“Better than all right, from what Diwa says.” She uncrossed her ankles and leaned back. “He told me that your Stephen was quite thorough about vetting him, and I gather the first dinner with them didn’t go entirely smoothly. He also described how your boy drove across London during peak traffic to take you to the doctor when you were unwell. That kind of loyalty from a child says everything about the parent that you are.”
“That’s just Stephen,” Colin said.
“A boy who does that learned that behaviour from you. You earned his loyalty.” Maria Lucia’s voice dropped. “That’s years of your work paying off. The invisible kind of work that nobody writes about, because there’s no metric for it. We give them everything. We spend years trying to show them what we can see. And then they grow up and decide they’d rather not have been shown.”
Colin bit down on his bottom lip. It wasn’t his place to comment on this. He’d met this woman two hours ago, and thede la Vegas had been nothing but warm to him since he’d walked through the door. He didn’t want trouble with the matriarch. Especially not when he was only just getting used to the idea of wanting to be a part of it.
“You’re a smart woman,” he said. “You look at things as an academic. And because your son is so bloody smart himself, you thought he’d take it better if you put it in writing and laid it all out clearly for him.”
Maria Lucia pursed her perfectly made-up lips. “I was wrong,” she admitted.
They sat in the quiet following that statement. The fan turned. The low garden lamps threw their circles of light on the pathway, and somewhere beyond the wall, a motorbike accelerated down the road and faded into the distance.
“I imagine,” Maria Lucia said, “that you and I have quite a lot in common.”
Colin glanced at her.
“We’ve both spent years trying to do right by children who didn’t come with instructions.” The smile was back, wry this time, directed mostly at herself. “Though I suspect you’ve been rather better at it than I have.”
The veranda door banged open behind them.
Diwa came through, his gaze finding his mother first, then Colin. His shoulders drew up the way they did when he was about to go on the offensive.
“What are you two talking about?”
“Garlic rice,” Maria Lucia said, lifting her cup to her lips. “He says you make acceptable garlic rice now.”
“Mama.” Diwa crossed the veranda in three strides and positioned himself beside Colin’s chair, his hand finding Colin’s shoulder, thumb pressing into the muscle above his collarbone. “He’s had a long flight. He doesn’t need to be interviewed by you.”
Maria Lucia looked at her son over the rim of her coffee. Her expression didn’t change. “We were having a conversation, Diwa. I wanted to get to know him better. Isn’t this what you brought him here for?”
“Right.” Diwa’s hand hadn’t moved from Colin’s shoulder. “And then what, Mama? Would you have written me up a peer-reviewed critical analysis of your assessment of Colin? Fourteen pages, double-spaced, with citations?”
“Diwa —” Maria Lucia raised her hands palm up in a staying gesture.
“I don’t care what you think about him, Mama.” His voice cracked on the word, and he didn’t seem to notice. “He’s fucking amazing. He tells me when I’m being an asshole, for my own sake, not just to score points against me. Then he puts the kettle on and doesn’t let me feel bad about it for longer than I have to. Fuck, ma, he makes me laugh harder than anyone I’ve ever met.” Diwa’s hand was trembling on Colin’s shoulder. “He’s the best person I know. And if you can’t see that, then that’s your problem.”
Maria Lucia’s hands came down. She looked at her son for a long moment, and then she smiled, her eyes bright in the low light. She reached up and laid her palm against Diwa’s cheek.
“Good,” she said. “It’s good that you feel that way about him, Diwa. And just for the record, I like what I’ve seen of him so far. We all do.”
Diwa’s mouth was still open from the next defensive sentence he’d been building. The fight went out of his shoulders, his hand loosening on Colin’s collarbone.
Colin leaned in against Diwa. “Come with me,” he said.
Diwa’s mouth opened around a protest.
“Now, please.” Colin held his gaze until Diwa drew closer to him, then turned to Maria Lucia. “Excuse us, please.”
She inclined her head and watched them as they walked away.
Colin guided Diwa down the veranda steps and into the garden, his hand still flat against Diwa’s upper back, walking him along the lit pathway between the trees until the veranda was twenty feet behind them and the sounds from the dining room faded.
He stopped. The warm night air pressed against both of them, thick with the scent of greenery. “She was being nice to me, Diwa.”
Diwa’s jaw worked. “You don’t know her, Colin. You don’t know what she’s —”
“I know what kindness looks like.” Colin kept his voice level. “I’ve lived through years of a lot of people I brush against not being very kind to me. I know what I’m talking about.”
