Terrance was in the Entertainment Lounge, standing between the blue vinyl couch and the television, newsboy cap on head, mop in hand. He smiled at Ted the way Jillian used to when Ted came home from work, the way their dog, Candy, did before she lost her heart to the Coxes’ German shepherd. Terrance removed an earbud from one ear. “Supertramp,” he called out, his voice loud.

Terrance listened to music on his phone during work, a deal they had worked out with Dana to keep his loquaciousness under control. Terrance had received warning upon warning for hanging out in residents’ rooms to chat, forgetting to mop and dust and water plants. He’d nearly lost the nursing home job last winter, when he opened an old lady’s window one evening before he left work. The temperature in her room dropped to the midthirties overnight; the woman, feverish, had been rushed to the hospital in the morning.

“But she told me to,” Terrance told Dana at the meeting the next day. Ted sat beside him the way their father had in similar situations at school and work for years.

“If I told you to walk into traffic, would you? Just because I told you to?” Dana said.

Terrance looked to Ted. Ted had shaken his head no. Terrance had shaken his head no, too, but he looked unconvinced.

“Check it out, Teddy.” Terrance offered an earbud.

“That’s okay, pal.”

Terrance let the earbud dangle, keeping the other one in his ear. “It’s a code orange today, Teddy. Moderately bad air. That was on the Weather Channel app, Ted. Catch!” He threw a wadded piece of paper at him. Ted threw it back. “I caught a ball at the Senators game that time, remember?”

“Sure do.”

“Frank Howard was number nine. Until 1968, Ted.”

“That’s right.”

“He was the only player ever to hit a fair ball out of Yankee Stadium.”

“I thought it was a foul.”

“Bobby Murcer said it was fair.”

“Then it was fair.”

“Pow! Remember when we played army?”

Ted smiled, thinking of long-ago summer days playing at the Willard Park creek. He and Terrance used to dig trenches and shoot stick guns, using metal dog bowls for helmets.

“We’re responsible carpenters, you and me,” Terrance said.

“Yep.”

“Dad said.”

Ted nodded. The summer they were ten, the boys and their father built a fort in their backyard, a months-long project that consumed every long, light-filled evening. It involved lessons in sawing and sanding and the wearing of safety goggles that slipped down their faces as they worked. Their father had entrusted them with the combination to the toolshed lock only when he was convinced they were “responsible carpenters,” an honor that ranked up there with “Eagle Scout” in Terrance’s mind.