James Patterson - I, Michael Bennett

“Speaking of road markers,” I said out loud, suddenly remembering something and putting on the bus’s turn signal.

“Everything okay?” Mary Catherine said as I pulled off the first exit after the bridge into the city of Newburgh. “Don’t we need to head up a few more exits?”

“I have to make a quick stop first,” I said as I made a left onto North Robinson Avenue.

We drove through Newburgh. Like many northeastern towns on navigable waters, the small city had had its heyday back in the 1800s, when goods traveled by ship. You could still see that nineteenth-century history reflected in its old oak-lined streets, its red-brick factories, its rambling Victorian houses. I always thought it had a faint resemblance to San Francisco, with its quaint old structures and steep streets that sloped down toward the majestic river.

But as we continued deeper into town, I started noticing changes, and they weren’t for the better. The city, even when I was a kid, had never been exactly bustling, but I definitely didn’t remember this many boarded-up buildings and businesses. Actually, as I passed a 99 cents store and an Internet cafe that advertised wire-transfer service to “Centro y Sudamerica,” I wondered if I’d made a wrong turn and was now rolling through a grittier section of New York City.

I made some turns and got lost once before I finally found what I was looking for.

Mary gaped out the window as I stopped the bus.

“Hot dogs, Mike?” she said. “We have hot dogs in the cooler.”

“These aren’t hot dogs,” I said. “These are Pete’s hot dogs. It’s a family tradition. My dad always stopped here first thing to kick off the summer. Just you wait. They’ll knock your flip-flops off.”

I picked up a baker’s dozen loaded with lots of Gulden’s mustard and sauerkraut. I sighed as I snapped into the first bite. Tube-steak heaven. The dogs were as perfect as I remembered. Pete’s hadn’t changed one bit. The kids seemed to like them, too. At least they couldn’t complain or aggravate each other while they were chewing.

I closed my eyes as I took a sip of orange soda. When I open them again, I’ll be twelve, I thought. My first summer with braces and E.T. playing in the movie house down the block.

I opened them, but instead of traveling back to the simpler days of yesteryear, I watched as a tricked-out Acura rolled by the hot dog stand, the thump of its megawatt rap music like a heart under a stethoscope. Not only that, but the two tough-looking Hispanic males in the front seat glared at me and my kids with silent malevolence until the light turned green and they peeled away. What was that all about?

I thought about Perrine for a second before dismissing it. It was just a coincidence. Had to be. I was just being paranoid.

“Okay, kids, back in the bus,” I said as I wiped mustard off my chin with a napkin. “This city living is for the birds. Time to get off the grid.”

Twenty minutes after our hot dog lunch, we made a turn off a forested road and rolled the bus over a tree-lined gravel driveway to its final stop.

I couldn’t stop smiling as the old rambling lakeside cabin came into view. It looked the same as I remembered it, as if I’d traveled back in time. Any second, the screen door would creak open and out would come my grandma and uncles and aunts and all my cousins, waving and smiling and sunburned.

The vacation house had been in the Bennett family for a couple of generations, until Seamus’s brother, Cosmo, retired from the fire department and moved in year-round. Cosmo had died a few years before and in his will gave the old girl back to the family as a whole to be used as a vacation place again.

“So what do you think?” I said to Seamus as he stepped over beside me.

Seamus had been a skilled carpenter, among other things, before he had become a priest, and he and his brother, Cosmo, and a few of their friends had built the place over the course of one long summer back in the early sixties.

Seamus took a deep breath as he stared at it. His blue eyes were wet, misted over.

“ I remember sitting with Grandma out on the back porch, and we’d hear that sound of tires on the gravel, and you had to see her face light up,” Seamus said. “Thirty years would disappear in a second because the family was together, her children and grandchildren.”

He looked down at the ground.

“God, she was a beautiful woman. I still miss her. This place brings back so many memories,” he said.

“Let’s go make some more, Seamus,” I said, putting my arm around him as we came up the creaky steps.

Even inside, it looked the same. There was the same massive bay window in the back that looked out over a faded dock and the mile-long lake. I smirked up at the old deer head on the wall, which we used for games of hat toss. My thirst for nostalgia ended abruptly in the kitchen when I realized we would be using the same old hit-or-miss 1960s appliances.

In the family room, I walked over to the wall where some old framed photographs were hanging beneath a mounted boat oar. I took down the one that showed two rows of grinning men above the caption

THE SHAMROCK HUNTING AND FISHING CLUB.

“Kids, come here. Have a look at this!” I yelled.

Everyone ran over. Seamus rolled his eyes when he saw what I was holding.

“Who can guess who this is?” I said, pointing to a strapping, shirtless, handsome young man in the back row of the photo.

“That’s not Grandpa Seamus, is it?” said Mary Catherine in shock.

“Hubba-hubba,” said my eldest, Juliana, squeezing Seamus’s bicep. “Pleased to meet you, Monsignor Stud Muffin.”

Everyone laughed.

“No, Daddy,” said eight-year-old Chrissy, shaking her head at the photo. “That’s not Grandpa Seamus. Grandpa Seamus is old, silly.”

“Yes, Daddy is silly, isn’t he?” a red-faced Seamus said, putting the picture back on the wall. “Who’s ready for some badminton?” he said, making a beeline for the yard.

The next morning, after preparing a late breakfast fit for a king-or a dozen starving wolverines-I took to the water. By a little past noon, the only thing between me and my most natural state was an inner tube and my surfer Jams. Sun on my face, heels trailing in the cool water as I floated gently down the lake, my only earthly concern was keeping the adult beverage prepared for me by the great people at Anheuser-Busch upright on my stomach.

I took another hit of my red, white, and blue Budweiser tallboy, squinted up at the tiny clouds high above me, and smiled. The Mike Bennett stress reduction program was going swimmingly indeed.

Off to my right came the occasional sound of my kids laughing and screaming as they cannonballed off the house’s faded old dock. Seamus, who had already swum the entire length of the lake earlier that morning, was teaching them how to swim. Or at least how not to drown.

Besides a volleyball tournament scheduled for three, I was planning on filling my day with a massive amount of nothing except kicking back and letting the pristine lake take me hither and yon.

But plans change. Sometimes drastically.

It was about two o’clock, as I lay there in a beery, sun-dazzled state, when I heard the whistle. When I sat up, I saw Mary Catherine waving from the distant dock. I looked over for a panicked moment to see if it had anything to do with any of the kids in the water, but it looked like everyone was in the backyard playing volleyball.

Mary Catherine whistled and waved some more. Something was up.

“I knew it,” I said as I started kicking and splashing back toward the house. It had been too quiet for too long.