Along for the Ride(64)

Hollis immediately reached for the baby, lifting her up high over his head. She looked down at him, as if trying to make up her mind whether to start crying or not. ‘Oh, boy,’ he said. ‘You’re gonna be trouble. I can just tell!’

My dad and Heidi laughed, but I kept my eyes on Laura, who was standing just off to the side, still holding her sunglasses, watching this scene with a somewhat clinical expression. After a moment of Hollis making googly faces at the baby, she very quietly – but pointedly – cleared her throat.

‘Oh, babe, sorry!’ Hollis handed Thisbe off to my dad, then reached an arm over Laura’s shoulders, pulling her in closer to everyone else. ‘Everyone, this is my fiancée, Laura.’

‘Fiancée?’ my dad said. ‘You didn’t mention that in your phone call. When did you…’

Laura smiled, showing no teeth. ‘We didn’t,’ she said. ‘Hollis is just…’

‘Confident,’ my brother finished for her. ‘And ready. Even if she isn’t.’

‘I keep telling Hollis that marriage is serious,’ Laura said. Her voice was very even and clear, like she was used to having the room’s attention. ‘You can’t just jump into it like an airplane.’

Dad and Heidi and I just stood there, not sure what to make of this, but Hollis just laughed. ‘That’s my girl! She’ll break my impulsive streak yet.’

‘Oh, don’t do that,’ my dad said to Laura, clapping Hollis on the shoulder again. ‘We love that about this guy.’

‘Impulsiveness can be charming,’ she agreed. ‘But deliberation can have an appeal, as well.’

My dad raised his eyebrows. ‘Actually,’ he said, his tone a bit sharper than before, ‘I –’

‘You must be exhausted from your trip!’ Heidi said, reaching to take Thisbe from my father. ‘Let’s go and have a cold drink. We’ve got lemonade, beer, wine…’

She turned, starting for the kitchen, and Hollis and my dad immediately fell in behind her, leaving me with Laura. I watched as she examined her sunglasses, then took a corner of her black shirt, slowly rubbing a spot on one lens clean before again folding them shut. Then she looked up at me, as if surprised to find me still standing there.

‘It’s really nice to meet you,’ I said, for lack of anything better. ‘Hollis seems… he’s very happy.’

She nodded. ‘He’s a very happy person,’ she said, although from her tone, I couldn’t tell if she thought this was an asset or not.

‘Babe!’ my brother yelled. ‘Get in here! You gotta see this view!’

Laura gave me another tight smile, then walked into the living room. I waited a beat or two, then followed her, stopping in the kitchen, where my dad and Heidi were huddled together by the sink, pouring lemonade into glasses.

‘… her first time meeting us,’ Heidi was saying. ‘She’s probably just nervous.’

‘Nervous? You call that nervous?’ my dad replied.

Heidi said something else, but I didn’t hear her, having turned my attention to my brother and Laura. They were standing in front of the open glass doors, the ocean a wide, clear blue in front of them. Hollis had his arm around her shoulders, gesturing with one hand as he said something about the horizon, but even from the back I could tell Laura was not particularly impressed. It was something about the posture, the way her head was slightly tilted to the side. Sure, she was a stranger. But I’d seen it before.

‘So you don’t like her.’

I looked over at Eli. ‘I didn’t say that.’

‘You didn’t have to.’

He pulled a container of milk off the shelf, sticking it in the cart. It was one thirty A.M., and we were at Park Mart, doing a little shopping. As it was a Monday night, we had the place pretty much to ourselves, and the quiet was just what I’d needed, having earlier endured a two-hour family dinner that had basically devolved into an argument between my dad and Laura about capital punishment. This followed their spirited discussion about university funding (liberal arts versus sciences) over cocktails, which had come after a protracted debate about environmental policy during lunch. For me, it was like watching an adaptation of the last couple of years of my parents’ marriage, just with someone else playing the role of My Mom.

‘It’s just,’ I said to Eli, pushing the cart forward to follow him out of the grocery section and into sporting goods, ‘she’s really different from all the other girls Hollis has dated.’

‘And what were they like?’

A blur of gorgeous, friendly faces appeared in my mind. ‘Nice,’ I finally said. ‘Sweet. More like Hollis.’

Eli stopped to check out a camping stove, then moved on. ‘He didn’t want to marry any of the others, though. Right?’

I considered this as we passed a collection of catcher’s mitts. ‘Not for more than a few minutes.’

‘But this girl he says is the one.’ We were coming up on the bike section now, several lined up in a row, from kids’ sizes to adult. He pulled a midsize bike off the rack, bouncing it on its front tire. ‘So it seems to me, it doesn’t matter what you or your mom or dad think. Relationships don’t always make sense. Especially from the outside.’