“They’ll warm up.”
I wanted that to be true badly enough to keep waiting.
During the second week, I began using the linen notebook.
I wrote down exact phrases after Ingrid described my laugh as too loud. I recorded the afternoon Klaus said I tried too hard to appear educated. I noted the date they assumed Lucas had paid for my engagement ring.
He had not.
The ring came from my grandmother, and I had paid to restore its setting.
I did not show the notebook to Lucas.
Not yet.
I needed to understand whether his parents were testing me, adjusting badly, or simply revealing who they were when they believed no one could hear.
The answer came at my parents’ house.
Mom spent two days preparing dinner. She arranged flowers for Ingrid, polished the dining table inherited from my grandfather, and worried whether Klaus preferred bourbon or wine.
When Ingrid accepted the bouquet, she smiled.
“How thoughtful.”
The moment Mom left the room, she leaned toward Klaus.
“The curtains are charming, though clearly homemade.”
Klaus looked around.
“Everything here does.”
At dinner, he asked for a second serving of shrimp and grits.
“You have converted me,” he told Mom in English.
When she returned to the kitchen, Ingrid murmured, “Too much butter.”
“She mistakes quantity for quality,” Klaus said.
Dad showed Klaus an old mantel clock that had belonged to his father.
“It survived three generations,” Dad explained proudly.
Klaus admired it.
After Dad walked away, he whispered, “An inexpensive reproduction. He probably thinks it is valuable.”
The clock was not valuable financially.
Dad knew that.
Its value was the memory of hearing it in his childhood home, marking hours during birthdays, Christmas mornings, and the final summer his father was alive.
Ingrid and Klaus measured everything with the same instrument.
Price.
Status.
Appearance.
After dinner, Mom brought out family albums. Lucas laughed at photographs of me missing my front teeth, wearing homemade Halloween costumes, and sitting beside a crooked treehouse Dad had built.
Ingrid looked toward Klaus.
“They are very proud of ordinary lives.”
“People who never go anywhere often are,” he replied.
My father was describing how the treehouse survived two hurricanes.
My mother’s hand rested on his shoulder.
There was nothing ordinary about the life they had built.
Later, when only Ingrid, Klaus, and I remained in the living room, their comments became clearer.
“She is pleasant enough,” Ingrid said.
“That is not the problem.”
Ingrid glanced toward the backyard, where Dad was showing Lucas the tomato plants.
“Look at them. A schoolteacher and librarian. People like that do not belong beside our family.”
“Lucas should be surrounded by culture.”
“Not provincial Americans pretending to possess it.”
I kept my phone in my hand and my expression neutral.
I wanted to confront them.
Instead, I looked toward the kitchen where Mom was wrapping leftovers for people who had mocked her generosity all evening.
This was her home.
I would not allow Ingrid’s contempt to become the final memory of that dinner.