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“You must be Sabine!”

“Madame Pendleton,” said Sabine, in the voice of a woman greeting her fiancé’s mother. “I have heard so much about you.”

“And you are Maksim’s sister! I can see it, around the eyes.” Mrs. Pendleton embraced her. “How old are you, dear? You can’t be more than twenty-two.”

There was a pause of about half a second.

“Twenty-two,” said Sabine, warmly. “Yes. I am in film school.”

I closed my eyes.

It went, on the whole, extremely well. Mrs. Pendleton took her by the arm and led her through the house, showing her the portraits and the china and the cat, and Sabine said all the right things in all the right places. Jenny fell instantly and totally in love and spent an hour cross-legged on the drawing-room floor showing Sabine the ukulele, while Sabine told her a long and quite unrepeatable story about a Czech director and a goat.

Tyler, who had been invited to lunch and had not yet recovered from meeting me, sat in an armchair in the corner and stared at Sabine with the rapt, glazed, hero-worshipping gaze of a boy who has found a person who has seen Stalker twice.

“You’ve seen Stalker? “ he whispered.

“Three times.”

“Oh my God.”

“I have thoughts about the third act.”

“I have so many.”

“He owes a parking ticket in Nova Scotia,” said Richard Pendleton, to nobody in particular, from the doorway.

“Dad!” said Jenny.

“I am merely stating a fact.”

“He’s paid it!”

“Hm,” said my father-in-law, and went to pour himself a drink.

Lunch was long and loud and warm. There was roast chicken, and potatoes, and a dessert my mother-in-law referred to as “just a little something.” Lex sat across from me with his hair sticking up and a smear of gravy on his chin, arguing with Jason about a fantasy football league. Sabine caught my eye across the table. She lifted her glass, very slightly, and I saw her mouth shape a single word.

Home.

I pressed my lips together.

Later, in the thin winter sun, she took my arm and we walked the length of the gravel path together, past the bare roses and the dry fountain and the forbidden lawn shimmering with frost.

“He is good to you,” she said.

“Yes.”

“He is loud.”

“Yes.”

“He is exactly what you needed and never would have chosen.”

“Yes.”

“I am so happy for you,” said Sabine, “that I would like to hit someone.”

“I have a squash court.”