CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
NORA
June.
Her parents came to Brooklyn.
Her mother, Susan, took one look at Felix and did what grandmothers did — fell completely in love, which was not a surprise, and picked him up immediately and began a running conversation with him that Felix received with great seriousness.
Her father, Graham, shook Roman’s hand at the door with the expression of a man who had already done his research.
“Roman Vale,” Graham said.
“Yes, sir,” Roman said.
“Felix has your eyes,” Graham said.
“Yes,” Roman said.
Graham looked at him for a long moment.
“Come in,” he said.
They had lunch. Nora had made too much food, which was her anxiety behavior, and Roman had brought wine, which was his. Her mother talked to Felix and Roman both simultaneously and treated them with approximately equal levels of charmed attention, which was its own kind of verdict.
After lunch her father asked Roman to help him with something in the living room, which was a transparent request for a private conversation and everyone understood it.
Nora sat in the kitchen with her mother and Felix.
“Well,” her mother said.
“Mom.”
“He’s good,” her mother said. “He carried Felix’s plate to the sink without being asked. He answered your father’s follow-up questions without deflecting.” She paused. “And he looks at you like he’s afraid you’ll change your mind.”
“He’s not afraid,” Nora said. “He’s — cautious. He’s been cautious since October.”
“Eight months of cautious,” her mother said.
“Yes.”
“And?”
Nora looked at Felix, who was examining a toy car with the thoroughness he brought to everything.
“And I love him,” she said. “I’ve always loved him. I’m — I’m ready.”
Her mother covered her hand.
“Tell him,” her mother said. Simply.
“Tonight,” Nora said.
From the living room she could hear her father’s voice — the specific quality of it, which she knew from a lifetime of watching him interrogate people, the way it sounded when he was deciding about something.
She heard Roman’s voice: even, steady, answering.
She heard her father laugh.
She thought: he found the right thing to say.
He always found the right thing eventually.
That was the true thing about him. Not that he got it right the first time. That he kept trying until he did.