Her father hadn’t stopped studying Victor throughout the exchange. He ate slowly, methodically, but his eyes missednothing: noting when Victor served others before himself, when he refilled Ava’s tea without being asked, when his hand found hers under the table during her mother’s more aggressive questions.
“How long have you been seeing our daughter?”
“Not long,” Victor admitted. “But sometimes you know right away when something matters.”
“And Ava matters?”
“More than I can adequately express.”
Her father served more duck. Considering. The silence stretched. Her mother, for once, didn’t fill it.
“Do you love her?”
The restaurant noise faded, leaving only this table, this question, this moment.
Victor set down his chopsticks with deliberate care.
“Yes,” he said simply. “I do.”
The kitchen clattered on around them. Her mother’s kettle hovered mid-pour. Her father’s chopsticks had stopped moving.
Victor met her father’s eyes without flinching. “I know how that sounds, coming from someone you’ve just met. But you asked a direct question, and I’m giving you a direct answer.”
Her father studied him for a long moment. Then he served more duck onto Victor’s plate, a gesture Ava recognized. Acceptance, provisional but real.
“Good,” her father said. “A man should know his own heart.”
“You marry her,” her mother declared into the ringing silence. “Soon. I’m not getting younger.”
“Mom!”
“What? He loves you, you love him… why wait?” She set down the teapot with a decisive clink. “Your father proposed after two weeks.”
“That was different.”
“How?”
Ava couldn’t exactly sayyou weren’t fake-dating to protect yourself from demon senior partners, so she stuffed a dumpling in her mouth instead.
The rest of dinner passed in a blur of food and stories. Her mother interrogated Victor about his family (adopted, he said, which was technically true if you considered Hell a foster system), his education (Harvard and Oxford, both of which he’d probably attended when they were actually founded), his intentions (serious, though he omitted the supernatural complications).
Her father said little but watched everything. Ava caught him nodding when Victor laughed at her mother’s joke about the health inspector, when he asked for the recipe for the mapo tofu, when he helped clear plates without being asked.
“You know,” her mother said, bringing out dessert, red bean ice cream and sesame balls, still warm from the fryer, “Ava’s grandmother would have liked you.”
Ava’s hand went to the pendant beneath her dress. The jade tingled against her palm, a gentle static that crept up her wrist.
“She had excellent judgment about people,” her mother continued, spooning ice cream into bowls. “Could always tell who was worth trusting. She gave Ava that jade pendant just before she passed. Said it would bring her luck.”
“She sounds wise,” Victor said carefully.
“She was. Always said Ava would find someone who could match her. Someone just as stubborn.” Her mother smiled, the expression tinged with old grief. “Took long enough, but grandmother was usually right.”
Ava seized the opening, keeping her voice casual. “Mom, the business line of credit you have. When did you set that up?”
Her mother waved dismissively, focused on dessert distribution. “Oh, fifteen years ago? Maybe sixteen? We don’t keep track anymore. Why?”
“Who arranged it?”
