His forehead scrunched. “Why?” he asked, sounding adorably puzzled. A lock of hair fell into his eyes.

“Use your hands to tap the sides and remove any excess air. It’ll come out smoother.”

With his open palm, he slapped the bucket on all sides until he determined it was ready to lift. “I’m nervous about getting this right,” he said with a laugh.

I reached for his hand. “Don’t be.”

He gave me a squeeze. “Building a sandcastle for the first time makes me feel like a kid again.” His eyes skimmed the beach.

I followed his gaze. The other teams that had claimed their spots were already working on elaborate towers and turrets, their castles twice the size of ours. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll get you caught up in no time.” With an encouraging smile, I nodded to his bucket. “Go ahead and lift it up.”

Grasping the sides, Levi began to slowly pull it upward.

“Gently,” I coaxed.

The bucket came off, but an area where the sand hadn’t totally been tamped down crumbled immediately.

“Try it again,” I said. “Try adding a little more water this time.”

Once he mastered that, I showed him how to repeat the process with the funnel roof. The good thing about building sandcastles was that once you knew the basics, there were so many different ways you could apply the same knowledge to get different results. Once we had a few different towers going, I showed him how to roughly shape a wall with our hands, using a spackle knife to get the edges sharp and neat. Once the wall was level, we used the knife to create little cuts at the top to resemble battlements.

“It’s always way easier to cut away than to add more sand, so I like to kind of keep it a little messy when I’m building,” I explained. “It can always be tidied up at the end.”

The peal of his cell phone made us both jump. With an apologetic smile, he reached into his pocket. “Just a second,” he said. “It’s my mom.”

“No problem.” I waited for him to move away, but he didn’t. Weirdly, it felt good that he didn’t want privacy.

“Hey, Mom.” He paused. “Yeah, I’m doing fine. Just out on the beach.” He shot me a helpless glance and mouthed Sorry. “Yeah, it’s going really well. You saw my photos, right?” Another pause. “Yeah, Dad would like it here. Did he see them, too?”