescent confusion, ambivalence about his father, and reticence about his stepmother. His mother had never remarried. They were a team. In an instant, the team had been broken up forever, and Ryan was cut loose into the world.
    Ryan came into their home all attitude and defenses. He and Gardner had never gotten further than being “buddies,” and given the fact that Gardner had been busy building his law practice for the three years of Ryan’s life in which he was married to Janice, they had no practical experience living together. Gardner’s response to his son’s delicate situation was to heap material things upon him. It was more of a well-meaning gesture than anyone other than Corrina understood, but it left