“Bay Bluff didn’t have an ice cream shop. Besides, everyone knew everyone in Bay Bluff, so if we didn’t want spies reporting to our parents, we came here.”

The bikes out front now have thick tires that make the ride over back roads easier. There are cars, too, and people eating ice cream under huge umbrellas that match the sea green of the awnings. The sky is a blanket of clouds with the occasional spot of blue, but the pavement is dry. Joy was right about that.

The final approach is lush with the rich green of oaks, the blue of hydrangeas that thrive in sea air, the fountains of ornamental grass that had become a landscaping mainstay. We pass the same three-way intersection that I remember, the same signs for Misquamicut and Watch Hill. Another several minutes in, and the houses start swelling in size.

“Crazy,” Joy murmurs when we pass a particularly grand one.

“That was there before, but the next one’s new.” I point ahead. “And that one.” These are expensive homes, with expensive cars parked in expensive circular drives. No overgrown shrubs here. All is as pruned as the salty air allows.

Bay Bluff is its own little peninsula halfway between Misquamicut and Watch Hill. A small, weatherworn sign with an arrow marks the turnoff, so that if you don’t know to look for it, you miss it. We used to joke that the arrow was flipping the bird to anyone who hadn’t been invited to town, but now I wonder if I’m welcome here myself. Is home always home? Why, then, does my mind see ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK in that arrow?

Tucking the warning away, I drive on past banks of mailboxes at dirt driveways that burrow off into the trees. Once the road has angled along the peninsula, we pass homes I remember—the Mahoneys, the Santangelos, the Wrights, all still here in some generational form, to judge from the names on mailboxes. These houses have been updated with gables, turrets, and glass, and, to a one, their cedar shakes are weathered a deliberately stylish gray.

“Beach,” Joy cries when houses give way to diagonal parking, not quite filled but almost, and beyond that sand and surf. “Put down your window,” she orders, straining against her seat belt to see out my side.

Slowing, I do it as much for her as for me, and the warm salt air billows in, as if it was just waiting for the invite. No matter how much beach air I’ve breathed in the last twenty years, this is different. It smells of time and fish and a gazillion grains of sand that have washed through kelp, cradled crustaceans, or human toes. And still, it fills me with an odd … purity. How to explain?