Devin could feel the wave of disapproval the moment his parents walked into the entryway and laid eyes on Grace. How could they be so blind to her inherent goodness? How could he have been?
Facing that familiar look he had seen so many times when he had dated Grace in high school made him wonder if his family had influenced their breakup as much as his friends had. He liked to think his mother’s comment about them getting too serious at too young an age had been made out of love and concern. Seeing the expression on her face now, he suspected Grace’s lack of wealth and family connections was the root of the problem.
The Sedona snobs. His parents could have invented the phrase.
They looked perfect, as always. His mother’s dark hair didn’t show any sign of gray, thanks to her biweekly trip to the hairdresser. The few streaks of gray in his father’s hair made him look distinguished rather than old. Devin didn’t have to see the labels to know his parents’ clothes were the latest from Paris and Milan and their winter tans a product of their most recent trip to the Caribbean.
“Devin, how good to see you.” Catherine Shanahan leaned toward her son and kissed the air beside his cheek.
“Mom, Dad. How was Paris?”
“Fine.” His dad shook his hand. The fact that he didn’t expound on his answer to include some criticism of the flight or hotel proved he wasn’t prepared to see him with Grace.
“You both remember Grace, don’t you?”
“Yes, I believe so,” Catherine said. “You ran track together, didn’t you?”
“That’s right,” Grace said without missing a beat. She smoothed over the obvious oversight of their previous relationship. “It’s good to see you both again.”
“Is lunch ready?” Devin asked.
As if on cue, Liwei, the longtime family cook, appeared in the doorway leading to the dining room. In his heavily accented English, Liwei bowed slightly and said, “Lunch is ready.”
Devin grinned at the older man, automatically shifting into Cantonese. “Liwei, so good to see you.”
Though he wanted to cross to him and give him a hug, he knew such behavior would be frowned upon. Instead, he tilted his head toward Grace. “Can you set another plate? I don’t think my parents were expecting her.”
“I already did.” His voice was serious despite the sparkle in his eyes.
“Must you do that?” his father asked. “English is the language we speak in this house, not Chinese.”
Devin didn’t correct his father in his assumption that all Chinese languages were one and the same. Instead, he fell silent. He waited for his parents to lead the way into the dining room and put his hand on Grace’s back to guide her forward.
As he passed Liwei, Devin whispered under his breath in Cantonese, “Is Jun here?”
“Yes. She will be serving you today.”
“Good. I’ve missed you both.”
He saw Grace’s questioning glance.
After Devin helped her into her seat, he sat beside her and wondered if his parents would ever forgive him for the choices he had made. They wouldn’t be happy if they knew he had committed to work for the CIA for at least the next five years, but the agency had been very clear that he wasn’t to share that information with them anyway. As for his relationship with Grace, he wondered how long he could keep his marriage a secret or if he should even try.
He glanced over at the rings on Grace’s right hand and debated coming clean right then.
Jun appeared in the doorway, carrying two salads, Liwei following behind her with two more. Upon seeing his longtime nanny, Devin stood. He hated that his parents had let her go when he was in college, but she had made a decent life nearby working as a maid for a number of local families.
“I’ve missed you,” he said, again slipping out of English, this time to converse in Jun’s native Mandarin. He gathered her close in a way he never could have done with his own mother. He supposed his fluency in both Mandarin and Cantonese was a testimony to how much time he’d spent with the household servants and how little he’d spent with his parents. Ironically, of his three languages, he had found English to be the most difficult to learn as a child.
“I have missed you too, but you are going to get both of us in trouble.”
“You’re right.” Devin reclaimed his seat. “Grace, do you remember Jun and Liwei?”
“Yes. I don’t believe I’ve ever had egg rolls as good as the ones Liwei made us when we were in high school.”
Movement in the doorway caught Devin’s attention, and he looked over to see his father’s secretary holding a pad of paper and a pen. Like Liwei and Jun, Maureen had been working for his parents for as long as he could remember, but her stiffly formal demeanor had kept Devin from ever connecting with her the way he had with the others.
“Excuse me, Boyd, but I wanted to let you know I’m going out to run those errands for you,” she said.
“Thank you, Maureen.”
Maureen turned, her heels clicking on the tile floor as she disappeared from the room and then out the front door.
“I see she hasn’t changed at all,” Devin said in Mandarin.
“Her visits to the beauty parlor are more frequent now. That blonde hair is most definitely out of a bottle,” Jun said. Her own dark hair was streaked with gray, but she didn’t seem to be concerned with the natural effects of aging. Jun looked around at everyone’s eyes on them. “We’ll talk later.”
His mother looked from Devin to Grace and asked, “How did you two meet up again? Are you dating?”
“Not exactly.” Devin reclaimed his seat, not surprised that Jun and Liwei quietly slipped out of the room. Devin supposed he could date his wife, but he wasn’t sure how to phrase his answer without lying directly. Some spy he was going to make.
Grace rescued him. “We were both at Caleb’s wedding a couple weeks ago. Caleb married my cousin.”
“Oh, how nice. What have you been doing since high school?”
“I’m going to ASU to finish my MBA.”
“I’m sure you know Devin is getting his MBA this spring from Stanford,” Boyd said.
“Yes, I do,” Grace said. “You must be very proud of him. He has always been such a good student.”
As though Grace had authenticated his father’s belief that Devin’s education was superior to her own, some of the stiffness eased out of his parents, and they were able to fall into familiar small talk. Grace and Devin listened to the latest news on Devin’s two older cousins, their successes in business and their travel plans.
The realization that he was the first to marry out of his generation struck him. Though his cousins were now in their early thirties, as far as he knew, neither of them was in any kind of serious relationship with anyone or anything beyond their careers.
He glanced at the woman beside him and hoped again that he could overcome his own family traditions and be a good husband to her.