“Well, she seems very nice,” Rory said lamely. He had no idea if she was nice or not. She hadn’t said a single word to him, and surely Zack knew that.
Silence fell between them once again. For some reason, Rory remembered carrying three-year-old Zack around Disneyland on his shoulders. He remembered how Zack would try to emulate his every move when they played softball at the local playground or kicked the soccer ball around the backyard together. He remembered Zack wear- in” little-boy pajamas, giggling when Rory tickled him, laughing at Rory’s goofy jokes.
Rory kept his gaze steady on the road, but he felt a wholly unexpected desire to cry, and the sensation took him by surprise. He was not the crying type. He’d shed a tear or two when Polly died, and came close when he found out Glorianne was having an affair, but why now? He swallowed hard and stared at the road. Zack was all he had. Why couldn’t they have a warm, amiable, father-son relationship? What was he doing wrong? He’d already lost today’s battle; unless something changed soon, he was going to lose the entire war.
The massive gold dunes rose in the distance, and he felt Zack perk up next to him at the sight.
“They’re the tallest dunes on the East Coast,” Rory said.
“Pretty cool,” Zack admitted.
“When I was little, developers were just about to demolish the dunes to make room for new homes,” Rory said.
“Some woman stopped them and turned the area into a state park.”
“Check out the hang gliders,” Zack said.
Rory turned into the crowded parking lot.
“Let’s go see them close up,” he said.
They got out of the car and began walking. Gradually, the sand grew steeper until they were climbing up the slope of the first dune.
People were scattered across the face of the dunes, some of them perched on the crests, and children rolled and tumbled down the sandy hills. Above them, a couple of hang gliders floated in the air; a few more were poised for takeoff on the side of the tallest dune-the dune Zack was most intent on climbing. He charged ahead of Rory, whose bad knee gave a warning twinge as he neared the crest, and he was breathing harder than he had in years. Either the dunes had grown a lot taller over the last twenty years or he’d grown a lot older. He never remembered being winded when he climbed them as a kid.
He had so many memories of these dunes. He’d been one of the small children who rolled down the sand hill, standing up dizzily at the bottom, only to scamper up the slope again. He’d been a wild preteen, flinging himself from the top of the dunes into a slide to the bottom, where he’d have to empty pounds of sand from his shorts and sneakers.
And he remembered being a teenager out here, in the daytime with the sun and the heat. At night with the stars.
A string of people were seated along the crest of the dune, watching the gliders, and Zack and Rory joined them. The sun beat down on them, but there was a soft, refreshing breeze that blew grains of sand gently against their cheeks. From where they sat, they could see both sound and ocean, and the cottages down by the beach were so minuscule, it was like viewing them from a plane.
“I think those people are just learning how to hang-glide,” Zack said, pointing to a group surrounding a hang glider, which rested on the sand.
Rory tapped the shoulder of the young woman sitting next to him.
“Do you know if that’s some sort of class?” he asked.
“Uh-huh,” the woman answered. Her blond hair blew across her face and she brushed it away with her hand.
“It’s a beginners’ class. My cousin’s in it.”
“Which one is your cousin?” Zack asked.
“The guy that just landed,” the woman said.
“Or, I should say, the guy that just got dragged across the sand on his face.”
The woman’s cousin, who looked quite young from this distance, appeared none the worse for wear from his rough landing. All of the would-be pilots were wearing harnesses and helmets. Rory and Zack watched a few more takeoffs and landings, and no one seemed to get terribly high in the air or fly for very long, but the smooth glide a dozen feet or so above the sand was inviting.
Zack was clearly mesmerized. Finally, something besides the beach and Kara was getting a rise out of him.
“Why don’t you and I take a lesson one day?” Rory suggested.
Zack looked at him, disbelief etched on his face.
“A hang-gliding lesson?”
“Sure.”
“Are you talking about here? This summer?”
“Why not?” He could do this, he thought. It looked safe enough. He’d watched enough of the beginners crash- land on the cushion of sand and get up unscathed to feel confident that he and Zack could handle this.
He did wonder how his knee would fare; it was still aching from the walk up the dune. But this was finally something they could do together.
“I can’t believe you’re serious,” Zack said.
“I just can’t see you” — “I was at one time a professional athlete, you know.” Rory felt quite the old man at the
