“It’s been that long?” I asked.
“Since I was on this side, yes,” he replied as a BMW with tinted windows drove past us, barely making a sound. “When we came back with you that summer, we only went to Mimi’s. And left quickly, as I remember.”
This seemed like an opening. “The second honeymoon didn’t take, right?”
“Nope,” he said, wiping his brow. Even though it was dark, it was still hot. “Truthfully, I think we both knew things weren’t salvageable at that point.”
“But you went to Vegas anyway?”
He shrugged. “Well, yeah. I mean, I loved your mom so much. I wanted it to work. It just... didn’t.”
“Roo’s been telling me some stories,” I said quietly, hoping it wasn’t too risky to mention his name. “About Mom and his dad, growing up here.”
“Hmm,” he said. I wasn’t sure what that meant. “They were very close.”
“You met him, right?” I asked. “Chris Price?”
“Oh, yeah,” he replied. We were across from the Tides now, heading toward Campus, which I could see up ahead. “We all met the same night, actually. At a party on the raft.”
“Our raft?” I said.
He looked at me, amused. “Well, we considered itours, but yes. The very same.”
“You guys had parties out there?”
“Yep,” he said, nodding. “It was the gathering place back then too, especially in the evenings. Tons of boats, tied together, and everyone moving between them.”
I would have bet the rest of my grounding there was beer there, too. Not that I felt I could say this out loud.
“How did you guys meet?” I asked.
He gave me a sideways look. “We didn’t come here to talk about your mom and me.”
“I don’t know why we came here,” I replied. “You’re the one who invited me.”
“True,” he said mildly. We walked a little farther, until Campus, its low block buildings dotted with chairs heaped with towels, was right beside us. He stopped, looking at it, then said, “My unit was around back. Should we try to find it?”
I looked at the buildings, wondering who I might run into. Then again, it was better than being in the suite. “Sure.”
He stepped up onto the grass and I followed him, crossing over to the first building. The door to Blake and Colin’s place was closed, but Hannah and Rachel’s was ajar, and I could see someone’s feet up on the bed as we passed by. Then my dad turned down the short hall by the laundry andbulletin board where Blake had taken me all those nights ago.
“See, the back rooms were better,” he explained as we popped out on that side and started passing doors. “More shade, so they weren’t as hot.”
“There’s A/C now, though,” I said, pointing at one.
“Ha! These kids don’t know how good they have it,” he said. “We melted all summer, every summer. Let’s see... here it is. Fourteen.”
It was the last door of the building, no chair or towels marking it. Just a single-bulb light, bugs circling it, and the strong sound of peepers coming from the nearby woods. This close up, they were deafening.
“Guess a tour is out of the question,” my dad said, peering in the one, dark window. “But man, do you hear those frogs? Those first few nights, I couldn’t sleep it was so loud. By the end of the summer, though, I didn’t even notice them. It’s funny what you can get used to.”
“It is,” I agreed, just as I heard footsteps on the other end of the walkway. By the time I looked, though, a door was just shutting, whoever it was having slipped inside.
“There used to be a wall,” he said, glancing back down the way we’d come. “Everyone signed it, every summer. I wonder—”
“It’s over here,” I told him, walking around the corner.
“You know about the wall?” he asked.
