From the collection Gryphon, Charles Baxter’s luminous story of caretaking under any circumstance. Burrage never thought he’d be the responsible one. When his brother and sister-in-law die in a car accident, he becomes caretaker to his young nephew, a fragile boy who wants to know what the future will be. Burrage begins writing the boy’s horoscope—stars, trains, and hide-and-seek—until his predictions begin to fail, in a rowboat, in the middle of a lake. Charles Baxter is one of our finest short story writers, a modern master. “The Would-be Father” is one of his first published short stories. An eBook short.