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Prologue

Amelie walked out to the pool deck of her family’s compound on North Miami’s Indian Creek Island. Her younger sister Katelyn was slipping around in the pool like a happy fish. Except Amelie knew Katelyn wasn’t happy.

Amelie walked down the stairs into the pool and lazily side-stroked her way to Katelyn. The pool was designed with a hot tub on one side at close to the same water level, so it was easy to slide from the cold water into the warm. Amelie went first and Katelyn followed.

“Jets?” asked Amelie.

Katelyn shook her head.

“We’ve known this has been coming for years, and we’ve been preparing,” said Amelie.

“I know,” said Katelyn. “But when you were a year ahead in a different school, we still lived at home together. This time you’re going more than halfway across the country for college and leaving me here to finish twelfth grade. It’s going to be unbearable.”

“But we’ll talk every day,” said Amelie. “And a year from now you’ll be with me in Austin.”

“If I get in,” said Katelyn.

“When you get in,” corrected Amelie with an encouraging smile. “And if it doesn’t happen, we’ll go somewhere else together.”

“I hate this,” said the younger sister.

“But this is the beginning of everything we’ve been planning,” said Amelie.

“What are the chances, though?” said Katelyn. “You’ve crossed out every guy on our list. Almost thirty. I’m not even sure the man we’re looking for exists.”

“That just means I need to look somewhere new,” said Amelie. “And that’s my number one priority in Austin.”

“You’ll get caught up in your studies, date for fun, and completely forget about our plans,” sulked Katelyn.

“Seriously, sis? Does that sound like me?”

“No,” grumbled Katelyn. “Just don’t forget about me, alright?”

“Never,” said Amelie. “A promise is a promise.”

“And twin promises are twin promises,” said Katelyn.

Part 1: Amelie

Chapter 01

It was blazing hot, the kind of August heat that presses on you like a heavy blanket and sucks out rubber and oil aromas from the concrete. Sweat soaked through my shirt as I hugged Mom goodbye. She tried to smile, but her chin trembled.

Dad offered his hand. I shook it, another part of the ritual.

“You be good now, son, you hear?”

“Yes sir,” I said.

Something just gave way inside me, and I pulled him into a hug before he could object. He held tight for a long moment, his fists bunching the fabric at my back. The intensity of it was almost enough to crack something open, but I kept it together. He stepped back, nodded once, lips tight. That was us. We felt things, but we didn’t let them show. Once, when I’d been upset as a pre-teen, Dad had called it “The Anderson Way” – feel, but don’t spill. It’d stuck with me.

I’d already said goodbye to Viking back in San Antonio, the big dog confused and anxious about my departure. Living without him was going to be every bit as difficult as being away from Mom and Dad. Still, I was only ninety minutes away and could catch a bus back home for a weekend now and then.

Mom waved as Dad eased the truck into the garage traffic. I stood watching until the taillights vanished behind a concrete pillar.

Just like that, I was on my own.

My arrival in the University of Texas at Austin had begun with a hiccup: Dad’s truck never got close to Carothers Hall. Mooov‑In congestion on Whitis Avenue meant staff waved us straight into the garage. I’d thought arriving a week before classes would spare us the chaos, but apparently not.

Still, I had my student ID from orientation during an earlier visit, my Mooov‑In envelope, my dorm room key, and my parents’ company, which steadied me. By some miracle, the Carothers front desk had a cart available, so I’d grabbed it and headed toward the garage. I’d read the instructions and knew I wasn’t supposed to take the cart that far away, but I didn’t know what else to do in the circumstances, so I’d hustled toward the garage before anyone could stop me.

Mom and Dad had walked alongside, their heads pivoting to take in the buildings. This was hard for them, I’d thought at the time. Their only child was leaving home to attend college, and an empty nest awaited them when they got back to San Antonio. At least they’d have Viking, who was retiring from police K-9 duty at the same time.

After my parents drove off, and I’d braved the heat while pushing a fully loaded cart, the Carothers lobby AC felt like stepping into heaven. The cart’s front-right wheel wobbled like it was trying to detach itself, announcing me with a clatter as I crossed the floor. I probably looked like I did after a high‑school basketball game – like I needed to be wrung out.

That’s when I saw her.

She stood near a loose cluster of students and families waiting for carts – sun‑blond hair, blue-green eyes, athletic, self‑possessed. Shorts, tank top, backpack slung easily over one shoulder. Not trying to draw attention, not posing, just… there. Something about her clarity hit me like a shot to the chest.

Clarity?! I forced myself to stop projecting – there’s no way I could figure out her character from a quick glance – and I kept moving.

People stared at me all the time – six‑six and and a big build will do that – but today they were mostly eyeing the cart I was pushing. She looked too, but not with the hungry, half‑desperate cart‑lust the parents had. And not, I thought, because I was oddly large. Something different. Curious, maybe. Her gaze lingered – on me, not the cart, like she was searching for something – before looking away. She seemed… deliberate.

More projection. Get a grip, John! I ordered myself.

Upstairs, I claimed a bed, took in the view of the quad green from the window, and unloaded my stuff. My roommate wasn’t there yet – just his name on the door and a text from earlier, promising a mini-fridge, which I hadn’t even considered, and couldn’t have afforded to do anything about even if I had. The room felt as bare as it looked. It smelled musty, too, making me question why the air conditioning ducts weren’t clearing out stale air.

I knocked back a warm bottle of water and pushed the empty cart back to the lobby.

The cart‑hopeful crowd had grown. People perked up when they saw me exit the elevator with an empty cart, and I felt the weight of their optimism. She was still there, now closer to the front, alone and patient in a way that made her stand out even more.

I don’t do impulsive. Not historically. I’m a planner. But something nudged me, and before I could talk myself out of it, I said to the room at large:

“Sorry – got another load.”

The collective groan was guilt-inducing.

Then I stepped toward her and lowered my voice. “You’re the only one here without a family. If you need help, walk with me.”

I don’t think I’d ever done something that bold, off the basketball court, anyway. She blinked once, processing, maybe evaluating, then nodded and followed me out the door. Yes, deliberate. Definitely. And decisive. This was a girl who knew how to make a decision.

“Where’s your stuff?” I asked once we were out on the street.

“San Antonio garage,” she said.

“I just came from there.”

She fell into step beside me. “Queue‑jumping is frowned on, you know.”

I glanced at her. She was smiling. Dry humor’s good. But the smile didn’t quite reach her eyes, so I got the sense that she was evaluating as well as enjoying herself. Well, to be fair, who wasn’t on the first day of college?

“We’re not allowed to take the carts this far, either,” I said.

“Queue jumping, flaunting rules on carts; we’re renegades,” she said.

“John Anderson,” I said.

“Amelie Foster.”

“Third floor, Carothers.”

“Second floor, Carothers,” she said, amused. She liked the banter, I thought. We traded majors next.

“First year. Plan II Honors and Architecture in a five-year program,” I said.

“First year. Business Honors at McCombs,” she said. “Plus some social‑impact coursework through the RGK Center.”

“Shouldn’t a university with a world‑class business school have a more efficient Mooov‑In system?”

“Maybe buy more than six carts for the whole building,” she said.

“Revolutionary thinking.”

She laughed, and the sound unclenched something in me. She suddenly seemed more relaxed, too. Maybe I’d passed some kind of test.

We found her Jeep – a brand‑new Grand Wagoneer, immaculate, shockingly expensive. I didn’t comment on it. It didn’t matter; what mattered to me in the moment was the way Amelie moved – steady, competent, focused on the moment rather than the spectacle, which in my experience was unusual for an unquestionably beautiful girl. I watched her glance at me when we reached the car – assessing again but trying not to show it, I thought. I was glad I’d said nothing about the luxury vehicle.

We loaded the cart. A couple of plastic bins didn’t fit, so we perched one on top, which I held steady as I pushed the cart, and she carried the other. By the time we reached Carothers, after twenty minutes in the baking heat, we were both soaked with sweat.

Back in the cool lobby, eyes tracked us – well, tracked the wobbling cart – but I wasn’t focusing on the waiting hordes anymore. We took the elevator up one level to Amelie’s floor.

She hesitated with the keys to her dorm room. It was the first moment of indecision I’d seen. But she unlocked the door and we entered. Same layout as mine. Her roommate wasn’t arriving for days, she told me.

“Nice view,” I said, taking in the scene from the window, which looked west over Whitis and the Mooov-In chaos on the street.

“Uh huh,” she said, but she wasn’t looking out the window. She was looking at me and biting back a smile.

I felt that look all through my body.

“You want to check out Kinsolving for dinner later?” I asked, trying to play it cool. It occurred to me that I’d just invited a girl on a sort-of date without obsessing over it – a giant first.

Amelie checked the time. “It’s still early, but I’m starving now.”

We left the cart at the front desk – earning hero‑level gratitude from the next group of desperate cart worshippers – and I stepped back into the heat. With Amelie.

Chapter 02

Walking north on Whitis past insane traffic congestion to the Kins dining hall, I resumed our rapid-fire get-to-know-you exchange.

“Only child,” I said.

“One sister, rising high school senior.”

“Basketball was my main sport in high school.”

“Tennis,” she said.

“Thought about college basketball but want to focus on career prep.”

“Never once considered college tennis.”

“Wanna be an architect.”

“Wanna work in nonprofits.”

“Raised in a very religious family but might have changed a bit on that front.”

“Nonreligious family; never been in a church or synagogue or temple or whatever.”

“The ’rents would be seriously worried to hear that I’m not religious in the way they assume.”

“You’re kind!” she said, abruptly breaking the pattern. She stopped walking and her hand flew to her mouth, belatedly attempting to hold in what she’d just let out. She’d said it as if finding a kind person was a “eureka!” moment. “Sorry,” she said, quietly. “That was…” but her voice trailed off.

“You’re… surprising,” I said, an honest statement of how I was feeling in the moment.

“You’ve no idea, John,” she said. I expected a smug or seductive smirk, which would have matched the words, but Amelie actually sounded kind of tired, as though being full of surprises was a burden she was doomed to carry. What a fascinating person!

“I love my parents and they love me,” I said, resuming our walk and feeling the urge to let Amelie see a little more of me, especially after she’d taken a risk and tossed aside the usual getting-to-know-you protocol. “So the religion thing has become a bit tricky. I’m trying to balance transparency and kindness, both of which they deserve, but on this topic I find it difficult to do both well.”

Amelie stopped again, this time in the Kins lobby, surrounded by the enticing smell of food wafting out of the dining hall. She just stared at me, her head slightly tilted, her long hair falling away from one side of her head, revealing a diamond stud in her ear and a little scar right below, which sparked my curiosity. Once again she looked as though she was assessing me. But it didn’t feel cocky or arrogant. To me it felt tender, maybe a bit self-protective, and her beautiful face was serious.

“Come,” she said, suddenly grabbing my hand and leading me to the table area. She was holding my hand! The place was bright and noisy, but she found a relatively quiet corner and sat me down. Literally, she kind of pushed the hand she was holding so I sat down. It was the non-verbal equivalent of “sit!” I guess. Then she sat opposite me.

I was so stunned I forgot to ask Amelie why she’d suddenly lost interest in food. Why was this so urgent for her?!

“You’re different,” she said. I frowned. “Than other guys. Or ones I’ve met, anyway.”

“I’m just a guy,” I said, baffled.

“You’ve got strong values,” said Amelie, her brow furrowed as she searched for words, her face fully engaged with mine. “You honor your parents and misleading them causes you pain. You like to help people. You prefer to be transparent. You’re loyal, I think – and kind; we already covered that. The religion thing… it’s like you got the good stuff from it without buying the whole story. And… you care about being a good person.”

She watched me intensely, seemingly demanding a response.

“Well…” I said. “But…”

“Different. Than other guys. That I’ve known. Like I said.”

“Amelie, you need to get out more. I’m not unique,” I said, trying to lighten the moment. But she wasn’t having any of it.

“John, you have to get out more. You’re rarer than you realize.”

We stared at each other for a long moment. She was very confident in her judgment. About me. Probably about everyone. And everything. I felt a little out of my depth, like I might not be able to keep up with this girl’s perceptiveness. But I was hooked, regardless.

“Weirdest dinner conversation ever,” I said. I tried to keep a straight face, but I could feel a smile creeping into the side of my mouth.

“And tall, dark, and handsome,” she muttered in a frustrated tone of voice – as if to herself, but it was obvious that I could hear, and she immediately looked embarrassed. “Did I just say that out loud?” She smiled sheepishly, which I found adorable. She tried to explain. “I had this plan, you know? I was going to explore, hunt for what I want in a guy. But how am I supposed to shop around when I meet someone like you as soon as I arrive?”

“I hadn’t thought much about exploring,” I said. “On the other hand, you are definitely the most interesting woman I’ve ever met. And drop-dead gorgeous, to boot.”

Once again, we stared at each other for a long moment.

“John, are we really going to do this?” she asked. That took my breath away. She spoke to me as if we were on the same page already, as if we’d talked at length about dating, and we just needed to make a final decision. She wasn’t wrong about how she was reading me. But it was just so unusual.

“If you’re talking about dinner, then I hope so, because I could eat a horse,” I said. “And if you’re talking about dating, then yes, absolutely no question.”

“C’mon, big guy,” she said, standing and pretending to pull me up by tugging on the same hand that she used to sit me there in the first place. “Let’s figure out how this whole dinner thing works.”

She was still holding my hand as we walked back to the food area. It felt like she was settling into the geometry of it, adjusting her grip to make her normal sized hand fit comfortably in my gigantic paw, but doing it like she wasn’t aware, while focusing on navigating the dining-hall tables.

Her touch… it was innocent enough, but it set my head spinning. Well, spinning faster, really, because this had been the most extraordinary conversation of my entire life. Amelie was a lot. And everything was moving quicker than I’d ever thought possible – for any two people, let alone for me, the planner. But despite my cautious nature, I was doing this.

Chapter 03

I woke early the next morning. James Carson, my roommate, was sleeping in the other bed. His quietly humming mini-fridge was beside his study desk, and I plucked out one of the water bottles he’d invited me to stash inside. It was pre-dawn light outside, about half an hour before sunrise at 7am – perfect for a run. Five minutes later I took the stairs down to the first floor, waved to the woman on the front desk, tossed the empty water bottle in recycling, and stepped outside into the relative cool of what was going to be another scorcher. The street was deserted, making a sharp contrast with the zoo of the previous day, which would be the norm all through Mooov-In week.

