He looks at his watch when he’s put everything away. It’s taken him less than an hour, not long enough for Isabelle to have made and iced a cake. He surveys the garage, lit dimly by a single bulb, and his eyes fall on the power drill. He picks it up and tests it; it’s charged and ready to go. He’ll finish up with the zip cord, he thinks. Sure, it’s dark, but he can bring a flashlight. And he likes the idea of doing something for Isabelle at the same time that she’s inside doing something for him.

He takes the power drill and flashlight out to the edge of the woods. He stands still for a minute and listens: the wind in the trees, the weary creaking of branches, coyote. There is no moon.

He holds the flashlight under his chin and uses both hands to drill into the tree. What took him the better part of an hour by hand just to start takes him all of three minutes by drill to complete. He screws the hook into the hole he’s made and yanks on it with all his weight to make sure it will hold. He puts a hook in the second tree about fifty meters away and returns to the box to read the instructions for the next step. This involves stretching the wire taut between the trees, from hook to hook. His fingers are numb, and he can hardly feel the wire in his hands, but finally he manages to attach each end of the wire to a hook. His neck is stiff from holding the flashlight, but he is satisfied. Last, the swing goes up. This Isabelle will ride back and forth, from tree to tree, pushing off on one tree and zipping to the other. First time she does it, he and Ruth should probably stand one of them at either tree to catch her in case she crashes. He remembers crashing his fair share on these things.

Putting the swing on the wire is the easiest part. Wilson steps back and admires his handiwork. He is pleased. Probably, he thinks, he should give it a test run, just to make sure everything is solid and ready for Isabelle to ride in the morning. He turns the flashlight off and sets it on the ground by the power drill. It is so dark he can hardly see the swing in front of him, but he feels his way onto it and with his feet pushes off hard against the tree. Next thing he is flying through blackness, the air cold in his hair, his heart pounding. He keeps his legs stretched out in front of him and ready to cushion his collision with the second tree, which he doesn’t see until the moment he hits it, and then he pushes off to soar back through the darkness to the first tree.