My mother climbed out first.
Sixty-four. Silver bob. A pale pink cardigan. Smiling like she’d come to deliver a birthday cake.
“Surprise!” she said. She opened her arms wide. “We thought we’d spend the week with you!”
Behind her, Melissa was already opening the trunk of the minivan.
Thirty-five. Three years younger than me. Blonde. Pretty. In leggings and an oversized Clemson sweatshirt. She didn’t look at me. She was looking at the house.
Her husband climbed out of the driver’s side. Ben. Forty. A high school chemistry teacher from outside Atlanta. Tall. Quiet. Glasses. He looked tired and uncomfortable. He gave me a small wave.
Their two kids stumbled out onto the gravel.
Poppy, eight. Long blonde hair. In pajamas with cartoon foxes on them. Clutching a stuffed rabbit.
And Jonah, five. Curly brown hair. Half asleep. Clutching a stuffed shark.
Then came the luggage.
Four enormous suitcases. Hard-shell. Matching. The big ones. The kind you take on a two-week trip to Europe.
Two heavy Yeti coolers.
A folding crib, even though nobody in the family was young enough to need a crib.
Beach chairs. Plastic buckets. Shovels. Boogie boards. A beach umbrella. Toys. Grocery bags. A box of wine. A case of Diet Coke.
Enough supplies to occupy a small vacation rental for a month.
I looked at the luggage.
Then I looked at my mother.
“You didn’t call,” I said.
“Oh, sweetheart.” My mother waved her hand. “Don’t make a big thing of it.”
My father appeared beside her.
Sixty-eight. Retired insurance adjuster. Tall. Broad. Gray buzz cut. A windbreaker zipped up to his chin. He walked around the front of the Pilot and stood next to my mother with his hands on his hips.
He looked at my house.
He looked at me.
“Family doesn’t need reservations,” he said.
I remember staring at him.
“Actually,” I said, “when it’s somebody else’s house, they do.”
He gave me that look.
The look. The one I’ve been getting since I was six. Head tilted. Lips pressed together. Eyebrows raised. Paternal disappointment.
“Still so sensitive,” he said.
Within an hour, my peaceful house looked like a crowded airport terminal.
Melissa claimed my premium guest suite before I’d even offered anybody a bedroom.
She walked straight through the front door. Past me. Down the hall. She opened the door to the guest suite. The one with the private deck. The one I rent for three hundred and fifty dollars a night.
“Oh, this is nice,” she said. “Ben! Bring our bags in here!”
She dragged the children’s bags into my office.
My private office. The room at the end of the hall with the door I always keep closed. My desk. My two monitors. My filing cabinet with confidential client files. Contracts. Financial records. A nondisclosure agreement for a project I was working on for a shipping company in Norfolk.
She dumped Poppy’s backpack on my desk. Jonah’s bag of toys on my chair. A plastic dinosaur rolled off the desk and hit the floor.
“The kids can sleep in here,” she said. “On the floor. We brought sleeping bags.”
Ben carried in the coolers without making eye contact.
He set them in the kitchen. He opened one. It was full of hot dogs and juice boxes and string cheese and a bottle of tequila.
He looked at me. Just for a second.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly.
Then he went back out to the car.
My mother started opening cupboards.
Every single one. In my kitchen. One after another. Looking at my plates. My glasses. My coffee mugs. My spices.
“Oh, these are lovely,” she said. Holding up one of my hand-thrown ceramic bowls from a potter in Ocracoke. “Where’d you get these? Are they expensive?”
My father changed the television channel.
He didn’t ask. He walked into my living room, sat down on my couch, picked up my remote, and turned on the TV. He flipped through the channels until he found a baseball game. The Braves. He turned it up.
And Melissa somehow found a rare bottle of wine.
It was in a cabinet in the dining room. A small cabinet I’d thought was locked. It wasn’t. The latch was sticky. I’d never fixed it.
Inside were six bottles. Special bottles. Gifts from clients. From my old business partner. From the Tidewater board when we sold.
Melissa found the best one.
A 2005 Château Margaux. My business partner gave it to me the day we signed the sale. He said, Save this for something that matters.
I’d been saving it for two years.
Melissa opened it with my corkscrew.
She poured herself a generous glass. To the top. Like a glass of iced tea.