I needed to get to know the area. Since I was no longer training with the team or playing competitive basketball, I had to establish new fitness routines. I needed to get over this feeling I should be running with Viking. And I needed to think about what had happened the previous day with Amelie.

I crossed Whitis and had barely begun running when I remembered that I was supposed to stretch first. I had a vague routine for stretching from running with the guys, but I needed to sharpen it up – I’d like to know why I was stretching which muscles.

“John?” The voice was quiet and I looked for its source but saw nothing. “Up here.” It was Amelie, leaning out of her second-story window.

“Morning,” I said, shocked to see her. I crossed back over the street and walked closer to her window.

“You run?” she said.

“Trying to get into a pattern,” I said.

“See what I mean?”

“No…”

“Which college student comes to school for the first time and is thinking about laying down healthy life patterns?”

“I don’t know, like, half of us?”

“You’re delusional, big guy. And different. In a good way. Give me five and I’ll join you, okay?”

“Okay,” I said, and resumed my haphazard stretching. The disorganization of the stretching bothered me. It occurred to me how unattractive my need for order and reason might be, especially to a free spirit. I wondered if Amelie was a free spirit, or whether she might prefer me this way. I guess we’d be finding out.

I wasn’t going to have time to take stock of what had happened yesterday. Amelie and I had parted after dinner. Dinner itself had been amazing. I’d felt incredibly frustrated about our parting, though I tried to stay cool and not show it. After everything had moved so quickly, we were suddenly putting the brakes on. And not even talking about it. I’d wanted to go for a moonlight walk later that evening, but I’d said nothing.

That kind of passiveness might be unattractive to some girls, too. Was Amelie one of them? Slowing down was wise, I was sure, but that didn’t help me calm down at the time. Thankfully, James’s arrival distracted me until I hit the sack.

Amelie appeared, dressed for a run. Her hair was in a high ponytail revealing gold stud earrings, her fit body decked out in high-end running shoes, shorts, and tank top. No makeup yet she looked perfect. I knew it was expensive gear but, as with the car, I said nothing. By contrast, I was in ratty shorts, tank, and shoes that looked like they’d been Viking’s playthings. Which they had.

She walked right up to me and placed her hands on my chest. The touch and an unfamiliar scent – soap maybe? – nearly knocked me out.

“Good morning, John,” she said. “May I give you a quick hug before we start?”

“Hugging before running,” I said, clasping her close to me, which was intoxicating. Somehow I kept my wits about me. “I’d heard Austin was different.”

She laughed freely. Amelie was of average height – about five-four, I reckon – but being six-six made average feel tiny. I loved the feel of her against me, her head tucked under my chin, her chest against my abs, her arms wrapped part-way around my lower ribs.

“Tell me you’re still growing,” she said, breaking apart, a twinkle in her eye.

“I’m still growing,” I said. “Dad’s my height and Mom’s tall, so they reckon I’ll sprout another inch or two in the next year.”

“Good,” she said. “You’re a little too short for me right now, but you’ll grow into the perfect size.”

I laughed. “Are you still growing?”

“We girls stop growing much earlier,” she said. “I’ve been five-four for two years already. Should we stretch before we run?”

“I’m thinking I should, but I don’t really know what I’m doing,” I said.

“Me neither,” she said. “We can look into it. Let’s just run for now.”

We set out, running north along Whitis Avenue toward Kinsolving. I tried to find a pace that suited her, but that turned out to be difficult because I thought she was doing the same. It was like a conversation in which two polite people were both deferring – needlessly confusing.

“Run at your normal pace for a bit so I can get a sense for how fast you like to go,” I said. After a bit, I added, “Yeah, that’ll work.” It turns out that we were comfortably matched for pace, so long as we weren’t messing everything up by trying to accommodate each other. Life lesson there, somewhere.

“What’s the deal with you staring out the window before sunrise?” I asked.

“I was thinking,” she said. “About you. Us. Yesterday. Was it too weird, John?”

“It was unusual, I guess,” I said, “but I’m glad you helped us bust through the normal awkwardness of getting to know one another.”

“I feel like I should apologize,” she said, as we turned right on Dean Keeton to work our way around the block housing the Honors Quad. “I was a bit caught off guard and saw something special and just kind of went for it. It might have been a bit unfair.”

“I’m good,” I said. “I’m usually cautious, but I liked it.”

“That’s a relief,” she said, but she didn’t sound relieved.

Remembering how passive I’d been after dinner, I took a risk.

“I missed you last night and wanted to go for a walk in the evening but in the end I didn’t text.”

“I had the same thought,” she said, as we turned right on University Avenue. “I guess I was kind of self-conscious about… well, about coming on so strong, and I didn’t reach out to you, either.”

“Hey, I got this started with the cart thing. It wasn’t all you. And the space probably did us some good,” I said, looking over at her with a smile, which she returned – gratefully, I thought. But a more honest comment would have been to say I regretted being so hesitant after dinner.

We ran in silence for a bit, then turned right onto a path that cut back to Whitis, completing the block.

“Again?” I asked, and she nodded.

Amelie was taking three or four steps for each two strides I took, and the chaotic rhythm of the footfalls on the pavement caught my attention. I almost shortened my stride to make it exactly four-to-two, then caught myself and decided the messy rhythm was actually kind of interesting. Another life lesson, I guess. We made a second loop in silence, running a little faster. It felt good.

Chapter 04

When we got back to Carothers, Amelie led me into the quad, and we lay down on the grass under a tree to catch our breath. The grass was thick and comfortable, and still had traces of that fresh-mown aroma. After a minute, with sunrise approaching, and colors in the quad slowly emerging from shades of gray, she rolled over to face me.

“John, tell me how you’re feeling about yesterday. No editing, okay?”

I rolled toward her and took in her concerned face. A few strands of blond hair had escaped her ponytail drifted over her high cheek bones and her mouth. She puffed some air out the side of her mouth to push them away. I felt myself frowning, mirroring her. Normally I’d smooth it over – say something to make it seem less of a big deal, just like Mom. But Amelie was asking for more than that. I think she could tell I was likely to dodge. I needed to be honest.

“Straight up, I’ve never experienced anything like that,” I said. “I was struggling at the time, and I still am, I guess. Overall, I liked your directness, even though it shocked me a little. But Amelie, I want this. I want to get to know you, be close to you. I want you to know me.”

She looked at me, her features easier to see as the sky lightened. I got the sense that she wanted more. Should I say more?

“You make me feel…” I fell into silence and watched her watch me. “You’re so smart, Amelie, and so perceptive. You read me perfectly yesterday. I felt… I feel a bit intimidated, right alongside my fascination and attraction, like I might not be able to keep up with you, like I might not be able to… oh God, sorry… meet your expectations.”

She reached out a hand and caressed my cheek, nodding slowly, her eyes glistening. Were they tears? I felt like I’d said too much, so I yielded to the temptation to walk it back.

“But I really don’t know you well enough to be sure about any of that,” I said. “I just feel insecure sometimes. And, again, I want this, no matter where it leads.”

She nodded and pulled her hand back. “Thank you, John. I felt drawn to you yesterday, so strongly, so quickly – that was new for me, too. At the time, the more you let me see you, the stronger I felt the attraction. I guess I kind of lost control a bit and said and did things that were out of character for me. Like, way out of character. Not just the speed of it. But that says a lot. Like, maybe I believe I’m finding…” Her voice trailed off.

We fell silent and stared. It was intense.

“I’m sure there was a more graceful way to get here, and I’m sorry I didn’t find it,” she said, the charming sheepish smile back. “It’s all just so unexpected. But here is where I want to be.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said, urgently feeling the need to reassure the beautiful young woman before me, so graciously showing me her uncertainty and regret. “Let’s just go on from here, okay?”

“Okay,” she said, shuffling closer. “Is this alright?” she asked. I nodded, and she shuffled still closer until she was in my big arms, cuddling close, my nose filled with that scented soap smell. I heard her sigh and felt content and happy – happy to be with her, happy that she wanted to be with me, happy that she could sigh in my arms, happy to imagine what might come next.

What came next for me was not wanting to move. Like ever. But Amelie pushed me gently on my high shoulder and I rolled onto my back. Then she cuddled into my side, her head on my shoulder and her arm over my chest. I leaned down and kissed her hair – our first kiss – and listened to her sigh again.

I was hit with this almost absurd vision – Amelie and me, old, sitting together somewhere, completely at peace. Just being near each other and that being enough. John, I told myself, you are not an old man, and I chuckled a little.

“What’s funny?” she murmured.

“Too embarrassing to say,” I said, chuckling again.

“After everything embarrassing I did yesterday, it’s your turn to embarrass yourself,” she said.

“But your stuff was cute and intense; my stuff really is embarrassing.”

“I don’t mind,” she said, and angled her head up toward mine, sliding up my body closer and closer until we were kissing. Kiss number two. And this one got my heart pounding. It was soft and slow, almost no movement, barely touching, yet almost did me in.

“I was picturing us as an old couple cuddling after a picnic, quietly enjoying each other’s company,” I said.

She lifted herself on one elbow to see me properly.

“See. What. I. Mean?” she said, very deliberately, punctuating her words with gentle finger-pokes on my chest. “Different. Which college freshman is filled with such a beautiful vision of contentment when cuddling with his girlfriend for the first time?”

“To be fair to myself,” I said, chuckling self-consciously, “that’s not all that was happening to me. But I did have this overwhelming feeling of contentment. I think your sighs might have caused it.”

She leaned down toward me, ever so slowly, almost but not quite brushing her lips on mine, her sweet breath bathing my face. It was incredibly tempting, and I tried not to give in – why, I couldn’t have said – but my will power failed me after a few seconds. Teenage John leapt into kiss number three, holding her head near mine and consuming her.

After a few seconds, I pulled back. She cuddled back into my side again and sighed. This time I sighed, too. Easy, John, I told myself. Nice and slow.

Chapter 05

My stomach growled and Amelie giggled. “You sound as hungry as I feel. Wanna eat?”

The honest answer was that I wanted to lie there with her all day. I was going to just go along with her suggestion, as usual for me – again, just like Mom – when it struck me that college presented new opportunities, so maybe I should try something new.

“So it’s like this,” I said, my hand caressing her back. “I’m hungry, as you can plainly hear, and would be glad to eat breakfast with you. But I’ve never felt this happy and content with a girl, even ones I’ve dated a while, and I’m reluctant to mess with the moment.”

“You’re sweet, John,” she said. “Thank you for telling me that. Let’s stay here and cuddle for a few more minutes. You can tell me about your Mom and Dad. I’ll tell you about my parents after tomorrow’s pre-sunrise run.”

“This is the new routine, then?”

“If you’re okay with it,” she said, hugging me tight and resettling against the side of my chest.

“That’d be amazing,” I said.

“First,” she said, “do you think your parents would like me?”

“Damn, girl,” I said, shocked by her question, which made her giggle again, though with a touch of nervousness, as though she really wasn’t sure about the answer. I loved seeing her nervousness; she seemed so confident most of the time.

“Okay, I’ll try to answer that,” I said. “At one level, you’re irresistible, so yeah, they’d like you. Anyone would.” Amelie leaned up and pecked me on the cheek before settling back down again. “At another level, you’re definitely outside their comfort zone, given that you’re nonreligious and they’re conservative evangelical Christians with a complementarian view of marriage.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s when men and women have defined roles in a marriage. They’re loving and close, and strong as a couple, but Dad’s a K-9 specialist in the San Antonio Police and Mom’s a homemaker and church volunteer. She was a teacher before I arrived but after that she stayed home. Dad’s supposed to set the moral tone and Mom’s supposed to give it loving expression in the home.”

“She’s okay with that?” asked Amelie.

“More than okay,” I said. “She’ll worry when she learns that I don’t agree with it, and I absolutely must tell them at some point. I disagree with it, but I have huge respect for them and what they’ve created together as a couple. Their marriage is amazing, honestly. I’d love to have something that strong, just built differently.”

We were quiet for a minute. Did I actually just talk about marriage to a girl I’ve known for less than one day? What was wrong with me?!

“Will you take me to church?” she asked.

Amelie had stunned me, yet again. Was I that easy to shock?!

“Amelie, do you think it would be possible for us to get through five minutes of conversation without you blowing my socks off?”

I leaned down and kissed her head to show that I was trying to be witty, not mean.

She giggled and patted my chest, letting me know I needn’t have worried.

“I’ve been thinking of visiting the Methodist church very close by,” I said. “There’s this thing called ‘church shopping’… would you like to try it?”

“Yes please!” she said. “You’ll have to teach me stuff. I don’t want to do something embarrassing. So that’d be Sunday, right?”

“Right,” I said. “Will your parents be okay with you attending church?”

“They’ll be confused at first, I guess,” said Amelie, her fingers picking at something on my tank top. “And Katelyn – that’s my sister – will tease me; I’m reluctant to give her any ammunition, but she’s not mean so I’ll put up with it. They’ll come around when they fall in love with you and realize that…” She stopped mid-stream. Then she leaned up and looked at me, her eyes scrunched tightly closed. She opened them to see me frowning in confusion. “Sorry, John. I’m doing that way-too-intense thing again. What I mean is that they’ll appreciate that I’m trying to get to know you and your world.”

I could see that Amelie was kicking herself mentally for what she saw as a slip, which made me think she was trying hard to stick to some rules she’d devised for herself. My heart went out to her. She was just as unsure as me. Just as attracted. Just as confused by how fast this was going. I wanted to make her feel better, to comfort her. But I didn’t know how, so I stayed silent.

Silent like my Dad when he was uncertain. Silent like my Mom when there was conflict. And now I was kicking myself, just as much as Amelie was. Say something John!

“Amelie…” I blurted out, and immediately lost track of what I wanted to say.

She moved closer and bent down to kiss me ever so softly.

“Say it,” she whispered. Something about that kiss unlocked my words.

“You don’t have to try so hard to edit yourself. You’re safe with me. And I guess if I’m saying this, then I feel safe with you.”

