“That’s the local insane asylum,” Fitz said without looking over his shoulder.

“Your father’s only joking, honey,” she said. “That’s the college—Bennett.”

“No hope for you there,” Fitz said, swinging easily into place behind Ken’s VW Bug, as Charlie and Alice eased in behind him in their turquoise Chevrolet, followed by the Robertses’ and Eggerses’ bringing up the rear. “It’s all girls. Or wait a minute”—now the glance over the shoulder—“maybe that does provide hope for you, after all. You do like older women, right?”

His face pressed to the window, Corey didn’t answer.

“I mean, Nancy’s what—four months older than you? Or did you throw her over when we left Mexico?”

Corey’s voice was in the process of changing, and it got stuck a moment, so that when he did speak it came out as a croak. “This is it? You really mean we’re going to live here? In this hick town? I mean, what does everybody do on Saturday night—ride cows?”

“They watch each other chew gum,” Fitz said. “Especially the teenagers.”

And she said, “Give it a chance, because just you wait and see where we’re going to be living, which is just—it’s at the top of this hill, isn’t it, Fitz? At the T?”

Suddenly Ken had his blinker on and Fitz hit the brakes so hard she thought she was going to go through the windshield. Corey shouted “Ow!” and thumped heavily into the seatback behind her while everything on the dash—maps, her sunglasses, an empty soda bottle that was hard as a brick—came raining down on her. No one was hurt, just startled. And Fitz had managed to stop without plowing into the rear end of the VW, which was where the engine was, and who knew what kind of damage that would do. Fitz let out a curse, his eyes leaping to the rearview mirror, but fortunately Charlie and the others were far enough back to avoid a pileup, and following Ken’s lead, they all rumbled up on the shoulder in a fan of dust. Dead ahead of them, rising up out of the pavement on the far side of the road, was a turreted stone gatehouse, three stories high. If they hadn’t stopped they would have sailed right on through the intersection and barreled into the heavy wooden gate one after the other, the blind leading the blind.

In the next moment, they were all out of their cars and gaping up at the building before them, which might not have contained sixty-four rooms, but looked big enough for all of them.

“You think this is it?” Ken asked, and he was looking to her and Fitz, as the local experts.