A short story of 5k words, orig­i­nally published in Witch Fantastic, edited by Mike Resnick and Martin H. Greenberg.

A young office worker over­looks a standing grove of weeping willows. There, her co-workers eat lunch in the shade. She’s tried this; all she can hear while she’s there is the weeping of chil­dren she can’t see, can’t touch, can’t reach. No one else can hear them. There’s nothing she can do, because there are no children.

But she has to do some­thing, has to find out some infor­ma­tion that might allow her to hear what everyone else hears. 

Who owns the willow grove? Who cries at its heart? What does it want from a woman who has never really been wanted?