“So it won’t bug you if I’m in the room while you run your trains?” Annie asked.

Charlie shook his head. “Fine by me,” he said, stuffing a spoonful of cereal into his mouth, milk dripping down his chin. “But what about your puzzle?”

Annie said, “That puzzle may be what’s driving me back to work.”

If she’d had any fears that the toy train’s relentless chuffchuffchuffchuffchuffchuffchuff would bother her, they were allayed very quickly. While not the same as the city’s background din, it served the same purpose. A kind of white noise that allowed her to focus on her work. And Charlie barely said a word. He lay on the floor, on his stomach, propped up on his elbows, and simply watched the train make loop after loop. Occasionally he would slow it down, bring it to a stop in front of the plastic railroad station, let imaginary passengers get on and off, then throttle it up again.

It was a great toy, Annie thought. Better than any video game, where you sat on your butt for hours on end, staring at a screen. With toy trains, you were playing with something. But even as she had such positive thoughts, she wondered how long Charlie would be captivated by this activity. How much time could you spend watching an engine, a few cars, and a caboose go around a loop of track?

It did get a bit repetitive.

One thing that had kept him engaged was the addition of several new buildings. The day before, Annie had given in to Charlie’s request that they return to the antiques store (still, in her mind, more of a junk store) in Fenelon where he claimed to have seen a number of model train kits. Sure enough, he was right. Someone getting out of the hobby must have cleared out their entire stash. Charlie found, some in the original boxes and others in clear plastic bags one would use to freeze pork chops, kits whose pieces could be snapped together to make houses, shops, a switch tower, a radio station, a town hall, and half a dozen common downtown structures. The shopkeeper let them have the lot for twenty bucks. Charlie was so excited by the haul that on the ride home he attempted to build an ice-cream stand and dropped some window parts between the seat cushions that Annie had to dig out later.

He had all of them built, and on his floor layout, within a couple of hours and was very particular about their placement. At one point, Annie had suggested swapping where he had put the town hall and the police station, prompting a curt, “No,” from Charlie.