Summer: Is June Spring Or

That night, Eloise lay in bed with the window open. The air smelled like cut grass and something sweeter—mock orange, maybe. A cricket sawed its legs together in a rhythm that wasn’t quite the frantic pulse of August. It was slower, more tentative. Spring’s last instrument testing a summer tune.

The next morning—June twenty-first, the solstice—Eloise woke to find a glass of lemonade on her nightstand. Beside it, a sticky note in her grandmother’s neat hand: is june spring or summer

They called a truce only because Eloise’s father, Tom, walked in carrying a grocery bag full of sweet corn. He set it on the counter and assessed the battlefield. That night, Eloise lay in bed with the window open

“Yes,” Tom said.

Spring. But only until noon.