Rather than try, I leave my window down. The tide is out, reducing the thunder of surf to a tuneful roll as the waves spill like dominoes down the shore. We pass a grove of stunted trees and shrubs, and while the green is dulled here, wild beach roses more than compensate.

Then those are gone, too, and we reach the square, which is as close to a center of town as Bay Bluff can claim. Slowing down, I’m impressed in spite of myself. When I left, only a handful of shops skirted a central patch of scruffy grass, but there are more than a dozen shops now, and the patch of grass has become a deck of pebbles hosting a large bench, whiskey barrels filled with blood-orange lantana, and a pair of gaslights. When I left, the shops had a freestanding feel, but the square’s corners are now pergolas to the sea, and the gaps between shops have been filled. Awnings and signage are of a style. Sidewalks have been widened for picnic tables outside eateries—and those? I can’t see details from the car, and with another car behind me I have to keep rolling, but there are three separate clusters of tables, all comfortably filled this mid-afternoon.

For a place that supposedly doesn’t give a fig whether people come or not, it’s an inviting little secret. Actually, not so much a secret, to judge from the flock of visitors milling in a splash of T-shirts and shorts, flip-flops and hats.

Feeling an inkling of pride, I ask Joy, “What do you think?”

“I need food,” she declares, which translates into Stop here, stop now, and even though the voice of wisdom says we should go to the house first, I’ve been promising Joy we’d have lunch.

So I park in the lot just beyond the square—once dirt, now neat gravel—pull my ponytail through a ball cap and slip on large sunglasses. By the time I’ve grabbed my camera, Joy is at my door, brows raised. “Seriously, Mom? Sunglasses?”

“For the glare,” I say and climb out.

Glare? she might have echoed and added another seriously? Instead, humoring me, she reaches back into the car to snatch her own sunglasses from the console. They are identical to mine. We bought them last February in Jamaica, and while large and round is more her look than mine, they happen to offer the right amount of shade.