“Did you find the heavy galvanized bolts at the hardware store on Third Street?” I asked.

Brandon took a folded paper receipt out of his flannel shirt pocket and handed it to me.

“Eight lag screws and four steel brackets for fourteen dollars and sixty cents,” he said.

He carried the wooden beams over to the shade of the cedar tree, laid the A-frame legs on the grass, and opened his toolbox.

By ten o’clock, the autumn sun had warmed the front yard, and the steady whine of his cordless drill echoed off the neighbor’s garage.

I sat on the wooden porch steps with Theodore in my lap while Brandon tightened the last support bar on the swing set.