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school than I was.
    “Funny how we sort of turn into our fathers, don’t you think, Collins?” he asked my dad, reaching for a peanut.
    Dad shrugged. “Hard to say. Mine died when I was nine.”
    “Shame. But I bet you are like him. I’m just like mine. He was like his before him,” he said, extracting the peanut carefully fromthe shell, brushing away the papery hull. He seemed lost to himself for a moment. A half smile played at the corners of his mouth, but his eyes projected something else. Regret, maybe? I couldn’t be sure. I’d never seen him like this.
    He tossed the peanut into the ashtray. “In fact, Win’s the fourth generation of Coggans men to join the Ivy League,” he said.
    “Yeah, but I’m the first to need a life coach to do it,” Win said. I laughed. In addition to open manipulation by his father, his mother had made Win’s acceptance her priority project during the spring of our junior year. She hired someone to help Win out with the application, get him into some volunteer work, and essentially pad his résumé.
    “Winston,” his father growled. My parents looked awkwardly at each other and to me. We all knew the show Coggans was putting on, but Win wouldn’t let it go. I willed Win to leave well enough alone. We were saved by an unlikely source.
    Win’s mother had spent the entire postgraduation hugfest on her cell with a travel agent. It rang again as we sat waiting for our salads. After a brief exchange she hung up and turned to us. “I’m finally getting back to Tuscany,” she said, snapping shut her tiny silver phone and reaching for her water glass, from which she plucked the straw as if it were a hair or something.
    I couldn’t remember when the woman
wasn’t
on vacation. Win had gone with her only a couple of times—once to Europe, that I remembered, and another time she made him go with her to Ecuador, where they delivered a bunch of books and stuff to this school her Women’s League sponsored. When she was home, she took a weird interest in Win, dragging him along to variouscharitable organizations she chaired, fund-raising events that she threw her name and money behind. Win told me once that he sort of thought it was her way of spending quality time with him.
    His dad was always too busy working to go with them anywhere, and when we hit ninth grade, she claimed she didn’t feel right about pulling Win out of school. Most of the time she traveled with her sister. Mrs. Coggans never fit in West Virginia anyway.
    “You must be very proud,” I said to Win.
    He nodded. “They grow up so fast, don’t they?”
    “Stop it, Winston,” his mother said, almost playing along. “You know it’s been a while. I just hope Cinque Terre hasn’t become too overrun with those backpackers,” she gushed, looking to my mother for sympathy.
    “Either way you’ll have a lot of stories to swap with the boys when everyone gets back,” said my mother, who’d only been as far as Niagara Falls.
    Win’s mother looked confused, though whether it was mention of the bike trip or the prospect of conversation with her son, who could say?
    “Oh! The bike trip! Right. I only wish they’d gone last summer. All that self-discovery and adventure and whatnot. Colleges eat that stuff up,” she said to Mom, before turning to Win. “But we managed, didn’t we, sweetie?” she said, reaching for Win’s hand. “Still, I can’t imagine how much smoother that interview might have gone if you’d had that to fall back on,” she said, shaking her head lightly.
    After a beat Mom tried again. “I don’t know if I could have been talked into it last year, but I’m pretty excited for the boys now,” she said. “Though I confess I’m more than a little nervous.”She’d been crying quietly off and on all afternoon and began dabbing her eyes with a napkin.
    “They’ll be fine, Nancy,” my father said, reaching behind my mother and rubbing the nape of her neck, stroking the few hairs that had