Middle-aged photographer and businessman Bobby Garfield returns to his old hometown upon learning that his childhood best friend, decorated soldier John "Sully" Sullivan, has died in a traffic accident. There, he begins recollecting his past when he visits his childhood home, which has long since been abandoned. During a summer in the 1960s, an eleven-year-old Bobby lives with his widowed mother, self-centered Liz Garfield, and has two friends, Carol Gerber and Sully. They experienced many things together, the most mysterious of which was meeting the older gentleman
Ted Brautigan, whom Liz takes in as a boarder. Ted takes the lonely Bobby under his wing, while his mother is busy with her job. They form a father-son bond, and it slowly becomes evident that Ted has some psychic and
telekinetic powers, which are why he has come to this sleepy town. In due course Ted explains that he has escaped the grasp of the "Low Men", strange people who would stop at nothing to get him back under their control. After reading Bobby's mind and realizing that the boy dreams of owning a bicycle, Ted kindly offers Bobby $1 a week in exchange for his reading the newspaper to him out loud. Bobby quickly figures out that Ted has some other purpose in mind. Mysteriously, Ted asks Bobby to keep an eye on the neighborhood looking for any signs of the "low men", like announcements about missing pets. Bobby sees one, but does not tell Ted, afraid to lose his new friend. Bobby, Carol and John have frequent conflicts with the local town bully, Harry Doolin, whom Ted scares away by looking into his mind and finding out that his violence is used to cover up his secret
cross-dressing. However, at one point, Harry harasses and injures Carol. When Ted manipulates Carol's dislocated shoulder into place, Liz arrives. As she has been raped by her boss on the trip, she mistakenly believes that Ted is a
child molester. Liz is confronted by Ted's ability to tell her the truth about what she has been through, and how her behavior is affecting her relationship with her son, providing another reason that Ted must leave. Ted is eventually captured with the help of a tip from Liz. As a form of closure, Ted yells to Bobby as he is being driven away that he would not have missed a moment with him "not for all the world", and later Bobby mirrors the same feelings. Bobby is later confronted by Harry, but he grabs the latter's baseball bat and beats him with it. Liz finds a new job in Boston so moves the family there. Before he leaves, Bobby and Carol say their goodbyes and share a final kiss. Returning to the present, Bobby turns to leave his old home, wherein he meets a young girl named Molly. They strike up a conversation wherein she reveals that she is Carol's daughter, who died not long ago. Bobby gives Molly a photograph of a young Carol as they connect. ==Cast==