I decide to pretend he never gave me this advice. “We need a place to stay. Anything downtown?”

“Downtown?” he asks in a husky voice, taking out his pack of cigarettes and going through the same routine as before. “Downtown?” Now he’s laughing through the smoke.

“No motels?”

“None suitable for a kid, ’specially not a little girl,” he says.

“What about the old Highway Inn?”

“Like I said.”

“So there’s nothing?” I ask, skeptical. It’s a long drive back over the bridge, south on the highway. The last hotel we passed was a good hour away.

But even more discouraging is that I am beginning to doubt my entire premise. I had hoped, perhaps unreasonably, that Nysa had grown into a certain quaintness, that the gentrification I railed about in the city might have positively impacted our small town, our small island even. I thought mansions would line the lakefront. All I’m seeing so far is a crumbling place, a place left behind by the rest of the world, and it gives me an aching sense of loss.

What if there is nothing here for you?

I shake it off. I’m making this judgment based on Galen’s son and what he’s telling me from a gas station outside of town. I rediscover my optimism.

“Thanks anyway,” I say, turning to go. I stop. “I didn’t get your name.”

“Junior,” he says. “Just Junior.”

On the way to the car, I panic. What if you ran while I was inside? Where would I even begin to search?

But there you are, still asleep, your hair pushed flat against the glass.

I climb in and turn the car toward town.

When Everything Started Happening

The two-lane road widens into three as we enter town, the middle being a turning lane, and you are staring out the passenger-side window again, your fingers on the ledge, your nose against the glass. An old Chevy pickup passes us, going in the opposite direction, out into the countryside. The driver appears to be in his sixties, white tufts of hair slanting out from under a green baseball cap. He stares straight ahead, doesn’t even make eye contact with me as our cars pass.

Driving through town feels like an out-of-body experience. Everything is arranged precisely as I had left it forty years ago. On the right is the tire store and the small grocery and the in-town gas station that is Junior’s only competition. The Nysa Diner is on the corner of Main Street and North Bay Road, which runs north to south, all the way up the island. There are other small shops and offices at the intersection, but the buildings thin quickly to either side of Main.

It’s the same but different. Nothing seems to be taken care of as it used to be—the weeds are high in the alleys and even in some places along the street, the roads themselves are rutted and pockmarked, and I can’t tell if the Nysa Diner is open. I try to think of some kind of explanation or apology for the state of things, but you’re still staring through the glass.