"Wesley Morrison," Nathan said, from behind me, like he had been trying to prevent exactly this and had not been fast enough. "These are my parents. My father, Dr. Richard Cross. My mother, Dr. Elizabeth Cross."
Both doctors.
Awesome.
Richard Cross already knew who I was. I could tell from the way he was looking at me. His eyes moved from me to Nathan and back like he was doing arithmetic.
His mother's mouth had gone slightly open. Just slightly.
"Wesley," she said. "Hello."
Richard Cross said nothing. His head tilted a fraction, the same angle Nathan used when he was deciding whether something was worth responding to, and his eyes moved from me to Nathan and back again.
"You were saying," he said. Not a question. The words landing flat and even, leaving space for me to continue if I wanted.
"I. . . was. . ."
Leo jumped off the couch and sat on my feet. I briefly considered faking another concussion.
"I was just in the neighborhood," I said.
Nobody moved.
"Let’s all sit down, please," Elizabeth said, already turning back toward the kitchen. "There's tea."
The tea was good,I guess? I couldn’t taste it.
I was too busy sitting in Nathan's apartment with Nathan's parents and Nathan's cat on my feet to drink tea. I tried to recalibrate, which was difficult because I had arrived with four days anger at someone who had not texted, and none of that had anywhere to go right now.
Nobody asked how I knew Nathan. They already knew how I knew Nathan.
I was not a surprise to either of them.
I was, I was beginning to understand, the reason Nathan's parents were in his apartment.
Elizabeth set her cup down carefully.
"We heard you come in," she said. To me. Still pleasant. Her expression had shifted into something that was working hard. "You were saying something about—not texting?"
"Elizabeth," Richard said.
"I'm just—" She stopped. Started again. Then, to Nathan, with the careful precision of a woman revising something: "Is. . . Is Wesley your—"
"Yes," Nathan said.
One word. Flat and certain and not leaving room for the sentence to finish in any other direction.
The kitchen was very quiet.
Elizabeth looked at Nathan for a long moment. Not the noticing expression. Something more complicated than that. Something that was doing the math on thirty-five years of dinners she'd mentioned and friends' daughters she'd suggested and phone calls where Nathan had saidthere's no oneand she had believed him.
Richard said nothing. He was looking at his tea.
"I see," Elizabeth said finally.
Her voice was even. Careful.
She picked her cup back up.
