Summer had been hanging around for so long that Ginger had begun to think it might never leave. For weeks, the high desert had baked beneath a bright blue sky. By afternoon, the dirt was hot beneath Ginger’s shoes, the grasses along the road had faded to pale gold, and even the lizards seemed to spend more time hiding beneath rocks. The piñon and juniper were dusty, and the prickly pear looked as though it had decided there was no point complaining about the heat.

Then one morning, Ginger stepped outside and stopped. Something was different. She couldn't see it exactly. The sun was shining. The sky was blue. The same dust lay beyond the house, and the same wide-open land reached toward the mountains. Still, Ginger knew.

She walked down the steps and stood very still. The air touched her bare arms. It was cool. Not cold. Not even close. But for the first time in months, the morning didn't already feel hot.

Ginger took a deep breath. The air smelled different, too. All summer it had smelled of sun-warmed earth, dry grass, dust, and sage. This morning there was something sharper underneath it, something clean that made her want to breathe in again. She looked around suspiciously. Something had happened while she was asleep.

Ginger set off to find out what. She wandered past the sage and around the side of the house, looking carefully at everything she passed. The prickly pear was still green. The junipers hadn't changed. A small lizard warmed itself on a rock as though this were an ordinary morning.

Then Ginger saw a patch of yellow near the fence and hurried toward it. Tiny yellow flowers had opened on a rabbitbrush that yesterday, or at least Ginger was fairly certain it had been yesterday, had looked like nothing more than a dusty green bush. She bent close. There were dozens of blossoms.

“Well, when did you do that?”

A bee crawled busily across one of the flowers. Ginger sat back on her heels. Maybe this was it. Maybe fall didn't begin with leaves tumbling from trees. Maybe out here it started with yellow flowers on a scraggly bush.

She continued her search. Near the edge of the yard, a chamisa had begun to glow with tiny golden blooms. The dried grasses whispered against one another when the breeze passed through them. A few sunflowers still stood along the roadside, but their bright faces had begun to droop, heavy with seeds.

Ginger heard something overhead and looked up. A flock of birds crossed the enormous blue sky. There were so many she couldn't count them. They moved together, turning almost at once, dark specks high above the desert.

“Where are you going?” Ginger called.

The birds kept flying.

“They never answer,” she muttered.

She followed them with her eyes until they disappeared. That was when she noticed the mountains. They looked different. All summer, heat had softened them beneath a pale shimmer, but this morning their ridges were sharp against the sky. Ginger could see shadows in the folds and rocky places that had been blurred by the summer haze. She stood looking at them for a long time. The world seemed bigger somehow.

By afternoon, summer came roaring back. The sun blazed overhead, the dirt grew hot again, and Ginger wondered if she had imagined the whole thing. She retreated to the shade with a glass of cold water and watched a lizard dart across the yard.

“See?” she told it. “Summer.”

The lizard disappeared beneath a rock without offering an opinion.

But the next morning was cool again. And the morning after that. Soon Ginger began noticing other things. The sun came up a little later. Shadows stretched farther across the yard in the evening. The rabbitbrush grew brighter until great patches of yellow dotted the land. Grasshoppers sprang through the dry weeds, and somewhere nearby, piñon jays called noisily from the trees.

One evening, Ginger went outside just before supper. The day had been warm, but the heat disappeared quickly when the sun dropped lower. A breeze came across the open land, carrying the smell of sage and dry earth. Ginger rubbed her arms. For the first time since spring, she thought about getting a sweater. Instead, she stayed where she was.

The setting sun spilled gold across the desert. The grasses glowed. The rabbitbrush looked almost orange in the fading light, and far away, the mountains had begun to turn their evening shades of pink and purple.

Nothing dramatic had happened. No storm had announced the end of summer. No tree had suddenly dropped all its leaves. No cold wind had come rushing across the desert. Fall was simply slipping in around the edges, a cool morning, yellow rabbitbrush, birds crossing the sky, longer shadows, mountains suddenly clear in the distance.

Ginger sat on the step and pulled her knees against her chest. Tomorrow afternoon would probably be hot again. That was all right. She knew something summer didn't seem to know yet.

Fall was already here.

It had just arrived quietly.