Graeme raises his camera. “You never told me about your parents. What’s their story?” Click.

“A very boring one.”

He casts me a sidelong look.

I crisscross my legs beneath me. Grass tickles my thighs. “My folks moved to Idaho for my dad’s job when I was two. He’s an engineer for the navy.”

“There’s a naval base in Idaho?”

“I know, shocks the hell out of most people. It’s on Lake Pend Oreille. They test submarine sonar and whatnot. Pretty high-level, secretive stuff.” I zoom in on the tortoise and take a picture.

“And your mom?”

“She works for the post office and runs an Etsy business on the side. Music-themed wood carvings.”

“They sound like hardworking people.”

“They are.”

“Makes sense.” When I raise my eyebrows at him, he continues. “I figured you learned your work ethic from somewhere.”

Graeme draws a knee up to steady his camera and silence falls between us again.

Curiosity nibbles at me. “What was your mom like?”

His eyes flick to me and away.

“If you’d rather not talk about her, I understand—”

“She loved ABBA.”

“ABBA?”

“ABBA. She knew all their songs. When I was a kid, she’d blast her ABBA CDs in the kitchen while she cooked dinner and we’d sing along at the top of our lungs. She was a terrible singer though. Really, really awful.” He laughs at some private memory. “She hated the color yellow. She loved teaching, but she didn’t like the politics of being a professor. She wanted to travel to Petra in Jordan more than anywhere else on earth, but she never made it there. And… she would have liked you.”

Warmth creeps across my collarbone. “You think so?”

“Definitely. And I’m not just saying that. She met my ex years ago, and she did not like her. At all.”

“What was the deal with your ex?”

“We dated through college. We met freshman year at Cornell and even stayed together long-distance for a while after I transferred to Michigan.”

“What happened?”

Graeme unzips his backpack and stows his camera. “My mom got sick. Avery couldn’t handle it. I went from carefree, doting boyfriend to caretaker. Weekends away turned into endless doctor’s appointments. Months of experimental therapy. Drained bank accounts. We lasted a semester after Mom’s diagnosis before it got to be too much for her to handle.”

“If she really cared, she would have stuck with you.”

“That’s what my mom said. But it didn’t make it any less hard at the time.”

“What about your girlfriends after Avery?”

“There haven’t been any after Avery. No one serious, at least. Women don’t like to date a sob story, and I didn’t really have time for a girlfriend until…”

Until his mom wasn’t sick anymore.

“You must have been lonely.”