Page 94 of State of Ruin

But my fiancé leans in and whispers in my ear, “I’m loving being the arm candy of the hottest model in the world.”

All I can do is roll my eyes.

My maternal grandmother is still alive. Aside from the trip we took when I was a baby, the only time we’ve met her is at Mom’s funeral. Her family cobbled together the money to send her over to New Jersey so she could bury her daughter in person. She stayed a couple days, and I remember, even through my own devastation, how old and grief-stricken she looked. We keep in touch by email and text, mainly to send her photos of Fleurie, but it’s not a great basis for a relationship.

To make matters worse, my mom was an only child. In the email, my grandmother told us she was throwing us a little fête, and we honestly haven’t known what to expect. So it’s wonderful to discover, when we show up at the address my grandmother has sent us, that she has many other relatives and friends. Sylvie and I are a little worried about how our French will hold up. We spoke it to Maman all her life, but this is a lot of people, all talking over each other and all very excited. I’m hoping smiling and nodding will go a long way for us. Dad has a few phrases, but he’s always been better at understanding it than speaking it. And Sinclair, of course, remembers enough of it from prep school to have had French panties melting off left, right, and center during our travels.

Our mémé’s front door opens right onto a narrow street, but the house is larger inside. Even so, it is crammed full of people. People who’ve gathered here to meet us. Oh, God. I’m not going to last five minutes without bursting into tears.

“Mémé,” Sylvie says, her voice catching as our grandmother embraces her. Mémé looks even older than last time we saw her, her tan face crisscrossed with a million lines, but today, she is positively glowing with happiness. She hugs Sylvie so tightly, and then me, and the moment she puts her frail arms around me, I lose my shit.

This is my mom’s mom, the woman who gave birth to her, who shaped her, who braided her hair and bought her her first pair of ballet shoes. Who knew her better than anyone for a long, long time. This is the woman who buried her husband and then her only child and has remained standing, something I’m not sure I could find the strength to do. Sinclair was right: we may have lost Maman, but these ties that bind us to our past, to a culture we’ve only experienced through our mother’s memories and customs and rituals, are so strong. They’re strong enough to stretch across oceans. Across generations.

They’re strong enough that, when I look into Mémé’s face, I see my mom’s eyes.

Thank God for Sinclair, who is by my side throughout it all, quietly thrilled for us, hanging out with Dad when it all gets too much, even though he’s honestly a bit of a mess, too. What can I say? It’s a seriously emotional occasion. Fleur, who speaks almost no French apart from words and phrases—Sylvie has been far too busy surviving single, working parenthood to teach her daughter a second language—is the center of attention, celebrated and adored and cooed over. She quickly makes friends with all of the kids, children of Maman’s cousins’ kids, and they play a whole load of games in the small, leafy yard where the language barrier is a total non-issue.

And my sister? Sylvie gets a lot of attention from a distant cousin who’s so insanely, revoltingly hot that some ad agency should immediately put him on billboards, shirtless and sipping from a sweating bottle of Kronenbourg 1664.

“Remind me what the French take is on fucking a cousin?” she asks Sinclair and me when the hot dude—Luc—has trotted off to refill her wineglass.

My fiancé spits his beer back into its bottle and misses, while I laugh.

“Cousin-fucking is not okay,” I tell her sternly when I’ve recovered. I pause. “Unless they look like that. Then you can probably find a loophole.”

“He’s not really a cousin, though,” she whispers urgently. “He’s, what, Jean-Jacques’s son? And Jean-Jacques was Maman’s… second cousin!”

Sinclair sighs. “Let’s run the math, shall we?” He starts typing into the search engine on his phone. “Okay, so his dad and your mom were second cousins… Let’s see.”

We try not to laugh as he runs his “math”. Finally, he looks up.

“According to Google, you can officially fuck your third cousin in any country. Congratulations, and go forth and copulate.”

Over my shoulder, Luc is making his way back over here, his long, tan fingers closed carefully over the drink he’s bringing back for my sister. His face is open. Hopeful. Even adoring, I’d say. I’m not surprised. She looks particularly smoking this afternoon in her sexy sundress.

Sylvie holds out a hand for a high five, and Sinclair hits it.

“His English isn’t great,” she says, as if trying to talk herself out of it.

“Girl,” I say. “You’re not doing this for the conversation. All you need to know is that the French for condom is préservatif. Go fuck the hot French cousin.”

Sinclair frowns. “It’s extremely disturbing that you know that.”

I give my fiancé a little smile and a happy shrug, and his face lightens. “I’m full of surprises.”

Luc returns with Sylvie’s wine and what I’d call a hot cousin-fucker grin, and we melt away. I have a suspicion Fleurie may get to have a sleepover in Grandpa’s suite tonight.

Sinclair, one month later

If you assumed that my parents would hate every part of my proposing to Elyse, you’d be right.

And if you assumed that my mom would create a press-friendly version of events that felt glamorized and shallow while being technically true, then you would also be right.

Her version goes something like this: My new fiancée is half French and a successful model who is well on her way to becoming a household face and name. She is the daughter of a classical ballerina who once trained in Paris. She and I met at a super-exclusive members club.

See what she did there?

True, but also… creepy. I think my issue is that it implies that I set my sights on Elyse because of all those things, that I went out there in true Voss style and thought, Ooh, that successful, half-French model would make a suitable wife, when obviously I fell for Elyse regardless.