The quiet subdivision at the end of a cul-de-sac looked as though it had been arranged to reassure people. Familiar houses, clipped lawns, trees barely stirring in the damp heat. Insects buzzed around the streetlamps and cicadas called from the woods.
I had delayed this visit as long as I could. Rhys cared too much for me to keep putting it off.
At the front door, I glanced at him. “We could leave. Tell them our flight was delayed.”
“In June?”
“Too much sun. The pilots couldn’t see.”
He held my face between his hands. “I’m good with parents, Mara. Talking to older people is one of the few skills the universe gave me.”
I was too keyed up to call him on the way he put himself down. “You’re not the part I’m worried about.”
His fingers slipped into my hair. “If you want to go, we go. I’m not afraid of them.”
“I’m making them sound awful. They aren’t. I just don’t know why being here makes me panic.”
He kissed my temple. “I’m right here.”
The comfort reached me before I could argue with it. “Please still like me after tonight.”
He leaned back to study my face. “Should I be worried you’re planning to stab me?”
“Only if there’s no kinder way to spare you.”
“Mara.” He kissed one eyebrow, then the other. “If I could have stopped loving you, I would’ve done it during that first year I tried so hard. I’m here. I’m staying.”
“If I’d known you needed help getting over me, I could’ve brought you here sooner.”
He held my gaze and rang the bell.
My parents opened the door like a tired picture of family life. Mom wore an apron. Dad had a novel in his hand, proof they’d been in separate rooms until we arrived.
They greeted Rhys with awkward handshakes. I’d braced myself for it, but the contrast with the easy welcome at Tideglass House still made me wince.
“Did Nadia get here?” I asked after we’d stood in the doorway a moment.
“She’s in the kitchen,” Mom said, and we went in.
At dinner my sister and Rhys reached across too much space to shake hands, then we all took our seats. Forks scraped against plates. I could imagine Rhys wondering whether I’d hired strangers to act like my family.
Still, he found something kind to say about the tart local wine, the mild stroganoff, and the conversation. He told them how we’d met and about our favorite park in Seattle. He mentioned how much we missed Bianca, who was away working on a farm north of Montreal.
I might have told my parents about Bianca’s move, but they’d never met my friends. I doubted they remembered the story. They nodded anyway.
“And you’re a cosmetologist?” Rhys asked Nadia.
She looked at him as though she were still sorting out who he was. “I’m in school for it.”
“She is,” Mom added. Nadia picked up her fork again.
“She’s great at it,” I said. “In high school she did my makeup for dances.” Those had been some of the rare moments when we felt like sisters. We hardly spoke otherwise, but I remembered her turning my chin toward the light and showing me how to bring out my eyes with makeup.
For a little while, I’d felt I had a sister.
“Nadia was brilliant,” Dad said, gesturing with his fork. “Skipped a grade. Wanted to be an astronaut, like I did. Then she got mixed up with the wrong people in high school.”
Nadia kept eating, unmoved. My hairline prickled with sweat.
“I wasn’t much of a student,” Rhys said. “And I can’t blame my classmates. There were about forty of us in the whole grade.”
“But you got into Alderbrook,” Mom said. “You must be smart.”
“He is,” I said as he said, “I played sports.” Dad went on, “And veterinary school—”
I tensed. Rhys squeezed my knee beneath the table. “I’m not a vet student.”
“He’s in law school, honey,” Mom said, her voice sharp with irritation.
“That’s Livia and Dane,” I said. “Rhys works at a bookstore and restores boats.” I tried to smile as if it didn’t matter that they’d forgotten the work of the person I was marrying.
Mom gave a polite smile, and she and Dad exchanged a quick look.
“Have you thought about the wedding?” Nadia asked.
“It’s early,” Mom said. “Mara still has years of veterinary training ahead, then a long residency.”
My stomach tightened. “We’re figuring it out.”
Under the table, Rhys found my hand and laced our fingers together. His thumb passed over the small scar on my index finger, from the time Bianca and I burned ourselves on our first trip to the coast. I’m here.
“We’re not rushing,” he said. “I don’t want to get in the way of Mara’s career.”
It was exactly the answer my parents wanted. Mom smiled, and my chest eased a little.
Nadia finished her wine and set her napkin down. “I should go. I have an early start tomorrow.”
“Who gets their makeup done early?” Mom asked, with a sweetness that didn’t disguise the old disappointment beneath it.
“Brides,” Nadia said, lifting her denim jacket from the chair. “Like Mara.”
Mom started to rise. “Let me pack you some leftovers.”