“Really?” she said, her eyes gleaming.

“Really,” I said. “I don’t… I mean, I want you to relax with me. Intensity is okay. Better than both of us trying too hard to say the right thing. To hell with the rules, Amelie. Let’s just be us.”

“To hell with the rules?” she said, with a hint of incredulity.

“To hell with the rules,” I said quietly. “Please, just be yourself. I’ll try to do the same.”

Then she really was crying. It wasn’t noisy. But I could see the tears rolling down her face and felt them landing on the bare part of my chest the tank top didn’t cover.

I must have frowned because she said, “I’m okay, John, please don’t worry. I’ve just never been treated so kindly by a man, except for my Dad. I’m kind of spiraling, like, out of control, probably with shockingly bad judgment, so I don’t know if I can trust what I’m feeling. But I do feel at home with you. I’ll try to relax and just be myself, and I’m glad you’ll do the same.”

She lay her head down on my shoulder again, but this time higher up, where she kissed my cheek and held on tight.

Chapter 06

We were quiet for a while until my tummy grumbled loudly again.

“Alright, big guy,” she said, springing to her feet and holding out her hand. “Breakfast time.”

“The idea of a tiny thing like you helping me up is hilarious,” I said, pushing myself to my feet.

“Hey! I’m not little,” she said, “and certainly not a tiny thing. I’m the only normally sized person around here.”

“True,” I said, draping my arm over her shoulder, which she held with one of hers. “I would like to formally apologize for any inconveniences that my size may cause you.”

“So one and done, is that it?” she teased. “I was hoping to hold your inconvenient size over you for years.”

Her free hand flew to her mouth.

“I did it again,” she groaned. “I gave myself strict instructions not to be so damn intense, but I keep forgetting.”

“And now it’s okay because we agreed that we’d just be ourselves,” I said. “To hell with the stupid relationship rules.”

“We did agree, didn’t we?” she said, laughing happily. “That’ll make things much easier for me because I seem to be way off kilter. And that’s all your fault, you giant meanie, confusing young women with your charm and kindness and shocking proportions.”

“I’m trying to be smaller but it’s not working,” I said.

Kins dining for breakfast was overwhelming. I felt assaulted by the aromas. I stood there looking at the options, confused about what to eat. She walked back to me, tray in hand.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Basketball was a lot of training, with year-round working out – lifting, flexibility, aerobics. I’m not playing or training hard anymore. My habits around eating are geared to a different level of output. I don’t want to become the fat-slob three-hundred-and-fifty pound architecture student a year from now.”

“We’ve been dating for, like, less than a day, and you’re already telling me about your body issues?”

I looked blankly at her.

“Oh, God, John, I’m sorry, that was supposed to be funny. What I really mean is thank you for sharing something so tender and worrying. Why don’t we grab a small breakfast and talk about how to eat healthy?”

“Okay,” I said, trying to smile. Why was I suddenly so sensitive? I was way out of whack, just like Amelie, our normal behavior turned erratic by strong emotions. Just settle down, John, dammit. I did not like being so out of control.

I enjoy breakfast food, but I kept my servings small and we sat at the same table where we’d eaten dinner the previous afternoon.

“Do you think we might explore the campus together today?” she said. “I’d like to see the architecture school and understand how the honors program fits with it. It’s like a double major and takes five years, right?”

“Sort of,” I said, digging into some scrambled eggs. “It’s actually a dual degree, so I wind up with a BA and a BArch. I like the idea of exploring campus. I’d like to see your business school, too,” I added.

“So maybe we can spend the whole day together and get done everything we need to get done. You know, stay close.” She said it hesitantly, hopefully.

“Sounds nice,” I said. “But we also need to have some fun. Something a bit less intense. I’m not used to being so off my game, you know?”

“I hear that,” she said. “This is unprecedented for me. I’m normally very… um… self-possessed, I guess. But around you I feel like a little girl who can’t think straight.”

The sheepish smile was back again, light dimples making it cute. Amelie was an unbelievably charming person. I couldn’t imagine anyone not feeling friendly toward her, unless it was someone jealous of her intelligence and beauty, both of which were very obvious – the latter just by seeing her, and the former as soon as she opened her mouth to say anything.

Or maybe unless they were very conservative religious people who were trying to protect their son from being paired up with someone with incompatible religious beliefs.

I just hated to think of my Mom feeling as though she needed to warn me off this amazing young woman.

“Hey, John, where’d you go?”

I would normally evade such a question, but with Amelie I felt drawn toward explaining my inner world. This desire to communicate felt new and strange, and that was part of the reason I was so messed up around her. But I’d promised to try to be myself.

“I was thinking how likable and charming you are,” I said. She smiled. “Cute, too, especially when you smile. Then I got to thinking who wouldn’t like you, and I could only think of two kinds of people.”

“Do tell,” she said, laughing.

“One kind is people jealous of how beautiful and intelligent you are. It’s, like, seriously unfair. The other is people who’d worry that you aren’t the right kind of religious person. You know, for me, or for whomever.”

“Like your Mom and Dad,” she said.

“Yeah,” I said. “They’d love you in one way, like I said, but… Do you know what a yoke is?”

“You mean inside an egg?” An eyebrow arched.

“No, one of those wooden things you put around the necks of oxen to help them work as a team.”

“Oh, yeah,” she said.

“In my parent’s religion,” I said, “they warn young people about being unequally yoked, meaning don’t team up with people with different religious beliefs. That’s what they’d worry about in your case, no matter how much they like you. But they don’t know how much I’ve changed, so there wouldn’t be as much of a mismatch on the religious side of things as they assume. The true mismatch is now between them and me.”

“What will the Methodist church we’re going to on Sunday be like? Would they think we’re unequally yoked? You know, if they knew us both well.”

“Probably not,” I said. “From what I’ve heard, most Methodists are more middle-of-the-road, and not as extreme in their beliefs as my parents’ Southern Baptist church.”

“What would your parents say about your breakfast?” She said it in a light and happy way that made me want to kiss her. Well, why not? She was my girlfriend after all, as weird as that sounded.

I leaned forward. She did too. I kissed her lightly and tenderly before breaking away. “My Mom would say ‘you’re a big boy and you need a hearty breakfast.’ My dad would say – I lowered my voice to a growl – ‘show some self-control, son.’”

“I love them already!” she said, sounding delighted. “I’m thinking they’ll be happy I’m going to church with you. Honestly, though, the main reason I want to go with you is because I’m fascinated with it. Religion, I mean. I might take some classes in it. It seems so strange, like an alien way of life, but it produces wonderful marriages like your parents’ and impressive young people like you, so it’s something I should know about.”

“I’m glad you’re interested,” I said. “It’ll be nice to have someone I can talk to about it. I’m feeling pretty confused about all things religion.”

“Let’s go get ready for our day,” she said happily, standing and carrying our empty plates.

Chapter 07

Back in Carothers, she led me to her dorm room on two.

“Can you wait here while I shower?”

“Sure,” I said, “but I thought we were going to spend the whole day together.” It was a stupid joke – my own clumsy way of flirting, I guess.

“Separate bathrooms for men and women, silly.” I’ll be back shortly. You’re not dripping with sweat anymore, so you can lie down on the spare bed while you wait.” Then she was gone.

My mind drifted. Our one-day anniversary was still hours away. This was absurdly fast. We needed to go on a proper date. I started making a mental list of all the date ideas I could think of.

I was still adding items when the door opened and Amelie walked in, her hair wet, her face scrubbed, her torso wrapped in a towel, and her feet in rubber flip flops.

“Welcome back,” I said, smiling and trying to play it cool when a stunning girl wrapped in a bath towel was standing a few feet away from me.

“I need to get dressed; would you mind looking away until I say it’s okay?”

“Sure,” I said, and rolled toward the wall. This was a whole other kind of intense. I heard the towel hit the floor and then clothes were moving.

“I’m good,” she said eventually, and I turned back to see her drying her hair with the towel. “Thank you for being a gentleman.”

“You’re welcome,” I said, “and since we’re trying to be honest with each other, I hope you don’t mind me saying that I found that very difficult to do.”

“Best of all worlds,” she said, laughing.

“What?”

“You wanted to look – I could tell – and you didn’t. That’s perfect. If I sit on the bed, would you brush out my hair?”

“Sure,” I said. I sat up on the bed and she handed me her brush before sitting cross-legged in front of me.

“I haven’t done this before,” I said, as I started to move the brush. “Any special instructions?”

“Just what you’d think,” she said. “It’s long and gets tangled, so get the knots out.”

There were a bunch of knots. I mumbled a few apologies as I figured out how to get through them with the brush.

“You’re good at that,” she said. “I like the way you hold the hair with your hand so it doesn’t tug on my scalp.”

“Beginner’s luck,” I said.

After a few minutes, I told her she was all brushed out.

“Your turn,” she said. “Your roommate being around means you should get your gear and come back here. You can shower on this level. Then we can head out.”

“I can just shower and change upstairs,” I said.

“That’s not the plan,” she said. “Remember, together the whole day? Quick!”

A few minutes later I returned to Amelie’s room with a change of clothes and my shower gear. She was sitting at her desk working on her makeup.

“Back in a few minutes,” I said, and she smiled warmly.

After a quick shower, I realized I could have changed in the men’s bathroom. Too late now. I came back with a towel wrapped around my body, just as she had. I hadn’t even thought about it.

“Change behind me,” she said, which I proceeded to do while she continued her makeup routine. Once clothed I got my hair as dry as I could and mumbled something about forgetting my brush.

“Ooo, may I?” she asked.

“Sure,” I said, as she approached me with her brush.

“Sit,” she said, pointing to the bed. She stood in front of me and started brushing, tingles pouring down my spine. “I used to do my Dad’s hair when I was little. Mom’s and Katelyn’s too, of course, but I liked doing Dad’s hair. No tangles. And he’d let me do it however I wanted.”

“Go ahead,” I said, hearing the hinted request. I felt her doing something… parting it differently, I think.

“Have a look,” she said, grabbing her mirror from the desk and holding it in front.

“Center part,” I said. “I can live with it for a day.”

Then it occurred to me that I was looking at myself in a mirror. That had just been on her desk. While I was changing behind her.

“Amelie! Seriously?!”

“A girl’s gotta know what she’s in for,” she said, smiling sweetly.

“Damn, girl. Okay, what’s the verdict?”

“I’m a little intimidated,” she said softly, biting her bottom lip. I had no idea how to respond to that.

“You owe me a kiss for peeking,” I said, eventually.

“If you had a mirror, would you have peeked?”

“Good question,” I grumbled, without answering. “I hope not.”

“You’re not certain, so we probably owe each other a kiss,” she said, suddenly standing between my legs a mere inch away. She leaned down ever so slowly as I tilted my head back to meet her. That kiss started sweet and rapidly accelerated into brand new territory.

“Amelie,” I moaned. “Not… safe…”

“Why?” she mumbled around the fiery kiss.

“Just… too much… way… too… much…”

“Okay,” she said, lifting her head away but cradling my head against her chest, my cheek pressing into the pendant hanging around her neck.

“Or that!” I said in alarm.

She released my head and stepped away, sitting on the bed opposite me.

“We need to talk about sex,” she said. “Not now, not yet. But I’m feeling… Oh God.” She dropped her head and breathed deeply to steady herself. “John, we just need to talk about it, okay?”

“Okay,” I said. I’d never actually talked with a girl about sex before. I had no idea what to expect. But I was sure that a conversation about sex with Amelie would not be standard fare, whatever that was.

“In the meantime, I’m gonna make a call,” she said.

Chapter 08

She moved to grab her phone then sat on the bed beside me. A couple of seconds later, she appeared on the screen. Or someone who looked almost identical to her.

“Hey sis!” said Amelie. “John, this is Katelyn. We talk every day, sometimes more than once. Katelyn, John.”

“Hi Katelyn,” I said. “I thought Amelie was showing me a photo of herself for a second until you started moving.”

“Well, we do have the same birthday, so we are practically twins,” said Katelyn. “Nice to meet you John. Amelie told me about you last night.”

“Same birthday?”

“We were meant to be twins,” said Amelie, “but we missed by a year. Some kind of stork mixup, most likely.”

“But Mom and Dad raised us as twins anyway,” said Katelyn. “You’re becoming an architect?”

“I hope so,” I said. “I’m in a five-year dual degree and it’s supposed to be grueling, with more than half dropping out, so who knows? I might not make it.”

“As if,” said Katelyn. “If you were the kind of guy who would drop out, I wouldn’t be talking to you right now, and you wouldn’t have shared more than a brief conversation with my highly perceptive sister.”

“I see you’re both quite direct,” I said, laughing. “Must be a Miami thing.”

“We read minds, too,” said Katelyn, making Amelie giggle. “Like, I knew you were going to make that crack about Miami.”

“Impressive,” I said.

“Hey,” said Amelie, “I just wanted to check in briefly because we’ve got a day full of orientation stuff.”

“Together?” asked Katelyn.

“Together,” said Amelie, smiling at me sweetly.

“Good God, John!” cried Katelyn. “You’ve broken my sister!”

“I’m sure you’ll be able to put her back together, being a special twin and all,” I said.

“I don’t know. She seems pretty damn broken to me.”

“You’re broken?” I said to Amelie, smiling and frowning at the same time.

“I might be a little bit broken,” she said, in an absolutely intoxicating way. It was quiet, and she looked at me shyly, those dimples working overtime, one hand brushing hair away from her eyes.

“Well, I’m definitely busted to hell and back,” I said, as though we weren’t on a video call with someone else. This was all sooooo out of character for me.

“I’m no expert,” said Katelyn, “but you two need to slow down a bit.” She sounded worried and amused all at once.

“Not today,” said Amelie. “We have plans. We tried slowing down yesterday and it didn’t take. So we’re ditching the usual dating rules and doing whatever we want. We can slow down later.”

“Whatever, sis. Just don’t confuse the poor man or yourself any more than you have already. John, tell me, why five years?”

“The accredited architecture program is a professional degree requiring five years. The honors program is its own four-year academic degree – that’s how I get to live in the Honors Quad here. The university worked out a way to do both in five years, including summers.”

“That means you and I will graduate at the same time,” said Katelyn.

