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the boy struggled to turn the mower. It veered toward a shrub.
    “Hang on!” Petey ran to help him.

10
    “No need to help with the dishes,” Kate said.
    “It’s the least I can do.” Petey dried another pot. “I can’t remember when I had a tastier beef stew.”
    “We don’t normally eat this much red meat,” she said. “I’m trying to put some weight on you.”
    “The lemon pie was spectacular.”
    Jason eyed a second piece. “Yeah, we hardly ever get desserts in the middle of the week.”
    “Well, you worked hard mowing the lawn,” Kate said. “You deserve a treat.”
    Sitting at the end of the table, I couldn’t help smiling. The reality that Petey was actually over there by the sink, reaching to dry another pot, still overwhelmed me.
    “Anyway,” he said, returning to an earlier topic, “it doesn’t surprise me that you moved here to Denver.”
    “Oh?”
    “That camping trip you and I and Dad went on. Remember?” Petey asked.
    “I sure do.”
    “Out here to Colorado. What a good time. Of course, the long drive from Ohio was a pain. If it hadn’t been for the comic books Dad kept buying us along the highway … Once we got here, the effort sure was worth it. Camping, hiking, rock climbing, and fishing, Dad showing us what to do.”
    “The first fish you ever caught, you were so excited that you reeled in before you hooked it good,” I said. “It jumped back into the lake.”
    “You remember that much?”
    “I thought about that trip a lot over the years. A month after we got back, school started, and …” I couldn’t make myself refer to Petey’s disappearance. “For a lot of years, it was the last good summer of my life.”
    “Mine, too.” Petey looked down. A long second later, he shrugged off his regret and picked up the last pot. “Anyway, what I’m getting at is, maybe you came out here because in the back of your mind you wanted to return to that summer.”
    “Camping?” Jason broke the somber mood.
    We looked at him. He’d been silent for a while, eating his second piece of pie.
    “Dad promised to take me, but we never did,” Jason said.
    I felt embarrassed. “We went on plenty of hikes.”
    “But we never used tents.”
    “Are you telling me you’ve never actually gone camping?” Petey asked.
    Jason nodded, then corrected himself. “Except, I once slept in a tent in Tom Burbick’s backyard.”
    “Doesn’t count,” Petey said. “You’ve gotta be where you hear the lions and tigers and bears.”
    “Lions and tigers?” Jason frowned, looking vulnerable behind his glasses.
    “It’s a joke.” Kate rumpled his hair.
    She left some soapsuds. He swatted at them. “Mom!”
    “But that might not be a bad idea.” She looked at Petey and me. “A camping trip. The two of you can pick up where you left off. Jump over the years. I know it’s been hard for you, Peter, but now the good times are starting again.”
    “I think you’re right, Kate,” Petey said. “I can feel them.”
    “What about
me
?” Jason asked. “Can’t
I
come?”
    “We’ll
all
go,” Petey said.
    “Sorry. Not me, gentlemen.” Kate held up her hands. “Saturday, I’m scheduled to give a seminar.” Kate was a stress—management counselor; her specialty was advising corporations whose employees were burned out because of downsizing. “Besides, sleeping in the woods isn’t high on my list.”
    “Just like Mom.” Petey turned to me. “Remember?”
    “Yeah, just like Mom.”
    “Except your mother,” Kate said, “was afraid of bees, whereas in my case it’s a matter of natural selection.”
    “Natural selection?” I asked, puzzled.
    “You guys are a lot better equipped to crawl out of a tent at night and pee in the woods.”

11
    “I’ve been meaning to ask you something.”
    Petey quit studying the map and looked at me. “About what?”
    It was almost eleven o’clock: a radiant Saturday morning. My Ford Expedition was loaded with all kinds of camping equipment.