Nadia insisted she was too busy to eat them, and Mom finally let her go. After quick goodbyes and another round of polite introductions, Nadia left.
“More wine?” Mom asked.
We stayed at the cleared table for another glass. The room loosened as Rhys asked about my summer research position and told my parents how proud he was of me.
“You know, we never had to worry about Mara,” Dad said. “She never had a rebellious phase.”
“Not a single detention,” Mom added. “Top grades, scholarships. No matter what else was happening, we knew she’d be fine.”
Rhys looked at me. His mouth was tender; his brow carried a question I couldn’t read.
He got them talking about themselves, too. Mom described her busy days at the dentist’s reception desk and said she hated being bored. Dad talked about teaching eighth-grade science.
“It wasn’t the plan,” he said, “but it’s been worth it. Our girl Mara’s going to change the world.”
I smiled, and something in me hurt.
I felt both compressed and stretched open: the sum of their abandoned possibilities, and still the child they were proud of.
At a quarter to ten, my parents headed to bed, as they had at that hour for as long as I could remember. I followed Mom into the kitchen to help with the dishes.
“So,” I said. “What do you think?”
“About what?”
“Rhys.”
“He’s a very nice young man.”
I waited. We dried plates and put them away. At last she turned to me with a tired smile. “Just don’t rush. You have your career ahead of you. Feelings can change. Your work will still be there. It’s something you can count on.”
I made myself smile. “But you like him?”
She set down the towel and glanced toward the dining room. “He’s sweet, honey. But I don’t see it.”
“See what?”
“I don’t see how he’ll make you happy. Or how you’ll make him happy.”
“I am happy.”
“Right now.” She looked toward the dining room again. “A man like him will want to move back here and have children. He’ll want someone whose life fits his. I imagined you with someone who had more of his own life, someone who wouldn’t ask you for more than you could give.”
My eyes stung. She softened. “Maybe I’m wrong. It’s our first time meeting him. Just be careful, Mara.”
She handed me another plate. I dried it without thinking. Inside, I felt split open.
I missed Rhys in the other room. I missed our Seattle apartment, the radiator that rattled and the books that never seemed to stay where we put them. I missed the cold rocks on the Washington coast, Bianca’s arms around my shoulders, all of us in old Alderbrook sweatshirts while Dane and Livia argued over the right way to toast marshmallows. Golden brown, according to Dane. Burnt through, Livia insisted.
We said good night in the living room. Once my parents had closed their bedroom door, I leaned against Rhys’s chest. He held me there, kissing my hair and gently rocking us.
“I missed you,” I said.
“From the kitchen?”
I nodded against his hands.
“Me too.”
“I want to go home.”
His arms tightened around me. “We will. In two days. But I want to see it all first.”
“My boobs?”
“Those too. I meant your old band posters and mortifying diaries.”
“The periodic table was my poster.”
He groaned. “You’re such a nerd.”
I rested my fingers at the back of his warm neck. “You still like me?”
“You’re my periodic table.”
I laughed into his chest. “That means nothing to me.”
“When we get home, I’m decorating our walls with indecent pictures of you.”
“Always good to have a home project.”
Showing him my childhood house felt like revisiting our trip to Montana in reverse. Instead of a fridge covered in old holiday cards and faded drawings, Mom’s grocery list sat in neat handwriting on a whiteboard attached to the stainless steel.
“Yogurt,” Rhys read. “Interesting.”
“You didn’t think I could come from a yogurt-free home.”
He kissed the back of my hand. “I still don’t know where you came from.”
In the living room, our family pictures were nothing like the macaroni-framed photos he’d shown me of himself and his siblings. My college degree hung off to one side. An empty frame waited nearby for the veterinary degree my parents expected me to earn. They’d bought it after I called to say I’d been accepted to Washington State University's College of Veterinary Medicine.
“Where are the baby pictures?” he asked.
“Albums in the basement.”
We found a box and carried a couple of albums up to my room.
My parents’ past had always felt like scattered snapshots pinned to a board. The albums didn’t fill in many gaps. There were a handful from their whirlwind college courtship, a few from Mom’s unexpected pregnancy, then pages of their hurried wedding and Nadia’s infancy. They looked worn out but happy. In love—with each other, perhaps, or at least with Nadia.
The pictures thinned after that: birthdays, Christmas, one trip with my aunt and her first husband. Their fatigue changed. It no longer looked like sleepless nights with a baby. It looked like boredom and frustration with the lives they’d fallen into. Their unrealized plans seemed to stare back from the photos.
