Her

In the evenings the family would gather in the dining room. Though portions of the family would sometimes be dispersed in the kitchen, baking or eating cookies, or in the family room reading over a book or a magazine. His father, Jack, was intelligent and warm. He asked the children questions about the world, inquiring after their thoughts on the role that the United States should be playing in other countries, or whether the singer on some television show as quite as good as everyone was telling him. He delighted in their responses, though often as not they weren't responses at all, but remonstrances to be left alone. Responses that he took light-heartedly asking if they'd prefer that he were Simon or Jacob or Isabelle, names he'd heard his children utter in passing and about whom he gently teased them.

Lauren's father was quiet and kind. A fact that she had not stood out until this trip. He did not inquire much after her personal or school life, preferring to leave these decisions, or so she thought, up to her. She could see now how her father could have been different, more involved in the day to day affairs of her life. Though she didn't know if that was something she would have liked. It was hard to say.

Often she would withdraw into herself, smiling outwardly, listening to the rattle and hum of conversation in the room while she considered the events of the day or studied David. She preferred it when he sat near her, holding her hand or running his fingers gently along the top of her knee. She delighted in his presence, in the reassurance that he brought her. She was beginning to feel a great deal of warmth towards his family. And yet, she was discovering that despite that warmth, in strange moments, when all of them would be laughing about something from their own shared past, they would remain strangers to her.

Every evening they had ice cream. In truth, some evenings she didn't want ice cream. She wanted to be able to go to bed without having eaten ice cream, though she knew then that she'd lie awake, her stomach slightly raw, wondering why she just hadn't eaten the damn ice cream. Life was full of little regrets. Around the time the time the ice cream was doled out someone usually turned on a television show or a movie. They had imperfect taste when it came to television shows. She liked it best when they watched what Elsa wanted to watch, Disney movies about princesses falling in love or horrendously scary cartoons like The Last Unicorn. There was a kind of nostalgia for her own childhood that was wrapped up in these movies. It made her feel subtly closer to home, and the enchantment of the movies where women fell in love was for the first time a mirror into her own life.

On the fifth night, before she went up to the bathroom to wash her teeth and prepare for bed, she logged into her e-mail and saw a message from the boy who'd been with her on the plane. She didn't click on it at first, reading something from her mother instead, a brief update about the goings on around home. Her father had taken up golf, though it was apparently a debatable choice. Her mother had started working part-time at the local library and was finding that it gave her a sense of purpose. These were all wonderful things, and yet she felt her heart rate lifting imperceptibly at the thought of the message that was waiting for her. She couldn't really remember what they'd talked about, but it seemed to her that their lives were threaded together now. Before she went upstairs she clicked on his name, hurriedly, excitedly: