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“Oh, I don’t mean to impose,” I say.
“Nonsense, where else are you going to go? They know you need a place; it’s going to be fine. Hopefully, we can leave tomorrow.”
I nod, and we walk into a large, homey kitchen.
An older man and woman sit at a breakfast nook, fingers wrapped around cups of coffee.
“Mom, Dad, this is Raven. Raven, my mom Nancy, and my dad Bill.”
“Thank you so much for having me at such short notice,” I say.
“Nonsense, dear,” Nancy says. “This weather isn’t good for anyone. We all need to help out when things go wrong.”
“Would you like coffee?” Bill asks.
I nod, and he walks to the Nespresso machine to make me a cup.
“This weather just confuses everyone,” Nancy says. “You’d think after so many years living here, the people will be used to it, but one freak of nature like this and it throws us right back to medieval times.”
“It’s not so bad, Mom,” Michelle says, rolling her eyes. “It happens, but we can all do with some time off from our hurried lives, right?”
“No, no,” Bill chips in where he’s watching my cup as it fills with caramel-colored liquid. “Your mom’s right. And I’m telling you, when our technology is fried, what are we going to do? The phone lines were down all day yesterday; do you know how many people struggled?”
“Did you still have power to your coffee machine, Dad?” Michelle asks innocently.
Bill looks at his coffee machine with a frown, mulling over her words. Michelle giggles.
“I just hope you’re not too inconvenienced with your flight grounded,” Nancy says.
“I’d like to get back home as soon as I can,” I admit. “But I think it might be soon.”
“We’re all hoping for your sake,” Bill says and hands me a cup of coffee.
“Come on,” Michelle says when we’re armed with coffee. “Let me show you to your room. Well,ourroom. We’re bunking together tonight.”
“Like a sleepover,” I say with a smile when I follow her down the hallway to a series of rooms with doors on either side.
“Exactly,” Michelle laughs. “When last did we get to do something like that, huh?”
I nod. She’s right—we’ve all grown up, and we drown in responsibilities so that the small things fall by the wayside.
The room we walk into is Michelle’s childhood room; there’s no doubt about it. The walls are decorated with posters of teenage boy bands; she has photos on her mirror where she’s wearing cheerleader costumes and pom-poms, and she has a row of fairy ornaments on her windowsill.
“This is cute,” I say with a smile. “This is what Ava’s room will look like in ten years’ time.”
Michelle sits down on the double bed we’re going to share and hugs a pillow to her chest.
“Have you spoken to them?”
“Ava and Maria? Yeah.” I sigh heavily. “That’s where it all went wrong.”
I sit down on the bed with Michelle and sip my coffee.
“Tell me.”
I rub my thumb along the cup's ear.
“Jean-Pierre called me a while ago, saying he wants to get back together.