“Where are you planning to attend college?”

“Right there at UT Austin, if I can get in,” she said.

“What’s the thing with the Foster girls and UT Austin?”

“I don’t care much what I study but Mom and Dad said I need to get a four-year degree. Amelie and I talked about it, and she applied for schools where I could probably get in with my mediocre grades.” Amelie snorted but said nothing. “And Amelie turned down offers from more prestigious schools so we could live in the same town.”

I raised my eyebrows in surprise. “Where did you get offers?” I asked Amelie.

“Almost wherever she applied,” jumped in Katelyn. “Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and a dozen other lofty places.”

“Not true,” said Amelie.

“Weirdly, Columbia turned her down, but that was the only Ivy that did,” said Katelyn, ignoring Amelie’s protest. “The problem is that, unlike my brainy sister, who is obsessed with extracurricular activities, I got a B once in middle school and I prefer to stay at home, so I’m not Ivy material.”

I took in Amelie’s sisterly scowl at Katelyn’s self-deprecation and distracted her. “You’re full of surprises,” I said, looking at her in something approaching wonder.

“Like I told you,” she said.

“I reckon I’m lucky to have gotten in here,” I said. “The architecture program is super-competitive. It’s also daunting, with year-round work, super-heavy workloads, and that terrifying cull rate. There are over a hundred of us to start, and I’m sure we’ll all be looking around at each other, wondering who’s going to crack under the pressure.”

“We’re calculating that UT Austin is a good bet,” said Amelie. “McCombs is hard to get into, especially from out of state, and fits my needs perfectly. We’ve looked into it and Katelyn has a strong chance of getting in here, depending a bit on the major she applies for. She’s a brilliant writer and they care about that here.”

“If I don’t get in there I won’t know what to do,” said Katelyn. The conversation, which had been flowing comfortably, abruptly ground to a halt. After a beat, Amelie came to the rescue, sounding for the first time like the older sister.

“We’ll figure it out,” said Amelie, and she smiled tenderly. “Talk later?”

“Yep,” said Katelyn, smiling – bravely, I thought.

We ended the call and Amelie looked at me, waiting for something. I was about to say, “she’s nice” or some such polite but meaningless throwaway line when I remembered the new rules.

“Less than 24 hours together and you introduce me to your sister without any warning?”

“You did fine, John,” she said. “But Katelyn’s right, this is so unlike me.” She gave me this impossibly adorable wonky smile.

I felt the powerful urge to tell Amelie that I… Rules or no rules, there was no way I was saying that.

I suddenly felt unbearably antsy, and abruptly stood up. I desperately needed to break out of this spiraling confusion. From the tiny frown that creased her forehead, I could tell Amelie wanted to ask what was happening, but mercifully she let it go.

“Ready to hit the campus?” I asked, my head still spinning from what I’d almost said. “McCombs, the College of Liberal Arts, and the Architecture School are all close by.”

“Let’s go,” she said.

I was not built for this kind of hot-house emotional intensity and was enormously grateful just to be walking – anywhere, for any reason. And doing it with Amelie was perfect. I could tell she was watching me, wondering about the sudden shift in mood, trying to give me space.

Somehow she knew exactly what I needed. She just gave it to me, no fuss, no questions. It amazed me enough to pull me out of the awful restless feeling I’d been trapped in. And seeing her compassionate way of handling me made me so grateful. I could feel myself surrendering to her, giving myself over, and it scared me how permanent it felt. The feelings were just too strong, too much, too fast.

I told myself not to take it out on Amelie. Dad had figured out how to manage the unbelievable stress he faced every day at work without taking it out on Mom. All I had to do was manage some unfamiliar emotions. I could do that by moving.

What I really wanted to do was play basketball. Hard. Throw my weight around in the key, feel those other sweaty bodies resisting mine. Just thinking about doing that was helping as we walked toward Sutton, the home of my first-semester studio. We crossed West Dean Keeton St walking south on Whitis, dodging more students and their families navigating the Mooov-In process. This was good. Walking was helping.

Chapter 09

“How do you know where to go?” asked Amelie, as we headed south around the gentle curve of Whitis.

“Map,” I said.

“Where?” she asked. I patted the phone in my shorts. “And where’s the map now that your phone is in your pocket?”

“My head, I guess?” I said. I noticed the tone of my voice rising at the end, as though I was asking whether that was an acceptable answer. I couldn’t read her face. More confusion. More restless discomfort. Another tiny frown from her.

“Race you,” she said, and ran ahead. I started out after her. As with walking and jogging, so with sprinting: our speeds seemed to be about the same despite the stride lengths being different. She stayed ahead of me all the way past the campus computer store, when she suddenly diverted to her right, pulling up in front of the César Chávez statue.

It had only been a two-block sprint, but it had helped. Had she known I needed to move?

“This is the guy who organized farm workers, right?”

“Yep,” I said. “And the statue is here because of a student movement to rebalance representation in public art on campus. Same with the MLK and Barbara Jordan statues.”

“Figures you’d know about art in public places around here,” she said, leading me to a tree in the West Mall.

“Sit,” she said, and I leaned back on the tree, trying to remember how many times she’d told me to sit already. It didn’t feel bossy. More like efficient.

Amelie leaned back against me, both of us facing west, welcoming the shade afforded by the broad trunk and the leafy boughs above. It was only just nine in the morning, and it was already hot. I wrapped my arms around her waist, leaned back on the tree, closed my eyes, and drank in the moment.

The West Mall was noisy. I could hear the beeping of a reversing truck, student and family clusters chatting in a variety of languages as they drifted by, some kids yelling about a frisbee. I could feel the tree bark through my shirt, the grass I was sitting on, Amelie’s back on my chest. It was noisy here but I felt almost calm again, the terrifying feeling of falling pushed to the background.

I was half afraid Amelie was going to launch an interrogation into the awkward mood shift she seemed to notice from before. She didn’t. She just lay back against me, her hands resting on my hands clasped around her. The scent of her hair, the feel of her body, the interior quietness… this was nice.

I needed more of this. Simple presence. Emotional stability. Time. Calm. Quiet.

We must have stayed like that for ten minutes. Very still. Centering. Our own world, despite the bustling people and vehicles.

Amelie lifted one of my hands and kissed it.

“Too much intensity, right?” She was so gentle about it.

“Yes,” I said.

And that was it. No interrogation. She showed me she understood. I leaned forward and kissed the top of her head, wondering if she understood how grateful I felt.

Suddenly I was the one who needed to talk.

“Spin ’round,” I said, and she sat on my legs facing me.

I stared at her gorgeous face. She tried twice to brush back a strand of my floppy fringe.

“The last time my dad talked about his emotions in front of me was, like, never,” I began. She was attentive, hungry for my words. “He has plenty of emotions. And some of them come through his actions. But he’s, like, highly self-regulated. I mean, Amelie, he and Viking risk their lives every day on the bomb squad. Yet at home he’s totally calm. Not relaxed, exactly, but rigorously calm. He’s awesome. Like hero-amazing. To me.”

“Viking?”

“His dog. Probably my best friend for the last decade.”

She nodded. I didn’t know why, but I really wanted her to understand this.

“I don’t want to live like that. I want to loosen up. Make mistakes without beating myself up. Be surprised sometimes. Feel less locked down. But I’m built like him. I feel things deep like he does. I need stability. Quietness.”

She nodded again.

“Talking to you like this feels perfect in one way,” I said. “I feel this overwhelming urge to let you see me. But doing it inside 24 hours of knowing you feels alarmingly fast. Scary and unsettling.”

Another nod.

“Amelie, picture me like a gigantic loyalty machine. I’m gonna lock on to someone and stay locked my whole life. I can feel it. I could feel it with my past girlfriends, though the locking on part never happened. That person will have my whole heart and only they can break it. Feeling that locking-on starting to happen with you feels very, very wrong. Like a serious mistake. For me, I mean. Knowing the way I am. It’s not that I need to guard my heart, exactly. It’s that I need to know the person I give my heart to – and I need to know them very well. That takes time. Much more time than we’ve had.”

She nodded a fourth time.

“I’ve never felt like this before so I’m seriously disoriented. But I’m not talking about distance or separation or even slowing down. I’m going to be insanely busy soon, and we’ll have lots of time apart. I think what I need is steadiness. Just being together without all the noise. Like a mountain lake – still and deep.”

She nodded a fifth time, this one particularly deliberate.

“And that is officially the longest I have talked about anything, ever, to anyone.”

Amelie shuffled closer on my thighs. Then closer. Then her hands were on my cheeks. The whole time she was staring at me, her eyes locked on mine.

“I think I just fell in love with your Dad,” she said.

It totally cracked me up. We were both laughing so hard she had to lean her head on my shoulder. Eventually we calmed down and she resumed staring at me.

“Close your eyes,” she said quietly. I did, focusing on the weight of her body on my legs, the scent of her hair, the feel of her waist beneath my hands.

“I’ll be your mountain lake,” she said. “I can feel it. I’m made for this. Even though I’m off my game, the normal me longs for that consistency, giving and receiving. I’ve got it in me to lock on, too. Differently than you but just as strong, I reckon. I’ve never been with someone who made me feel the possibility of actually locking on until now. So I need to know who I’m dealing with, just as much as you do. We just got caught by the surprise of it, both of us. But there’s still a real thing here to explore. It’s not wrong because it’s intense, John. We just need to find a good way to handle it.”

I slowly opened my eyes. “If you’d told me this could happen to me one day ago, I would have laughed in your face. Politely, of course.”

She smiled, then. She was more than happy; this was joy, and it spilled all over me. I was beaming, I think, but the feeling was unfamiliar so I wasn’t sure how I looked. Probably goofy.

Chapter 10

“I want to know Viking,” said Amelie.

“You can come visit him in San Antonio,” I said. Then I thought about what that must have sounded like and rolled my eyes in frustration. “I think I just invited you to meet my parents, but I wasn’t thinking about that, honest. Just Viking. And, unlike Viking, meeting my parents would take quite a bit of preparation, on both sides.”

“Well, I’m up for that, too. But what’s Viking like?”

I closed my eyes and listened to the cicadas droning in the branches overhead. I felt Amelie’s balance shift and her hands loosely drape around my neck, as she leaned closer, the heat of her forehead giving away its presence, an inch from mine, nearly touching. I opened my eyes to see her out-of-focus face studying mine with a half‑smile.

“Tell me,” she said.

I opened my mouth, closed it, and tilted my head back. “Talking about him makes me miss him. And you sitting there, leaning forward, your pendant dangling… it’s… distracting.”

Amelie giggled and rearranged herself sideways in my lap, her head tucked into my shoulder, one hand on my chest, the other wrapped partway around my waist. “Better?” she asked.

“Better,” I said, though having an intriguing and beautiful girl on my lap was still pretty distracting. “Viking’s… well, imagine the world’s most disciplined soldier trapped inside the world’s biggest cuddle addict.”

“Perfect,” she said, giggling.

“He’s a Belgian Malinois, but not the scary kind you see in police videos. He’s friendly. He’s got this built‑in radar for human feelings. Especially mine. If I’m wound too tight, he’ll come put his head on my leg and just… stay. Make everything slower. Better.”

“So the bomb-squad dog is your emotional-support animal?”

“Yep. Dad would say Viking could sense my mood before I could. Viking would sleep near me whenever Dad would let him, follow me around. He’d tuck himself into my legs when I’d sit down to do homework. He loved wrestling with me when he was younger. Even now at eleven he loves running with me, so long as I don’t push him too hard.”

“Was I your Viking replacement this morning?”

“I hadn’t thought about that but maybe,” I said. “You look better in running gear, though.”

She laughed and patted my chest.

“I bet he’s protective too, right?”

“He’s basically a four‑legged guardian angel with fur instead of wings,” I said. “There was this one time – I was nine so he was, like, two, and must have been with us for just a year – some guy wandered into our backyard. Viking just stepped in front of me. Didn’t bark, didn’t freak out. Just this low, quiet growl that said, Nope. Not today. The dude left in five seconds flat. Dad caught the guy out front. Apparently he said he was looking for work, but who knows? I never found out what happened to him and Dad wouldn’t have told me if I’d asked, but I was fine.”

“Viking: 1. Stranger danger: 0.”

“Pretty much. Then when I was fifteen, some dude came charging at me and Mom in a supermarket parking lot. Viking was waiting with Dad at the car and broke heel – huge no‑no – but he got between me and this crazed guy and barked once. One bark. The guy skidded to a halt like in a cartoon, and reconsidered whatever deranged plan he had.”

“Note to self: Never approach the Anderson family at high speed,” said Amelie.

I laughed. “When Dad tells that story, he says that single bark was like controlled lightning. But Viking’s the gentlest creature I’ve ever known… until someone threatens a member of the Anderson clan. Then he’s a whole different animal.”

Amelie leaned closer and kissed me on the cheek. “I love him already,” she said, and homesickness flooded me for the first time since Mom and Dad left me in the garage.

“He just retired,” I said. “He flunked his last fitness test, but he’s been working for more than a year longer than average. He had a good run.”

“What’s he doing now?”

“Mostly sleeping, I reckon, but his retirement was the same time as I left so I’m not sure. Dad’s moving into training, so no more field calls, but Viking’s still with him most of every day. They leave the house early and come home early so Viking gets these long, slow afternoons. Dad loves him something fierce. He could have gotten a new animal to keep up the work, but he wants Viking to enjoy the rest he’s earned after a decade of courageous and flawless service. So he’s shifting his career for the dog.”

We sat there cuddling quietly.

“Oh, get this,” I said, suddenly energized. Viking recognizes me on video, which dogs can’t usually do. Last night I called home and Viking started whining because he could hear my voice. So Dad cast the call onto the TV to make me life‑sized. Viking walked right up and nose‑booped the screen. I didn’t see it, but Dad and Mom were laughing about it. He sat down in front of the TV and just stared, apparently. Probably confused by the lack of scent.”

“He misses you,” said Amelie.

“Yeah. I miss him too. Each day’s gonna feel a bit off for a while, I guess. Mom and I talked about it on the drive up here – how I might feel, how Viking might react to my sudden absence. Apparently he’s sleeping beside my bed or outside my bedroom door if it’s closed, staying close to my scent. The scent will fade eventually, but Dad says the imprinting will last for life.”

