"Mike's an only child."
"Oh my God, that's Mike?"
Leaning against the safety rail with his back to the Pacific with burning ears, Mike closed his eyes in the growing dark. Yeah, well, so he'd had long hair before the Navy, lotta people did. Had he known how much more convenient a buzz cut was, he would have done it a long time ago.
Just put the damned album away.
Just put it away, okay?
He'd come up to see if they were all right up there by themselves, only to find this, this, this…
(This little bit of the past he'd just as soon not remember.)
Like seeing his dad and his, what was it? Third? Fourth? Wife/girlfriend/whatever in that gas station parking lot.
He'd bought Lt. Dash lunch from the burrito joint next to the gas station, trying his best to try and get something she'd like before tearing out of the parking lot and back onto the highway even as the red convertible pulled up behind them at the pump.
He watched the two of them in the side mirror of his old truck, the blonde at least twenty years younger than his dad, a cheap knockoff of mom with dad a slowly dissolving wreck of a man in a loud sports coat lighting up one handed behind the wheel, free arm around the bimbo's shoulder. Just seeing him suddenly made the last nine months, the last seven years, meaningless.
How had the man found him and what the hell did he want? He'd never bothered with Mike's life before. Why now?
"Mike?"
"What!" he turned his back to the sinking sun, "Yeah, I had long hair back then. So?"
"No need to snarl." His mother gave him "the look", "I just need to know if you want to stay up the road at the Ventura Lodge with me and the Shys or if you were going to stay in the campground with your friends tonight because I don't think Rainbow is up to roughing it. Not with that ankle."
Rainbow spoke up, "I can take care of myself. The site we reserved is pretty level. I'll be all right as long as I don't find a gopher hole in the dark with my crutches on the way to the latrine at 2 a.m."