It was nothing new. From the time he was a baby, while I worked during the day, she’d stayed home to teach him all that she knew. He took to her old comics so that the two of them nearly shared a secret language: sending, treeshaping, soulmate, wolf friend. He’d echo her, Practice and prepare, and if she managed to press knowledge into him, he’d be proud of it. But all the while, he’d resist her. She’d tell him to muck out the duck shed, and he’d toss his shovel in a ditch. He’d hide behind a tree, aim hickory nuts at Karen if she came calling him. She’d teach him to use live coal to hollow wood into bowls and spoons. He’d use that coal to build a fire and burn up the whole project. She’d set him to digging up multiflora rose. He’d lay aside his hoe and follow deer into the forest to find out where they slept. By the time Perley decided to go to school, the only time there was ease between Karen and our son was at night, when he slept with his head in the crook of her arm, when she licked her fingers and smoothed his eyebrow.

When I went back to work, the two of them stood together at the top of the driveway and waved goodbye to me. It looked as if they planned to stay right there waving until I got back.

But when I came home that day, it was to the corduroy sound of the handsaw, the clap of the hammer, and I found Karen and Perley kneeling in front of the camouflage camper, surrounded by scrap lumber. They bent their heads together over a piece of waxed cardboard. On it, a drawing of a table surrounded by three-legged stools, a shelf, what looked like a porch swing. The whole thing was covered over with measurements and notations. Perley wielded Rudy’s Sharpie, his tongue out, concentrating. Karen’s toolbox was unpacked around them.

“Mama K’s teaching me tools and whittling,” Perley said, barely glancing at me. He capped the Sharpie and began to arrange drill bits by size. He was wearing Karen’s tool belt, cinched beyond the last hole. “We’re going to make my house so sweet. It’s going to have everything I need for living forever.”

“The camper could use a table and chairs,” Karen said. “It could use a bunk bed. A bookshelf.”

“Have you been inside it?” I asked her.

“Of course she has,” Perley said. “How else could we have figured out how high to make my new bunk?” He took her sheepsfoot blade from the tool belt, held it up proudly. “She’s showing me how to carve spindle legs,” he said.

“Mortise-and-tenon joints,” Karen said. “We’ll need to use the chisels.”

“Does she know the password?” I asked. They looked at each other.