“What was he like when he was young, like when he first arrived?”

“Playful,” I said, laughing as my mind was flooded with memories. “He’d steal Dad’s and my socks. Repeatedly. And when Dad ordered him to bring them back, he’d only return mine.”

Amelie laughed brightly.

“Back then, Viking hated thunderstorms and fireworks, but only for the first five minutes. After that he’d fall asleep like nothing was going on. And he’d be so goofy if he was home when I got back from school, dancing around me and wanting to play or wrestle or run or whatever.”

“I think I just learned as much about you and your family as Viking,” she said. “You haven’t said much about your mother yet, but I’m drawn to your Dad and Viking, and really want to meet them. And I really want them to like me so I can get close to them.”

I chuckled. “This ‘ditch convention and say what you’re thinking’ method of getting to know each other is really something.”

She tucked herself into me more tightly.

Chapter 11

Fifteen minutes later we were on the fifth floor of Sutton, looking through the glazing of room 100, the studio where I’d be working huge hours in less than a week. We saw drafting tables in formation, rolled tracing paper on each one. There was a faint smell of sawdust and glue even in the corridor.

A wiry, balding, black man in his late forties passed and said, “You two new? You can peek inside if you want – I’ll open it for a sec.”

“Thanks,” I said. “John Anderson, new BArch student. This is my girlfriend, Amelie Foster, a first year in McCombs.”

“Professor Roscoe Phillips,” he said. “I’ll be running first semester studio, so we’ll get to know one another. Go, poke around. I need to check on a few things.” While I moved through the space, taking it all in, I listened to Amelie engaging Professor Phillips as he did his prep work.

“John says the dropout rate is over fifty percent. Why is that? I mean, why do students go to all the trouble of competing to get in and then give up?”

“Some of them misjudge the workload,” said the professor. “But most of those who move on realize that they lack the talent. It takes deep giftedness to be a good architect. But we still graduate about fifty people a year, and we have one of the best placement records in the country, so we think we’re doing okay.”

“John’s doing the dual degree with Plan 2 Honors in CLA. I figure I won’t be seeing a lot of him for the next five years.”

“That’s a big load, sure,” said Professor Phillips, “but you’ll be furiously busy in McCombs. My bet is that you’ll spend a lot of time studying together.” He called out to John. “Any questions back there?”

“No,” I said, as I walked back to join them.

“How’s it feel?” asked Professor Phillips, looking earnestly at me. I got the sense that he really wanted to know.

“Honestly?” I asked.

“Life’s too short for anything else,” he said, smiling warmly.

“I feel like this might change everything about me,” I said.

“Good answer,” he said, and led us out of the studio. “I’ll see you next week, John. Nice to meet you, Amelie.”

We walked through Goldsmith but it was hard to figure out what anything in the main architecture building really meant when it was so quiet. We dropped into the architecture library in Battle Hall briefly.

“Imagine knowing what’s in these shelves,” I said, the sense of wonder drawing me in. I thought the hundred-fifty or so architecture books I’d consumed was a lot, but it was nothing against this trove of wisdom and beauty. I reined in the impulse to explore, and we went next door to the CLA quad instead. We walked through the ground floor of the CLA buildings. As with Goldsmith, it was difficult to grasp. I guessed it would become clear with time.

The next stop was the undergraduate part of McCombs School of Business, a bizarre combination of buildings next door to CLA. Once again, we felt a bit lost.

“Do you know where any of your classes are?” I asked Amelie.

“No idea,” she said. “This tour has been a total flop, apart from the studio visit.”

“Let’s go see the graduate business building,” I said. “We can walk by the new undergrad tower, which should go live while you’re still here.”

“You know where those buildings are, too?”

“I do,” I said, and got us moving in the right direction.

We couldn’t see much of the new tower on Whitis between 20^th and 21^st but it had a huge footprint and was going to be seventeen stories, so it was a gigantic deal for business undergrads. I was glad Amelie was going to get a chance to experience it before she graduated.

The Graduate School of Business was housed in Rowling Hall, one of the buildings I’d studied before coming here. It was a stunning structure, and the east-facing atrium was all space and light and dancing structure.

After walking through it, Amelie sat with me at one of the shaded tables in the external courtyard.

“I guess I won’t be here much, being mainly for MBAs, but the architecture takes my breath away,” she said. I nodded and stared back at the façade, the atrium visible from outside. All the indoor-outdoor spaces on each level brought the light and space inside the building. It was majestic design.

But I had to keep my eye on the time. Amelie saw me looking at my phone.

“You on a schedule?”

“Yes. It’s getting toward 11:30am. We have an appointment.”

“John Anderson, what have you got planned?”

“A tour,” I said, as we walked quickly north toward the UT Tower. “Dad planned it for me. And the problem is that if you come with me, dad’s gonna hear that I was with a girl. That’ll lead to questions. So you need to decide: come with me, or wait for quarter of an hour and rejoin me afterwards. Sorry about the lack of warning.”

“Come with,” she said. “But maybe no PDA and just be new friends.”

“Perfect,” I said.

A couple of minutes later, we were waiting at the spot dad had texted me, with Amelie still having no idea what was about to happen.

“John Anderson?” called a man from behind me.

“Yes sir,” I said, shaking his hand warmly. “This is Amelie Foster; we met yesterday and have been trying to wrap our minds around the places we need to go next week.”

“Lieutenant Jack Barnes,” he said, shaking Amelie’s hand. “I’ve known your dad for a long time, John. He’s kind of a hero around here. Twice he and his dog came up to handle bomb threats, both the real deal. He’s been up a bunch of other times to train us with the Austin PD. When he reached out, I was glad to help. Come on inside.”

We followed Lieutenant Barnes, Amelie with a giant question mark scrawled on her face. I laughed quietly as he walked us to the elevators and we ascended. We chatted about his work and our degree programs until we reached the observation deck level. He unlocked the access door with his ID and then we were out in the open.

Amelie gasped when she realized where we were. It was hot and breezy, and the clock face was huge from there. The protective fencing cast a delicate grid of shadows across parts of the deck. The usual campus noise had dissipated to almost nothing. It was peaceful, awe-inspiring, and surreal to be looking down at the campus, which seemed so tiny from way up high.

“Lieutenant Barnes,” said Amelie, with that thoroughly charming manner she had, “we’re still getting to know Austin. Could you tell us what we’re seeing?”

“Sure,” he said. “This is the southern view, and you can see the Austin skyline, including the Texas State Capitol dome. That’s Lady Bird Lake glinting in the distance.”

After a minute, we walked clockwise to take in the westerly view. “That’s Hill Country,” he said. I instantly fell in love with the texture and the light of the rolling green ridges and faint blue silhouettes stretching for miles after the flat land gave way steep hills and a completely different kind of landscape.

“It must be amazing up here at sunset,” said Amelie.

“Yes,” said the Lieutenant, walking us slowly around to the north. “Visitors rave about it. To the north, you can see the engineering and natural sciences quad areas, the north campus neighborhoods, and the Austin suburbs.”

He kept slowly walking until we took in the easterly view. “And this way you can see the athletic complexes, the medical district, more Austin neighborhoods, and the low-lying Texas plain that runs all the way to the Gulf.”

“I can get the feel for the original forty-acre layout from up here,” I said.

“Yes, the original square is easy to pick out from this height,” said the Lieutenant. “Of course, the campus is more than ten times larger now. Take a couple more minutes to look around and meet me at the elevator. Sorry to rush you but this is definitely an exception, if you know what I mean.”

Amelie and I slowly paced the deck. Alone now, her hand found mine. I explained the history of the original forty-acre plot of land that the state set aside for the university, before UT Austin was founded in 1883. She was quiet and listened to me describe a little of the history of an impressive state institution.

As we rode the elevator down with Lieutenant Barnes, I thanked him warmly for the tour.

“It was a total surprise for me,” said Amelie. “I should make a point of hanging out with John in the future!”

The Lieutenant chuckled and walked us out of the building. We thanked him again and set out for lunch at Kins.

“That was quite the romantic interlude, John,” said Amelie, her hand snaking around my waist as she grabbed my arm and draped it around her shoulders.

“Dad would be surprised to hear it described that way. But I’m glad you liked it. It’s not easy getting up on a public tour, and private tours like that one are impossible. Of course, later today I’ll get an intrigued call from mom, right after dad hears that I wasn’t alone.”

“What if we call him over lunch? You know, like new friends, and me grateful for such an unplanned treat.”

“Really?”

“Sure,” she said. “No boyfriend, girlfriend stuff, but I really ought to thank him. And I’ll find a way to tell him that you’re coming with me to the Methodist church on Sunday to check it out.”

“Okay, sure,” I said. “You’re amazing,” I said, kind of blurting it out.

“Why, thank you, kind sir,” she said, mirth dancing in her eyes. “So are you, John. And your dad and Viking. And I’m pretty sure your mom must be, too.”

Chapter 12

“Our” table was free again, so we ate lunch there – sandwich for me, salad for Amelie. When we were nearly done, Amelie said, “How about that call?”

“Come around here,” I said.

“Start the call first, then invite me around,” she said.

“Smart,” I acknowledged, starting the video call. “I don’t know his new schedule. If he’s busy, I can leave him a message.”

“John!” said dad, appearing on the screen. “I’m at home. Give me a sec to get you on the screen for Viking.” I heard him call out for mom, who came running.

“Watch this,” he said, turning the camera on Viking. “Say something.”

“Hey Viking, boy,” I said. “I’m missing you like crazy.” Sure enough, the big dog came up and booped the screen then lay down in front to watch me. “Wow,” I said, as dad turned the camera to face him, now with mom right behind him, wiping her hands on a dish towel. “Hi Mom,” I called and stupidly waved.

“Hi sweetie,” she said. “You doing okay? Viking’s not his usual self with you gone.”

“I miss him almost as much as I miss you guys,” I said. “I met Lieutenant Barnes for the tour of the UT Tower. Amazing, Dad! Thank you so much for arranging it.”

“I heard you had a friend with you,” he said.

“A friend?” echoed mom.

“Amelie, come over here,” I said, and she pulled up a chair next to mine.

“Hi Mr. and Mrs. Anderson,” she said, with her beautiful smile. “John pushed my Mooov-In cart yesterday – other people just walked by when I was struggling but he stopped to help. Today we toured the buildings we need to navigate next week. And he agreed to come with me to the Methodist church right near the residence hall. Mr. Anderson, I wanted to thank you for the tour. I was lucky that Lieutenant Barnes let me up with John. The campus and the whole city are amazing from up there.”

“You’re welcome,” he said. “Amelie, is it?”

“Yes, sir,” she said. “Amelie Foster. Business honors. Before I go and let you guys talk, would you mind showing me Viking? John told me about him, and he sounds like a very special companion.”

“Sure,” said dad, and turned the phone around, to show the big dog lying there, ears perked up waiting for any sound from me.

“Beautiful dog!” she said, as dad’s phone turned around again. “Well, nice to meet you both. I’ll leave you to it.” She picked up the plates and walked away, but soon was back at the table, sitting right in front of me, making faces in wordless commentary on what she could hear of the video call.

“Made a friend already?” said mom. Amelie nodded slowly, grinning mischievously.

“Maybe,” I said. Amelie rolled her eyes. “My roommate James arrived last evening. He seems nice enough. I met Professor Phillips, the instructor for first-semester studio. That’s the first of the gigantic design sequence at the core of the architecture degree. He’s going to be very important for me, one way or another.” Amelie stared at me seriously when I said that, like she was as invested in my success as I was.

“Dad, how’s the new routine?” I watched as mom’s hand touched his shoulder tenderly. I just loved the way my parents were there for each other at big moments.

“Getting there,” he said, which is about as much as I could expect. “Your mom’s working on recertification and updating her training.” Classic deflection, and I smiled fondly at them. “With the teacher shortage, she’ll probably land a job while she does all of that.”

“Early elementary teaching has changed a lot,” she said, which made Amelie’s eyebrows raise. I couldn’t tell why; maybe she was genuinely surprised. “New methods for teaching reading, new technology, and what not, so I’ve got a lot to learn.”

“All four of us are in big transitions, then,” I said. Amelie smiled so warmly then. I stretched my hand out of mom and dad’s view, and she leaned forward and grasped it.

“In my case, I’m expecting gigantic work weeks starting in a few days. I’m feeling a bit intimidated, but also excited, like, deeply excited about learning. I really appreciate the opportunity. Thank you both.” I was shocked to see Amelie’s eyes get misty.

“Call and tell us about the Methodist church on Sunday,” said mom.

“Will do. Love you both,” I said.

“We love you, too, John,” said mom, speaking for dad, as usual when it came to stuff like that.

“Bye Viking,” I said and ended the call.

My focus was immediately on Amelie, who seemed upset.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, squeezing her hand to offer comfort.

“You thanked them for giving you the opportunity to learn,” she said. “Who does that?”

“Like, fifty percent of us?” What caught Amelie was constantly surprising me.

She just shook her head, a tear running down her cheek. I leaned forward and gently wiped the tear away.

“I suppose you think I need to get out more,” I said.

She nodded, her eyes glowing. “You’re so lovely,” I whispered. “And you see things so differently.”

“You see things differently, too, John. I want to learn to see that way too, so I can be in it with you.”

“You handled mom and dad beautifully,” I said.

“It’s my thing,” she said. “I could feel their bond,” she added, kind of blurting it out. “I love how close they are.”

“But you kind of misstated how we met as well as the church thing,” I added frowning lightly.

“Was that okay?” she said warily. “I didn’t want to get into unnecessary details.”

“It’s fine,” I said. I didn’t want to fight about it, but I thought she’d been doing more than just leaving out details; she was making the story fit the audience – and she wasn’t wrong about the audience. “I love how you see people, like, effortlessly and fast.”

“Katelyn sees more than me, sometimes,” she said. “Well, differently than me, anyway. I’m the one who reads feelings. She’s the one who reads the room – like, who has power, who’s pretending, who’s full of it. Between us, we catch pretty much everything. We keep each other honest, too.”

It occurred to me that Amelie must be missing her sister every bit as much as I was missing Viking. I stopped myself from saying that out loud; I don’t know why.

