“The Tides? That place is super fancy. When are you coming back to stay at Mimi’s?”
“I’m not.”
He raised his eyebrows. “What? You’re leaving for good?”
“I can still visit,” I said. “For two weeks, anyway. After that, we all go back to Lakeview.”
“Wow.” He reached up, running a hand through the back of his hair. Another tuft sprang to attention, sideways. “I thought you were here all summer.”
“Nope,” I said. “Really, I was only supposed to be here until now. The Lake North thing just sort of happened because our house and Nana’s are still under construction. So I guess I should be happy.”
“Are you?”
“No,” I answered, honestly. “I mean, a month ago I had no plans to come here. I didn’t even think about this place. Now that I have to leave, I can’t imagine not being here to help with Calvander’s and see the baby come.”
We were quiet for a second. Outside, on the water, I could hear a motorboat chugging by.
“So you came to say goodbye,” he said. He looked at me. “Thatsucks.”
Hearing this, I felt a pang I didn’t expect. “Not goodbye yet. First I have a favor to ask.”
“You want some complimentary RideFly mints? I’ve got a whole bag.”
“No.” I took a breath. “Bailey said your mom took a lot of pictures that week I was here, when I was a kid. Do you guys still have them?”
“I’m sure we do,” he replied. “The tricky part will be finding them.”
He got up, crossing the room quickly over to a low cabinet beneath a window. When he bent down, pulling open the doors, I saw it was jammed full of photo albums of all types, sizes, and colors.
“Like a needle in a haystack,” he said, taking out a small flowered one that was wedged at the top and opening it. After scanning a page, he said, “Well, this one documents my awkward stage. So we can rule that out.”
“Can I see?”
“No,” he said flatly, putting it on the cabinet and taking out another one that was deep green, square, with an embossed cover. Opening it, he said, “Oh, here’s a picture of Waverly. So at least we’re getting closer.”
He handed the album to me. Sure enough, in the right-hand corner was a snapshot of my mom, in rolled-up jeansand a Blackwood Station T-shirt, bent over one of the dock pumps. “I wonder when this was.”
Roo, now rummaging through the rest of the cabinet, glanced over my shoulder. “Well, that’s the old Pavilion. It got taken out by a hurricane in 1997, so it had to be before that.”
“She met my dad in 1999,” I said. “And I guess she left for Lakeview in—”
“2000,” he finished for me. “That fall, after my dad died.”
I looked at the picture again. In it, my mom would have been around the same age I was now, although she looked like much more of a grown-up than I felt. What was it about pictures that aged people?
“Okay,” Roo said suddenly, putting another album, this one burgundy-colored, on the top of the cabinet and opening it. “I think we’re getting somewhere. Look.”
It was a picture of three little girls with blond hair, sitting at the picnic table below Mimi’s. They were all in swimsuits, eating Popsicles, and turned in the same direction, as if they’d been told to look at whoever was taking the shot. I immediately picked out myself, in the red tank suit with a giraffe on it. It took a second of looking this time, but only that, to realize the other two were Bailey and Trinity.
“That’s the summer,” I said. “2005. My parents split up that fall.”
“So we were four.”
“Yep.” I looked to the next picture, also of the beach areaat Mimi’s, but this one was of a skinny little boy in a skiff, holding a set of oars. “Is that you?”
“Nope. Jack. He’s always been skinnier and taller.” He pointed to the row below. “That’s me.”
I leaned in closer, taking him in: towheaded and skinny as well, in baggy shorts and a T-shirt with a dinosaur on it. He was sitting on the hood of a car, feet balanced on the front bumper. Behind him, you could see the driver’s-side door was open, an arm—thick and hairy—cut off by the frame.
