When she heard Charlie stirring, she would take a break from reading the Times and set a place for him. Pour him a bowl of cereal, get the milk and orange juice from the fridge. Once he was down, they would discuss what they wanted to do that day. Go into Fenelon? Drive around randomly and see what they might discover? Hang out on the porch and read their books?

No, no, and no, Charlie would reply.

He had a project of his own that was as engrossing as his mother’s jigsaw. Charlie was building an empire.

It had been several days since he had discovered, in the shed out back of the house, an old Tide detergent box filled with toy trains. And not just trains, but track and building kits and little trees. He’d told his mother he’d been racing past the shed on his bike when he decided, on a whim, to try that padlock one more time. He said he’d given it a good yank and it came apart. Just like that.

“I think it was rusted or something,” Charlie said.

The box had been too heavy to carry, so he had been bringing the contents into the house a few items at a time. Before letting him get too far along in the process, Annie had put in a call to the leasing agent, Candace, to ask who the toys belonged to and if they should be returned to their rightful owner.

It was the first Candace had heard anything about a box of toy trains.

“Finders keepers,” she said. “Let your boy have fun with them.” There was a pause, and then she said, “Would today be good if I dropped by with Stacy? She’s dying to show you her drawings.”

“Why don’t we revisit that later in the week,” Annie said. “We’re still settling in.”

Charlie had been awaiting the results of the conversation anxiously. “Go nuts,” his mother said, and he shrieked with delight. He had already brought in so many items from the box, including the heaviest ones like the engine and the transformer, that Annie was able to carry it from the shed to the house.

She put it down on the porch, so there would be room to empty the contents, spread them out, and see just what they had.

“What a haul,” Annie said. “That was some dumb luck, that lock falling apart.”

“I know, right?” said Charlie as he examined the pieces of track and started to arrange them on the porch without connecting them, seeing what kind of configuration he could make.

“Looks like all this stuff has been in the box a long time,” Annie said. “Hope the engine still works.”

“It will.”

“You sound pretty confident. But if it needs oiling or something we can go back to that hardware store where you got the Brasso and—”