Chapter 13

Back in Amelie’s room after lunch, she sat at her desk piecing her schedule together while I sat at the other desk and wrote out the list of no-cost dates I’d dreamed up earlier in the day while she’d been showering.

“I should have written out my schedule before today’s building tour,” she said.

“You’ll figure it out. And we can do the tour again tomorrow, if you want, with actual room targets. Look at this,” I said, handing her my top ten date ideas.

She stood and walked me to her bed where we lay down, her shoulder in the crook of my arm as she read through the list.

IDEAS FOR DATES WITH AMELIE

1. Sunset with a view of the UT Tower.

2. Walk the Speedway pedestrian mall at twilight.

3. Explore the Blanton Museum of Art.

4. Visit the Harry Ransom Center, see the Gutenberg Bible.

5. Sketch and read together at the Turtle Pond.

6. Architecture mini-tour: Hidden courtyards, weird stairwells, acoustics under archways, figure out our ten best benches on campus.

7. Wander the Drag and people‑watch.

8. Catch a free Butler School of Music recital.

9. Lie on the South Mall lawn and watch the stars come out.

10. Explore the Kinsolving Garden and eventually every tucked‑away campus green space, figure out our favorite trees for lying against.

“This is so romantic,” she said, leaning over and kissing my cheek. “Can we do the tower sunset thing tonight?”

“Absolutely,” I said.

“All of them sound wonderful,” she said. “Do you really know all of the hidden nooks and crannies around here?”

“I’ve spent a long time studying the campus,” I said. “Not sure how much of it will be interesting to you, though.”

“If you’re fascinated by it then I’m going to be interested,” she said.

After a beat, my usual self-editing failed me once again because I blurted out what I was feeling. “I wish I could….” My words dwindled to nothing as I realized I didn’t know how to reveal my financial situation. Damn, John, don’t start if you can’t finish. What’s wrong with you, boy?!

She rolled onto her side and faced me, a tiny frown on her face, and I could sense her mind working again. She said nothing and stared for long enough that the silence became awkward, and I felt like I needed to fill it.

“I want to take you places. Nice places. And I can’t.”

“John,” she said.

“I know, I know – it’s dumb to worry about stuff like that.”

She sat up, one foot tucked under her, the other stretched over my waist. “I don’t need you to buy me anything.”

“I know, but I… with you, I don’t want to feel like I’m… limited.”

“You are limited,” she said, reaching for my hand.

I blinked in surprise.

“Today we had an architecture visit to the MBA building where you got so animated your hands looked like they were conducting a symphony. Tonight it’ll be a sunset. You’ve already got me almost snorting with laughter in public. If you’re limited, it’s limited to being the person I actually want to spend time with.”

I looked down, grateful but embarrassed. “It’s just hard to say out loud, you know? Money’s tight. Mom and dad are doing everything they can, but even in-state tuition is a hardship for them. Especially for five years. And there’s no way I’m going to have time to work an outside job in this degree program, like I did in high school, at least not in the first year. So it’s going to be a very simple lifestyle for me. And for anyone with the misfortune of hanging out with me.”

“What job did you have in high school?” she asked.

“Hardware store. All four years, almost full-time in the summers. But most of that money was spent on just living. Clothes, friends, dates. I didn’t have a car, fortunately, because that would have been a money sink.”

“I’ve never had to think about money,” she said. “I’ve never worked but I’ve volunteered ever since seventh grade. I’m probably a bit stupid about real-world financial pressures.”

“You haven’t said or done anything stupid,” I said, frowning.

“I might, though. Like, make some dumb assumption. If or when that happens, it’ll just be because of my limited experience, I promise. And I’m sorry in advance. I’m limited, too.”

I watched her closely. She was being absolutely sincere. But it didn’t sound like she felt guilty about her family’s financial resources that allowed them to pay out-of-state tuition and buy her a fancy car and top-of-the-line clothes. She was just worried about saying something off-key.

“Can I say one more thing?” she asked.

I nodded.

“Your parents saving everything they have to send you here might be the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

“That’s how I feel about it, too,” I said.

Chapter 14

She smoothly rolled on top of me and hugged me tight. Then she perched herself on my hips and said, “Can we circle back to the sex conversation?”

“You want to have the sex talk now?” I asked, chuckling. “We’ve only been dating twenty-one hours.”

“Do the math, big guy,” she said. “We were together, like, six hours yesterday and more than six hours today. At three hours per date, that’s four dates already. Five dates if you count how much time we spent daydreaming last evening when both of us were too shy to initiate.”

I reminded myself: New rules, John. New rules. Just do it. “Okay,” I said, “but I’m not… very experienced.”

“What?” she said in surprise. “You must have been big man on campus with the basketball hero thing, and you look super hot. You’re so smart the geeky girls like me would have been pining after you, and the popular girls would have been hunting you. And you mentioned girlfriends, plural.”

“It’s a Southern Baptist church thing, Amelie. And a family thing. And at the time it was a John thing, too. No sex before marriage.”

“Oh, I see,” she said, genuinely surprised. “That’s very different than the culture of my Miami high school, but I get it.”

“You sort of implied you dated some,” I said.

“For three and a half years, since I turned fifteen, I’ve been dating boys, but casually and often in groups. Nothing intense like us. I’ve been looking for a particular kind of person and just never saw it, so I never got serious enough to get my heart broken.”

“How many boys, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“A lot. Like, more than two dozen. I’m almost certainly less experienced than you on the intimacy front, though.”

“I don’t understand, Amelie. You are so smart and so beautiful.”

“You’re talking about being attractive,” she said. “I’m talking about trusting the guy. Like, seeing something close to what I’m longing for, enough to explore it seriously. It started to happen a couple of times, but then the guys did something stupid and I saw their true character, enough to know I didn’t want to take it any further.”

“Young boys are stupid,” I said. “All of us. Some of us grow out of it, thank God.”

“Are you saying when you were sixteen you would have boasted to your buddies that you had sex with me, when you hadn’t even kissed me? Or when you were seventeen you would have trapped me in your car and tried to…”

Her eyes were instantly full of tears, overflowing. Damn, those were painful memories.

“Absolutely not,” I said, in a low growl, which made me sound like Viking. “And if I’d known anyone who’d treated you like that, I would’ve had a quiet word with them.”

She nodded, not trying to stop the tears, her fragile smile on trembling lips conveying her gratitude.

“So…” she said, resting her hands on my big chest and trying to steady her breathing, “neither one of us knows much about what we’re doing. Agreed?”

“Agreed,” I said softly, wiping her tears and smiling as lovingly and protectively as I felt.

“Okay,” she said, calming herself. “So what are the rules?”

“I guess I assumed we’d make up the rules as we go along.”

“Won’t work,” she said. “For me, anyway. Feeling like I do toward you, I need some kind of boundaries, so I’ve got something to help me self-regulate. I care less about the specifics and more about having some kind of framework we can stick to – something both of us want.”

“Makes sense,” I said. “I feel the same toward you, and it’d be good if it’s not up to one person to slow things down.”

“Are you still in the no sex before marriage camp?” she asked.

“Honestly, I don’t know,” I said. “My parents would expect that of me, one hundred percent. But I saw stuff… like, girls getting pregnant because they were not prepared, including one of my friends. And so much guilt from natural human feelings. I stuck to the rules, but the whole thing left me confused. Even angry sometimes.”

“I’ve seen stuff, too,” said Amelie, “like people pressured to have sex when they weren’t ready, with a lot of messy and confusing feelings afterwards – including a bunch of my friends. I guess I might have had sex if I’d found the right guy, but that never happened.”

“We need time to settle,” I said.

“But the way we both feel…” she said.

We were quiet for a bit, staring at each other.

“Okay,” she ventured, “how about we do nothing more than we’ve done already. Then we reevaluate on a date we agree on.”

“Like six weeks?” I said. “Reevaluate on October first?”

“Six weeks! That’s gonna be…” she said.

“I know,” I said.

We were quiet again, counting the cost, I think.

“Shake on it?” she said.

We shook hands.

Amelie leaned down and kissed me tenderly. “I never had a conversation like that before,” she said.

“New for me, too,” I said around the kiss. “I’m really sorry about those two guys, Amelie.”

“They don’t matter anymore,” she said, just before her kiss became aggressive.

“Framework!” I pleaded through the kiss.

She relented and lay down on top of me, sighing as she nestled her head into my neck.

“See? The framework thing’s already working,” she said. We both chuckled quietly.

I started to feel sleepy and let myself drift. We’d named a boundary and shook on it. I felt the weight of the beautiful girl laying on me, quietly breathing. Waiting wasn’t pulling away. It was heading somewhere. It meant something.

Chapter 15

I woke mid-afternoon with Amelie wrapped around me, sound asleep. I couldn’t see her face easily, but I could feel her body pressed close to mine, and smell her hair. I already felt like her home, and she was starting to feel like mine. Cuddling in stillness like this helped.

The voices of my basketball teammates were distant echoes but I could hear them making fun of me. I choked back a laugh.

Amelie stirred and sleepily said, “John?” I caressed her back. “Were you laughing?”

“Sorry I woke you,” I said.

“Time?”

“Two-thirty. Wanna redo McCombs and find your classrooms now that you’ve worked out your schedule?”

“No,” she said, sitting up, her back toward me. “We’ll sit on one of your favorite benches, and you can tell me about your mom.”

“Sounds like a plan,” I said. “And your family’s tomorrow, right?”

“Right,” she said, standing and stretching like a slinky feline creature. “I need to change, turn away for a sec.”

“Nope,” I said. “I’m not breaking the rules, not even for you.”

“What do you mean?” she asked, facing me with a frown.

“We agreed nothing new until October first,” I said. “You watched me changing so that’s the norm.”

“I didn’t realize the mirror thing was going to come back to bite me,” she said. I reminded myself that she’d probably rarely done anything this physically intimate with her many past male companions and momentarily felt bad about pressuring her.

She took a deep breath, seeming to gather her courage, and quickly slipped off her shorts and swept her tank top off. Oh my giddy aunt, as my grandmother might have said. I watched physical perfection poke around her closet and fish out a summer dress, mostly light blue, with shimmering darker blue details. She slipped it on, and it gathered around her bust and flowed around her from there like a satin waterfall, down to mid-thigh. She leaned on me as she slipped on low-heeled sandals that looked brand new and matched the dress perfectly.

She looked like a million dollars, even though she’d just woken up. I looked like I was wearing hand-me-downs from my Dad. Which I was.

Then she faced me, looking incredibly shy, her head tilted down so she looked at me through her long lashes, her lips pressed together. She didn’t speak but she was frowning ever so slightly, plainly aware that she’d just allowed herself to be viewed and, inevitably, assessed.

I held out my arms to her and she walked straight into them, like they were a refuge from exposure. “That was brave. And you are magnificent.”

“I kind of had to do that, after what I did this morning, which was much worse. I’m sorry about that, John. I feel like I violated your trust – and after you were so honorable with me.”

“We’ll be ready to laugh about it soon enough,” I said, wondering why Amelie seemed so upset about it. “And I was flattered. Hey, tell me about this amazing dress. I’ve never seen anything like it.” I held her at arm’s length to take it in from up close.

“I don’t think I’ve mentioned that I’m really into fashion. I always wanted to be a fashion designer until the nonprofit bug bit me. Katelyn says business school is the wrong move for me because of that. Anyway, this one’s gorgeous, isn’t it? I fell in love with it at first sight.”

“Mesmerizing. How does the light interact with the fabric? And how does it drape so perfectly?”

“A girl like me loves to be asked questions like that, John,” she said as she brushed her long golden hair. “I’ll tell you about it while we walk. And you can tell me what you were laughing about when I woke up.”

Amelie allowed me to guide her out of Carothers, past even larger numbers of people navigating Mooov-In challenges on an even more fiercely hot day. Amelie didn’t seem to notice but everyone – I mean every single person, regardless of gender or age – watched her move through the lobby and out to the street. I’d never seen anything like it outside movies.

The staring kept happening the whole time we were walking – a combination of the dress and the girl – the open face, the freely flowing hair. It’s a wonder she wasn’t surrounded by accidents. But she didn’t react. Maybe she was used to it and didn’t notice. Maybe she avoided thinking about it.

“It’s silk charmeuse, which is one of the most light‑responsive fabrics there is,” she said, as if the public display I’d witnessed her causing hadn’t happened. “It has a satin weave, but it’s not just glossy; it has a directional sheen that interacts with the angle of the sun, which is why it’s so good for outdoors.”

“When you move, the fabric seems to pour from one shade of blue into another, as though light were sliding down the material,” I said, wishing I could do that with a building.

“The charmeuse is like that. But this one has these deep ultramarine details woven into the satin, and they shimmer, catching the sun so they flare momentarily as I move.

“The contrast between the sky‑blue ground and those darker blue accents makes the whole dress behave like a water surface under angled light,” I said. “It’s the way I think of reflective pools in a gentle breeze under glass-fronted buildings.”

“I get the connection,” she said. “The draping works because of the micro-pleats in the bodice. From that gathered point, the dress flares and cascades downward – fluidly, the way silk charmeuse does. And the length is perfect – short enough for the fabric’s movement to be noticeable with every step, long enough to be modest, so I can move unselfconsciously.”

“It’s like a moving study in how light reflects off surfaces,” I said, thinking of the countless architecture books I’d read. “The dark woven bits are channels for the light, and the skirt acts like planes rotating in space. The whole thing is basically architecture you can wear.”

Amelie pulled me to a stop. “John, you’re not being fair.”

“What do you mean?” I said frowning.

“We just agreed to limit things. Then you talk to me about one of my great loves in a way that is incredibly hot. Nobody else has ever been able to get beyond ‘that looks nice, Amelie’ and here you are getting me excited about light dynamics and optical architecture. How am I supposed to control myself if you do things like that?”

She was trying to hide it, but I caught the trace of a teasing smirk in her beautiful face, as she pretended to complain.

“Tell me about the sandals,” I said dryly, smirking right back at her.

“Damn, perfect response,” she said, and we resumed walking. “They’re dyed Nappa leather with a pearl finish. See how the subtle shimmer mirrors the dress? They match the base color almost exactly – sky‑blue with a faint cool tinge. They’re super comfortable because of the suede lining, and I love the geometry of the straps.”

