My parents arrive the following Thursday afternoon, pulling into the driveway in the rental car my mother insisted on getting despite my offer to pick them up from the airport. “We’re not helpless, Peter,” she’d said on the phone. “We drove across Portugal last month. We can handle the 103.”
Mom is out of the car before Dad has it in park, which is standard protocol. She takes in the cottage with her hands on her hips and the expression of a woman who is already mentally planning new garden beds.
“Oh, Peter. It’s gorgeous.” She turns to me, and her eyes are doing the thing—the quick, full-body scan she thinks is subtle and absolutely is not: checking if I look healthy. If I look rested. If I look like the version of her son who called her from a Toronto sidewalk five months ago, unable to breathe. “You look good, sweetheart.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
“You look tanned. And less…” She waves a hand vaguely at her own face. “Clenched.”
“Clenched?”
“You used to look clenched. Around your jaw. Like you were always bracing for something.” She pats my cheek and walks past me into the house. “Not anymore.”
Dad follows, pulling two suitcases from the trunk. He’s a quieter presence than Mom, but no less significant. Always has been. Rob Darcy communicates primarily through firm handshakes, well-timed nods, and a dry humor so subtle people occasionally miss the joke entirely.
We walk in, Mom oohing and ahhing as we go. Dad sets the bags down in the hallway and looks around the living room with an appraising eye.
“Good bones,” he says. Which, from my father, is practically a standing ovation.
“Leo did most of the cabinetry. Neve designed it all. And Billie’s crew handled the structural work.”
“Ah.” A single syllable, loaded with more meaning than it has any right to carry. Dad has heard the name Billie approximately forty-seven times in the last month. I know because my mother has been keeping count and reporting it back to me with undisguised glee, while commenting on how I go back and forth between calling her Beth and Billie. And theahtells me he has thoughts. He’ll share them on his own schedule. Probably at the worst possible moment. That’s his well-meaning way.
I give my parents the grand tour, which takes longer than expected. Mom has an opinion about every room, and Dad keeps asking structural questions I can’t answer and have to text Billie about. By the time they’re settled in the guest room, I’ve received six texts in rapid succession:
Tell your dad the joists are 2x10 on 16-inch centers
Also I’m freaking out
What do I wear to meet your parents?
Neve says a dress. I don’t own a cute enough dress for this.
I used to. But it has paint on it now.
I’m wearing jeans. Can I wear jeans? If your mother judges me for jeans I’m leaving.
I type back:
My mother is currently wearing cargo pants she bought in a Lisbon flea market. You’re fine.
Beth:
Oh I love her already
Then, a beat later:
I’m still freaking out.
ME:
I know. See you at six.
Leo and Neve arrive first, which I planned deliberately because I know what they are for Billie—a bridge. If she walks into aroom full of Darcys with no buffer, every wall she has will go up, and we’ll spend the first hour trying to coax her out. But if our friends are already there, already comfortable, already making my parents laugh, she’ll see that and her nervous system will relax.
It works exactly the way I hoped.
Leo brings a bottle of wine and a loaf of bread he baked this morning. Mom pulls him into a hug that lifts him slightly off the ground, which is impressive given she’s a foot shorter than him.