Then came a long blank stretch. After it, I arrived. My parents looked happy again as they held my wrinkled body in a pink onesie far too big for me. Perhaps not as overwhelmed as they’d been the first time. Six years had turned Mom from a nearly teenage girl with round cheeks into a stern-faced adult. Dad had gained weight, and the corners of his mouth had grown tight. Even in a zoo photo, holding me while Nadia stood beside him, he looked distracted.
Not unhappy. Just short of fulfilled, as though another life might have suited them better.
As the pages moved forward, Nadia stood farther from the camera, looking more sullen. I began to grin as if I needed everyone to see it.
Rhys stopped at a photo of me beside my first-place science fair trophy, a gap where one of my front teeth should have been. “My little genius.” He touched the frame. “I hope our kids get your hair.”
Kids. The way he said it—easy, affectionate—stole my breath. The old longing woke up. So did Mom’s warning, quiet but present.
“What if I’m bad at being a parent?”
He brushed my hair away from my neck. “You won’t be.”
“You can’t know that.”
“I do.”
“How?”
“Because you know how to love. That’s what matters.”
My throat tightened. “When I was little, I always felt like everything could fall apart without warning.”
“What did?” he asked softly.
“My family.” His hand moved slowly down my back, then rested there.
“There was never enough money. My parents were exhausted from work. Tonight was the most positive I’ve ever heard them sound about their jobs. When Nadia got older, they’d have these terrible fights. They’d tell her she didn’t understand what they’d given up for her and that she was wasting it. She’d storm out. They’d go to separate rooms. I’d think she wouldn’t come back, or they’d get divorced. I was always waiting for something to happen.”
Rhys traced a reassuring line up my back and waited. With him, the truth came out before I’d decided to say it.
“I used to bargain with the universe. If I got straight As, everything would be okay. If I won the science fair again. If I never got to school late, did the dishes before Mom came home, found her the perfect birthday present. I know they love me. I’ve always known. But I’ve spent my whole life trying to make it up to them.”
His hand tightened gently at my neck. “Because we cost them so much,” I continued. “Because they didn’t get the lives they wanted. If I could just be good enough—”
“Mara.” He pulled me against him. “No.”
His voice roughened. “When things go wrong, people sometimes need someone to blame. Maybe they put that on you and Nadia; maybe you took it on yourself. But it wasn’t your fault. Your parents made their choices. I’m not saying it was easy or that they didn’t try. But they didn’t give you enough reason to believe you were never a burden. If you can still wonder whether they regretted having you, then they didn’t do enough.”
He didn’t understand. They had done everything: tutors, fees for every activity I wanted to try, rides back and forth, help with homework when they were exhausted, help with my veterinary-school loans.
They weren’t people who talked about love. They gave things up for us. That was love, and I hated that I still wanted more, that gratitude couldn’t erase what it had cost them.
“You’re the best thing that ever happened to me,” Rhys said, voice low. “They were lucky you were their daughter. Even if you’d never tried so hard to make them proud, they’d still be lucky. You’re clever and funny. You care about people. You make things better. Okay?”
When I couldn’t answer, he asked again. “Okay?”
“How can love turn into that?” I said, my voice thick. “How can you love someone so much and then have it disappear?”
I couldn’t bear the thought of resenting Rhys, or of him resenting me. I didn’t want either of us to lose the life we wanted because of the other.
“Maybe it doesn’t vanish completely,” he said. “Maybe people stop looking at it, or it changes into something else. But it’s still there somewhere.”
He held my face and kissed the tears on my cheeks. “Do you want me to promise I’ll love you forever? I will.”
Fear rushed through me. My whole body tightened against the words before they could reach the part of me that wanted them.
It wouldn’t matter. He could promise anything, and feelings could still change. We might not be able to stop it.
“Just promise we’ll end it before we get there.”
Pain crossed his face. I wanted to take the words back, but I couldn’t.
This was all the protection I knew how to ask for: if we made each other miserable, we wouldn’t stay until love turned cruel. I couldn’t live beside him believing he resented me.
“I won’t,” he said quietly. “I couldn’t.”
“Please, Rhys. I need to know we won’t hurt each other like that.”
He studied my face. “I’m not going to stop fighting for you.”
My eyes blurred. He drew me close. “I’m not going to stop loving you.”
It wasn’t what I’d asked him to promise. It was the promise I wanted most.
Years later, when I couldn’t sleep and that old ache returned, I would take this memory out and turn it over. I would tell myself we’d done the right thing. We’d let each other go. That, too, could be a kind of comfort.