“What’s Nappa leather?” I asked.

“Oh John, let me tell you about Nappa leather,” she said, smiling excitedly and grabbing my arm tightly as we walked. “It’s made from the top layer of the hide, so it retains natural strength and fine grain. And it’s chrome-tanned to maximize flexibility and strength; it won’t crack and it takes most dyes well – including the pearl finish that these have.”

“Chrome tanned?” I asked.

“Not chrome like on a car,” she said. “Chromium salts – instead of the plant-based tannins that have been used in tanning leather for thousands of years.”

“I could listen to you talk about clothes and light and drape and textiles and shoes all day,” I said. “To me, all of this connects to architecture – the way light and geometry interact. It’s beautiful and it makes you feel something. That’s how I want to design: gradients, reflections, moving color. Making light do something poetic.”

“Damn! Where has this John been? I’m already head over heels. Give a girl a break.”

I chuckled. “This is architecture John. And I had no idea that you were as obsessed with light and design as I am. That’s common ground, big time.”

“I worked textile and design courses into my schedule this morning, taking up the elective slots after the Management major and the Religious Studies minor. I’m going to learn CAD drawing, just like you.”

“Are you doing a Religious Studies minor because of me? My background?”

“Partly, I guess,” she said. “But I also need to understand cultures and worldviews to do my nonprofit thing.”

“What if you dump me like the last two dozen guys?” I was teasing but it felt awkward. I would never normally say something so stupid!

“Well, I’ll just change minors,” she said gracefully, easing us past the awkwardness. She just saved you, John, you gigantic idiot.

“Will you study the chemistry of fabrics, so you can explain to me how your dress does that with the light?” Much better, I told myself.

“Probably,” she said, as we arrived at my planned destination. “Oh, I came here when I visited with mom and dad.”

Chapter 16

“The turtle pond has these Adirondack chairs, which will do for benches,” I said. “From here you can see the north face and some of the west face of the tower, as well as the famous red-eared slider turtles.”

I moved a couple of unoccupied chairs into the shade of a live oak, and we sat down next to one another. The pond had that warm green smell of sun-cooked water and algae, with something sharper underneath – the turtles themselves, probably. After a few moments of absorbing the scenery, Amelie asked me about the suppressed laughter that had awoken her.

“I don’t know what high-school tennis was like, but high-school basketball has a lot of locker room teasing and joking around. I woke up with you cuddling beside me, both of us respectably covered, and I could almost hear one of my buddies saying, ‘Johnny boy, the most beautiful girl any of us has ever seen is wrapped around you in bed, and you just agreed to six weeks of nothing but fully clothed kissing. Are you insane?!’ Just thinking of it made me laugh.”

“I guess it might be a bit crazy,” said Amelie, smiling cutely.

“It’s right for us,” I said. “The guys didn’t understand me then, and they wouldn’t understand me now. I loved them. And they get beauty and attraction, of course. But they didn’t get reverence. Well, Mickey did – Michael Michado. He’s at SMU now, a budding engineer with the soul of a poet. He was point guard to my center, my best human friend, and I miss him. He’d definitely tease me about our agreement if he knew, but I think he’d understand, too.”

“Your mom,” she said, changing directions abruptly. “In our post-lunch call, she seemed to do most of the talking.”

“You couldn’t see, but she did the touching, too. When I asked dad about adapting to training other K-9 officers instead of being in the field, he said, like, two words, which was two words more than usual for him. But mom’s hand instantly went to his shoulder, offering comfort, and she smoothly switched topics. Their attunement is beautiful.”

“The complementarian thing…” she said, searching in vain for her actual question.

“Amelie, it’s not abusive or even oppressive, at least when it’s done properly, lovingly. It can be beautiful. I disagree with it, but I respect it, especially the way mom and dad do it. But I’m out of the house and she’s going back to teaching Kindergarten, with dad’s full support, which will help a lot with money. So, they flex around their core priorities.”

“But you needed more money all those years when she was raising you.”

“They made choices about what was most important to them. They still found a way to save enough to get me through four years of college.”

“Not five?” she asked.

“My love of architecture has been clear for a long time, but they didn’t realize it was a five-year program until recently. Neither did I. We didn’t know about the summers until recently, either. Mom’ll be helping them save to put me through the final year, and stop the second mortgage from getting too large.”

“What would they have done with a second or third child?”

“College isn’t for everyone,” I said.

“Wow. They’d stick to their principles even though it would prevent them from doing something they want for their own kids?”

“Yep,” I said. “But that’s them, not me. I want something as strong as that but built differently. I want my partner to be free to go after whatever she wants, and I want her to want the same for me. That’s probably harder – more compromises, more tough conversations. But every marriage is hard in its own way.”

“Does she talk about her core commitments? About what she values the most?”

“Not really,” I said. “She’s more of a live-it-out kind of person, same as dad. But her faith, her marriage, and her family are her three pillars, I reckon. And she has real compassion for the kids she teaches in Sunday School and the struggling mothers she helps in her volunteer work, so maybe that’s a fourth pillar.”

“Is she passive or compliant?”

“Depends,” I said, trying to think over everything I’d seen my primary care giver do over the years. “She’s assertive at home, which is her domain. But even there she believes she flourishes by nurturing dad and me, and by holding together the emotional fabric of our tiny universe. She defers to dad on some things, and she usually avoids conflict. She defends me from his occasional rigidity, though usually only when she thinks I can’t hear.”

“Good to know,” said Amelie, who seemed to be making some kind of calculation I didn’t grasp.

“She’s idealistic. Definitely loving and loyal, and she’s confident when she’s doing home stuff. She can get anxious if conflict is brewing, and she’ll sometimes stop watching the news for a few weeks if there’s too much social chaos. She’s hyper-conscious about how dad and the people at church see her. And she prefers to smooth things over rather than confront difficulties directly. She can be a bit judgy, I guess.”

I saw Amelie’s eyes widen for a moment.

“Sometimes I think she feels like her contribution is not fully appreciated. She shouldn’t feel unseen, but she does. Once I saw that – I was maybe thirteen – I started acting differently. I stopped complaining about my chores, I was more affectionate, and I tried to encourage her. Dad’s not harsh, but I think she sometimes feels invisible, and honestly, I get why. Dad keeps so much inside that there’s not a lot of ways for her to feel noticed.”

“You were a good son,” she said, watching me carefully.

“Tried to be,” I said. “I was a bit withdrawn until my teenage years, and then I settled down a bit, became more social, despite being self-conscious about my size. Mom had a big role in drawing me out. And dad’s parents. Grandpa taught me to fish, and we spent a lot of time together until he died recently. Grandma probably did as much as anyone to help me learn to read, way back when. I spent a lot of time with her, and mom used the freedom to volunteer in the church. She and mom were my biggest encouragers when I started to draw, and later when I started to design buildings.”

She was still watching me, looking radiant and attentive.

“I got lucky, Amelie. Like, seriously blessed. I have two wonderful parents, and a lot of people in this world don’t.”

She nodded and smiled softly at me. I slid down so I could lay my head against the back of the chair, then turned toward her. We stared at each other for a long minute.

We’d just crested the 24-hour mark of our relationship, and I knew with more confidence than I’d ever known anything. I was in love with Amelie Foster.

Chapter 17

“Amelie?”

“Hi Katelyn. You weren’t asleep, were you?”

“No. I’ve been waiting for you to call. Like, a long time.”

“Sorry,” said Amelie. “John just dropped me back at my room.”

“Is he still there?”

“No; he went to his own room. We went for a walk tonight, after dinner. He timed it so we could watch the colors of the sunset light up the limestone of the UT Tower. It was so beautiful. I’ll show you when you come out here.”

“Sounds romantic. Are you just having fun or…”

“Katelyn,” said Amelie, moving closer to her phone, “I think he’s the one we’ve been talking about. I’m totally infatuated right now so there’s a chance my judgment is out of whack, but he seems to have all the traits we’ve been looking for.”

“Wow,” said Katelyn. “And you just, like, stumbled across him?”

“Yeah,” said Amelie. “He helped me move my stuff, like I told you yesterday.”

“Did he see you first, or you him?”

“I think we saw each other at first,” said Amelie, “when he came through with his loaded cart. Then he came back with an empty cart but, instead of turning it in to the front desk, he walked straight up to me and asked me if I wanted help. I was the only one without a family, so at the time I thought he probably just felt sorry for me and was trying to make himself useful. Even so, I guess that means he initiated. But I looked at him a good while when he came through the lobby all sweaty and muscular.”

“How big is he? I couldn’t see on the video call yesterday.”

“Six-six right now, and he’s still growing, apparently. But he’s not just tall. I can’t get my arms around him, and his biceps are so large I can’t stretch two hands around them.”

“Sounds like you’ve gotten all touchy-feely, then.”

“Not really. We talked about it. We both have about the same amount of experience – not much – so we agreed to take it slow on the touching side of things. He’s a good kisser and a great hugger, though.” There was a pause. “But the thing that gets me…”

“Hey, Amelie, are you crying?!”

“No,” she said. “Maybe. The thing that gets me is that he’s so kind. He’s loyal and loving and thoughtful and selfless and brilliant and artistic. He’s perceptive. He reads me beautifully. He’s more than we’ve dreamed, Katelyn. More than I thought possible.”

“Have you thought about how to tell him?”

“I’m not telling him about us, yet,” said Amelie. “But tomorrow’s my turn to talk about family. I need to know if you’re okay with me telling him about your accident.”

“You think he’s the real deal?”

“I can’t imagine anything closer,” said Amelie. “Based on what I know right now. And he’s had plenty of chances to be a jerk, but he hasn’t gone there.”

“Then tell him,” said Katelyn. “But I agree on staying quiet about our situation – for now, anyway. He needs to know you and trust you much more before you go there. Like, not until next year at least.”

“That’s going to make me feel like I’m lying, long before next year,” said Amelie. “I mean, it’s a big part of my life, and I’ll be hiding it.”

“We’ve talked this through countless times, sis,” said Katelyn. “Better to wait too long and hurt him a little than to dump it all on him too early and lose him completely.”

“I know. That was fine in the abstract. Now it feels like I’m luring John into a trap, and it’s making me sick.”

“It’s not a trap, Amelie! Don’t say that! It’s a tender secret and he needs to prove he’s worthy of learning about it. He certainly can’t do that in twenty-four hours.”

“I know. Thanks for the reminder. I’m going to need more reminders, I expect. I’ll let you know how tomorrow goes when I get a free minute.”

“Love you, Amelie.”

“Love you, Katelyn.”

Chapter 18

I woke up to find James asleep, like the previous day. I’d not seen him awake since the evening he arrived. He’d still been asleep when I snuck in for my shower gear, and he’d been out when I got back last night. I felt a flash of guilt, as usual for me. Then I reminded myself that we had an entire year together.

Amelie and I hadn’t discussed when to meet up for a run. I texted her as I got dressed. I received a reply almost immediately.

“My room. Bring your gear for showering after.”

Five minutes later, teeth cleaned, face washed, and hair brushed, I arrived at Amelie’s chocked-open door.

She smiled at me and approached. “Now that I know I’m not going to scare you off by talking about clothes, I’m going to tell you all about my gear. First, though…” She crept ever so slowly into my arms for a morning hug. It was just Iike the previous day, except that I felt we’d traveled a million miles since then.

A few minutes later, we were south of the Honors Quad and crossing 24th. “This is the north side of the original forty acres we saw from the tower,” I explained. “It’s exactly one mile around. Sound good?”

“Let’s go easy,” she said. “I’ve got some textile miracles to explain, after you start noticing things.”

“I like a challenge!” I said.

The Forty Acres felt half‑asleep when we started. The Tower looked heavy and grumpy, like it needed morning coffee, whereas the previous evening it’d seemed as light as the air surrounding it. The air was cool enough that I could pretend it wasn’t Austin in August, and the pre-dawn was a soft blue that reminded me of Amelie’s amazing dress from the previous day.

We jogged clockwise around the perimeter of the forty acres, settling into a rhythm. I was thinking about how nice it was to run with her as the campus wakes to a new day, when something caught my eye. Her shirt was… flickering?! It wasn’t shimmer; more like little pulses of brightness running across the fabric.

“Your top is doing something weird,” I said. “Like it’s evaporating light.”

She grinned, which told me she’d been waiting for me to ask. “Directional wicking,” she said, like that’s a totally normal phrase. “The yarns have micro‑channels that pull moisture from the inside to the outside. You’re seeing the drying pattern.”

I blinked at her. “Your shirt has plumbing.”

“Capillary action,” she corrected, seeming delighted. “Like plant stems.”

After that, I couldn’t help seeing the technical cleverness. The knit density changed between panels, opening at her upper back. As she got ahead of me slightly, a streetlight caught the mesh, creating tiny constellations of light.

“It breathes differently depending on the zone,” she said. “Tighter up front, open on the back. It’s mapped to heat patterns.”

“That’s a ventilated façade system,” I said before I could stop myself.

She laughed. “Exactly! Clothes are tiny buildings, John. Only bendier.”

We rounded the northeast corner and headed south along Speedway. Her shorts fluttered instead of clinging, and I asked about it.

“Micro‑ripstop weave. Super thin but stable. And they stretch because the yarns are crimped, not because they’re full of elastane.”

“So… pre‑tensioned fibers?”

“You make it sound way cooler,” she said, bumping my arm with hers.

A few steps later, I noticed something else. “The seams look… too clean.”

“Oh!” Her face lit up as if I’d complimented her personally and not her apparel. “They’re bonded. No stitches. Heat‑sealed. Less bulk, no friction.”

“That’s how some curtain walls are assembled,” I said, making her laugh.

We jogged on, and the sun finally made an appearance between two buildings. Her shirt and shorts caught the light at once – microdots flashing like tiny mirrors. She glowed for a moment.

“Okay,” I said. “Your shoes. Explain the springiness. You’re rolling forward like someone installed a hinge in your foot.”

“Carbon-fiber plate,” she said. “The plate bends, stores energy, then releases it. And PEBA foam for lightness.”

I snorted. “So your outfit has a ventilation system, a tension grid, adhesive‑bonded seams, and a built‑in springboard.”

