Chapter 3
### Part 3
The engagement dinner was Daniel’s idea.
“He grew up in that house,” Marissa said when he told me. “It would mean more there.”
She said it warmly, almost reverently, and Daniel squeezed her hand under the restaurant table. I said yes before my caution could catch up with my mouth.
The dinner was set for a Saturday in March. Eighteen people. My sister Carol and her husband. Daniel’s three closest friends from college. Two coworkers from his office. Marissa’s older cousin Priya, who flew in from Phoenix. A photographer friend of Marissa’s named Elise. A few people I had met only once and immediately forgotten.
I spent two days cooking because that is what I do when I don’t know how to say what I feel.
Salmon with dill and lemon. Roasted carrots, potatoes, and parsnips. A green salad with pears and walnuts. Helen’s lentils, simmered low with garlic and bay leaves until the whole kitchen smelled like the old years. I set the dining room with Helen’s good dishes, white porcelain with a thin blue rim, the ones she used to say were too nice for ordinary days and too pretty to stay in a cabinet.
Marissa arrived an hour early.
Alone.
She wore a pale blue dress and a camel coat. Her hair was pinned back, her makeup soft enough to look like she had not tried. She kissed my cheek, handed me a small box of chocolates, and said, “I came early to help.”
“That’s kind of you.”
But she did not really help.
She sat at the kitchen island while I checked the salmon and asked questions.
Not rude questions. That would have been easier.
“Walter, how many doors are you managing now?”
“Depends how you count mixed-use.”
“Do you hold everything under one LLC or separate entities?”
“Separate, mostly.”
“That must make succession planning complicated.”
I closed the oven door and wiped my hands on a towel.
“That’s a very specific dinner-party subject.”
She laughed lightly. “Sorry. Daniel says I get intense about business. I just admire what you built.”
“Most of it isn’t glamorous.”
“That’s why it’s real.”
Again, the perfect sentence.
I wanted to dislike her more than I did. That was the uncomfortable truth. In the yellow kitchen light, with rain drying on her coat and Helen’s lentils bubbling behind me, Marissa looked like someone who could become family if I would just stop guarding the gate.
Then Daniel arrived, and her whole face changed.
She went to him quickly, both hands reaching for his lapels, and he bent to kiss her forehead. It was tender. Natural. Either she loved him or she understood love well enough to imitate it in close range.
I hated myself for not knowing the difference.
The guests came in a rush of cold air, wet umbrellas, perfume, laughter, and shoes squeaking on the entry tile. The house filled the way it used to when Helen was alive. Carol fussed over the salad. Daniel’s friends opened wine. Someone turned on music too low to hear clearly. Marissa moved through the rooms like a hostess, touching elbows, introducing people, remembering names.
At dinner, Daniel stood with his glass halfway raised.
“I wish my mom could be here,” he said.
The room quieted.
I looked down at my plate because grief still embarrasses me when it arrives in public.
“She would’ve loved tonight,” Daniel continued. “She would’ve loved seeing everyone here. And she would’ve loved Marissa.”
Marissa covered her mouth with one hand. Her eyes shone. Daniel looked at her like she had given him something sacred by being moved.
For a moment, I let myself believe it.
After dessert, Marissa leaned toward me.
“Walter,” she said, “could I see the backyard? Daniel talks about the view.”
“Of course.”
We stepped out through the kitchen door. The night was cold and clear after the rain. The patio stones were damp, reflecting little broken pieces of light from the house. From inside came the muffled rise and fall of conversation, a chair scraping, Carol laughing too loudly at something.
Marissa stood beside me at the railing.
“It’s peaceful here,” she said.
“It can be.”
For a few seconds, neither of us spoke.
Then she said, “I need to talk to you about something. Father to daughter, in a way.”
I turned my head.
She kept looking toward the dark water.
“Daniel and I found a property,” she said. “Six units in Fremont. Ground-floor retail. Underpriced, honestly. It could be the start of something real for us.”
“Sounds like a conversation for Daniel’s lender.”
“We’ve had those conversations.”
Her voice stayed pleasant, but something underneath it hardened.
“I need two hundred thousand dollars,” she said. “A family loan. Private. Quiet. Transfer it by Monday morning.”
I stared at her profile.
Then she turned and smiled.
“And if you don’t,” she said, “I’ll tell Daniel you assaulted me the last time I was here alone.”
May you like
Inside, the house was still warm and bright.
Outside, all I could hear was my own blood in my ears.
