"Same thing."
"Very different thing."
He grins, and for a moment he looks exactly like he did when I was ten and he'd let me help him with construction projects, teaching me to measure twice and cut once.
"Help your mother with dinner," he says. "She's been cooking since dawn."
In the kitchen, Mom has me chopping vegetables while she works on the tourtière—meat pie, traditional Québécois, the smell of it taking me straight back to childhood winters in Montreal.
"So," she says casually, too casually. "Your Victor. He is good to you?"
"Maman—"
"I ask because I see the photos. From the hotel. You look happy."
"It's complicated."
"Love is always complicated."
"It's not love. It's—" I struggle for words. "It's an arrangement."
Mom stops stirring and looks at me with those perceptive eyes that have seen through every lie I've ever told. "Mon cœur, I have been married to your father for forty-two years. I know what love looks like. I see it in those photos."
"You can't see love in a photo."
"Non? Then you weren't looking close enough."
Before I can respond, Dad appears in the doorway. "Harper. Walk with me?"
It's not really a question.
We end up on the back porch—which Dad built himself fifteen years ago—wrapped in coats against the November cold. The yard is small, mostly concrete with a few stubborn plants Mom refuses to let die, and the neighbor's dog is barking at something invisible.
"Your mother's worried about you," Dad says.
"I know."
"I'm worried too."
"Papa—"
"Not about the TV thing. Or the marriage thing." He's quiet for a moment. "I saw Thomas last week. At the pickleball court."
My blood goes cold. "You play pickleball?"
"It's good exercise. Doctor recommended it." He waves a hand dismissively. "But Thomas. He was there. With that…woman. Showing off like always."
"Dad—"
"I almost hit him with my paddle."
I can’t help but laugh. "You didn't."
"I wanted to. I would have found an attorney to defend me. Self-defense. Temporary insanity." He's smiling, but there's something serious underneath. "He hurt you, ma petite. Bad. I wanted to hurt him back."
"I'm okay now."
"Are you?"