“Meanwhile,” she said between breaths, “you’re running in a T‑shirt that looks like it has seen better days.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. “Harsh. But fair. It’s a hand-me-down, like most of my clothes.”

We turned right on 21st and ran quietly until we reached Littlefield Fountain. We stopped there to look up the rise along the south mall. The Tower gleamed in the new day’s sun. Just as I thought to reach for her, I felt her cuddle into my side.

“Textiles… they’re architecture that moves,” I said.

“And buildings,” she said, “are clothes big enough to walk inside.”

We resumed running, this time in silence, west to Guadalupe and then north to the corner of 24th where we started. We paused for early morning traffic and I chuckled at what had just happened.

“What’s funny?” she said, smiling happily.

“We’re two design nerds who somehow speak the same language,” I said. “It’s… kind-of perfect.”

Chapter 19

Amelie reached for my hand and we crossed the road. Three minutes later, we were in the Honors Quad, me leaning on our favorite tree, she leaning back on me.

I closed my eyes and drank in the atmosphere. I felt Amelie’s hands resting on mine, which were clasped around her waist. I felt her back pressing against my chest, her outer thighs running along the inside of mine, the scent of her hair making my head spin. I leaned forward to kiss her head and she took it as a signal.

“Two events define my family,” she said. “One was when Katelyn arrived. She was the first twin to be born, and everything looked fine. But when she came out, the cords shifted – hers and Kinsey’s. They think Kinsey’s cord got compressed in the process. Maybe it wrapped, maybe it pinched against the wall… nobody knows for sure. With twins, especially identical twins sharing a single amniotic sac, things can change in seconds. By the time they realized Kinsey’s heart rate had crashed, it was already too late. My parents never blamed anyone. It was just one of those awful, impossible birth‑room chain reactions.”

“That’s horrible,” I said, my voice cracking as I was suddenly overwhelmed by the thought of joyful expectancy crumpling into shocked grief in a few horrific seconds.

Amelie leaned up and twisted around to see my face. “Tears?” she said.

“No,” I replied, wiping my face. “Thinking about what that must have been like for your Mom and Dad…”

“Feels like I’ve been thinking about that moment ever since I was old enough to understand it,” she said, settling back down again. “Katelyn was inconsolable, apparently. She can’t have understood what had happened, of course, but it’s a thing – a surviving twin being deeply disoriented by not having the other twin right there. Somehow our parents got the idea of putting one-year-old me in the crib with new-born Katelyn and she settled immediately. They tell me I took to Katelyn instantly, wanting to be in physical contact, sometimes crying when we were separated, same as the baby.”

“So you were raised as twins, like Katelyn told me,” I said. “I thought she was joking.”

“No joke,” said Amelie. “It started out as a necessity and turned into something very important for all of us. Especially Mom and Dad at the start. Like, just coping with what had happened. And then for Katelyn and me, because we’re as close as close can be.”

“Is it as beautiful as it sounds?” I asked.

“It’s beautiful. And complicated. And the single most important relationship of my life. The transition years were difficult – starting school, moving between schools, coming here – with me always a year ahead. But they’re healthy challenges, for both of us.”

“I sometimes dreamed of having a sibling,” I said. “I guess most siblings aren’t as close as you two, but I longed for it when I was younger.”

“You would have been an awesome big brother,” she said. “Kind. Protective. Fun.”

“What’s the second family-defining experience?”

“I was the nerdy sister, Katelyn the athletic one. At thirteen she was on the cheerleading squad in middle school. She was performing at a football game when she fell from the top of a pyramid. She landed on her back and damaged her spinal cord.”

Amelie stopped talking for a moment, then moved to sit sideways in my lap and cuddle into my chest.

“I wasn’t there to see it happen, and neither were Mom and Dad,” she said. “We normally would have been, but something came up. The coach told Mom and Dad that Katelyn had been calling for me, over and over.”

She broke down and sobbed into my shoulder, clinging to me tightly. I was picturing the agony of the family hearing panicked calls to meet at the hospital as I felt Amelie shuddering in my arms. I caressed her back until she calmed down.

“After the recovery period, where there’s always some uncertainty, it turned out to be a complete break at T8. You can look it up later so I’m not going to explain what it means in detail for her, for us. But she’s in a wheelchair and these days she’s fairly independent.”

“I didn’t see a wheelchair when we talked,” I said.

“She was being polite, holding the phone close to her face,” said Amelie. “She’s a long way from ashamed of being a paraplegic, believe me, but she wouldn’t have wanted that fact about her to dominate the call.”

“That must have been a life-defining moment for everyone,” I said. I was trying to imagine how my parents would have coped if something like that had happened to me. It was impossible to picture it. My empathy muscles would need a lot more stretching before I could truly wrap my mind around what this must have meant for the Fosters.

“Mom changed the most,” said Amelie. “I mean, she lost a baby, had to deal with her own grief while figuring out how to care for the bereft survivor, and then had to handle the surviving twin breaking her back and being confined to a wheelchair for life. Sometimes I think she believes Katelyn is unfairly cursed. Mom’s playfulness when we were little is a strong memory for me, but it dried up after the accident, squeezed out by years of intensive caretaking. I missed it as a teenager, but what else could she do?”

I continued caressing Amelie’s back as she felt those old feelings anew.

“The whole experience made her extremely vigilant and protective. Like, a complete change in personality. Even when that gets annoying for Katelyn and me, I can’t bring myself to blame Mom. But Katelyn is much blunter and more aggressive than me, and she pushes back hard. I can see that it hurts Mom, but Katelyn’s right to do it, even if she doesn’t need to be quite so harsh at times.”

I felt Amelie’s hand drift up from my chest to caress my cheek, and then slide back down again.

“Now I see flickers of play coming back in Mom, four years later. She’s recovering from the shocking trauma at her own pace, and in the big scheme of things, it’s pretty fast.”

“There are worse things in the world than a mom who got too protective after something terrible happened to her kids,” I said. “I’m happy for her that’s she’s finding her way back to some light moments.”

“Dad helps a lot. He spent the most time with Katelyn in rehab. Like, all day, every day, for months. The weird thing is that he was affected just as much as Mom, but he didn’t really change. She went from the fun parent to the overprotective parent, while he stayed grounded and goofy all the way through. I guess we all cope however we can.”

“What do they do?”

“Mom was an acquisitions editor for a children’s book publisher until the accident, and she hasn’t worked outside the home since. With Katelyn heading to college, she’s slowly restarting that work, which she loves. Dad runs a nonprofit. I want to follow in his footsteps, which is why I chose my major.”

Chapter 20

“So you chose a major because of your Dad, a minor because of me, and a school because of Katelyn.”

“Damn, John, you sound just like him,” she said, picking at my tee shirt. “He never pushes, never sets up unreasonable expectations, and always gently asks me to consider what I most want to do and be. Katelyn yells at me for choosing business school instead of fashion design. Mom worries about every little choice, no matter what I decide. Dad sits me down and makes space for me to talk through all the options. So he became the safe parent for me. I love my Mom, totally, but I’ve needed Dad’s calmness. I still need it.”

She looked up at me. “You remind me of him in that way.” Then she strained up to kiss me, her hands moving to my shoulders, then my neck, then my cheeks, as the kiss deepened. We broke apart and she sighed.

“That’s a lot of drama for a little family,” I said.

“The drama started years before I arrived,” she said. “Mom and Dad were high-school sweethearts and had to elope to get married at eighteen over his parents’ disapproval. They went through college together and I arrived as they finished those four years, when they were twenty-two. Then Kinsey and Katelyn at twenty-three. And now they’re forty, in great shape, and their babies are moving on with their lives.”

“Do you have a relationship with your grandparents?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she said. “Dad’s parents relented when I arrived, so Mom and Dad reconciled with them. They’re supportive but reserved, nothing like your Dad’s parents’ warmth. Mom’s parents live in California now and we don’t see them much.

Amelie spun around and sat on my lap, facing me.

“You’ll love Mom and Dad, John, and they’ll love you. Mom will worry, of course, like always, but I think you and Dad could become best buds. Katelyn already loves you from what I’ve told her.”

I must have looked shocked because she laughed and rested her index finger on my forehead. “New rules, remember? No stupid dating protocol nonsense. We handle the speed problem in other ways, like yesterday’s agreement.”

I looked at her earnestly for a moment, feeling on the edge of something big. New rules or old, though, I wasn’t going to say that. I felt my way to a compromise.

“I adore you, Amelie Foster. Your mind, your heart, how beautiful you are… I feel so lucky to have met you.”

I saw the tears rush to her eyes, but she wasn’t upset or agitated. Her tears seemed like a release of tension, a settling into long-awaited comfort.

“I feel the same, John Anderson.”

Part 2: Lake House

Chapter 21

“Hi Mom, Dad!” exclaimed Amelie, sitting on my lap at the turtle pond. It occurred to me how nice it was to have permission to be affectionate in front of her family. She certainly wouldn’t be sitting on my lap if we were calling my parents.

“Hi sweetie, hi John!” said Pam, which is what I was supposed to call Amelie’s mother.

“Hi Pam,” I said. “Is that half of Pete I see?”

“Here’s the rest of him,” said Pam laughing, moving the camera to show her waving husband. “And here comes Katelyn.” She pivoted the camera to Katelyn wheeling toward her parents, her hair dripping from the pool – her absolute favorite place because of the freedom of movement she experienced in the water.

“Hi you two,” said Katelyn from her wheelchair. They were out on the back patio of their magnificent Miami waterfront home, and I could see the pool behind them in the giant screened-in area that encompassed their outdoor living area, with grass, ocean, and the barrier island beyond. After seven months, I’d still never made it back to the main house.

The happy greetings yielded to swapping news. Amelie and I spoke with her parents once a week, and of course Amelie and Katelyn spoke every day without fail, sometimes with me.

Amelie and I talked to my parents weekly but not for long; they weren’t temperamentally suited to video calls, though Amelie’s charm helped to lengthen the calls a little. But Amelie and I had visited them half a dozen times – always day trips, because overnight stays would have provoked confusion and potentially conflict.

The most recent visit had been the previous Saturday, a week in advance of spring break. That’s when I explained to Mom and Dad that I was heading to Florida to meet Amelie’s family over the break. They weren’t happy, but they made an effort to understand. I promised to visit again a week after spring break. Compensation.

It had never occurred to me that my family was difficult. But the Fosters were so accepting and easygoing that the contrast was painfully obvious. Amelie had to keep reminding me where my parents were coming from, because I was starting to resent how reserved they were with her. The fact that we’d been attending the Methodist church right near our dorm had done little to mollify them. They weren’t rude. They weren’t even unwelcoming, in one sense. But they weren’t warm, either, and they were a long way from easygoing. I felt protective of Amelie and angry that they wouldn’t embrace her with enthusiasm matching mine.

“Big news,” said Katelyn, dragging me out of my funk about my family. “Mom and Dad are letting me drive by myself to the Lake House.” Pam didn’t look excited over the prospect of worrying about her daughter for the two hours it would take to get from Miami to their place on the east shore of Lake Okeechobee. But Katelyn was independent and could handle her adapted car just fine. Plus she was eighteen now, and less inclined than ever to defer to her overprotective mother.

“We’re leaving Austin first thing Friday on a direct flight to Miami,” said Amelie. “We’ll rent a car and should reach the Lake House before noon.”

Katelyn turned to her parents, full of hope. “Can I leave Friday instead of Saturday?”

“Friday’s a school day, and Amelie and John need some time alone,” said Pam.

Katelyn turned to the screen and silently pleaded with Amelie. I squeezed Amelie’s hand to let her know I was okay with it.

“It’s fine with us,” said Amelie to her parents, “so it’s really about school and that’s for you guys to decide. For what it’s worth, John and I will have all week there and you three are only coming up for the two weekends either side, so we’ll have tons of time.” I’d learned that was as confrontational as Amelie would ever get with her mother – always gracious, never avoidant.

“I’ll just drive up on Friday, anyway,” whined Katelyn. Her stubborn refusal to do what her parents said, especially when Pam and Pete had good reasons, repeatedly took my breath away. I’d never been that rebellious. But Amelie had helped me understand the dynamic between a fiercely independent daughter and an understandably protective mother.

“We’ll talk about it after this call,” said Pete – only after Pam gave him the look. By this time, I knew Pete well enough to know that he loved the idea of Katelyn leaving school early on Friday and driving a long way by herself for the first time. “We have to let the girls try,” was his mantra for soothing Pam’s anxious tendency to say no to anything new. To her credit, Pam usually came around. She wasn’t naturally anxious, after all. She was working through the aftermath of traumatic events that had upended their lives.

This spring-break kickoff weekend was a big deal for all of us. I’d be meeting Amelie’s family in person for the first time. I’d thought about taking some of the break over New Years to fly out to Miami but I didn’t have the budget for it. More importantly, my Mom stiffened at the idea when I floated it, and I knew what that meant: she and Dad had been counting on me being with them the whole time. That had been true for spring break, too, but this time I hadn’t given them the choice.

So Amelie and I went in different directions for the long holiday break, just as we had for Thanksgiving. She drove me down to San Antonio, stayed for part of the day, then drove east to Miami. And she came back the same way, spending part of the day with Mom and Dad before driving me back to Austin. She could have flown but she loved cross-country driving. Even if she didn’t, she’d still have wanted to drive me home instead of forcing me to catch a bus.

After we ended the call with Amelie’s family, I expressed once more my shock at the way Katelyn talked to her mother.

“She’s actually quite reasonable for a teenager under the circumstances,” said Amelie. “What you could learn from this” – she paused to kiss me gently, letting me know that she was about to gently challenge my assumptions – “is that you and I are unusually accommodating to our parents. She’s normal. We’re the weird ones.”

I thought back to the intense early days of our relationship, when we spent all day, every day together, until class schedules forced us apart. I’d held back from telling Amelie I loved her. But within a month, I was completely locked on, and whether I’d said the words or not didn’t seem to matter.

Just before she left me in San Antonio for the long drive home to Miami in the middle of December, I finally said it. We’d gone for a mid-afternoon walk and, before we were back in view of the house, I pulled her to a stop and enfolded her in my arms. I told Amelie I loved her, and she told me she loved me. It had only been four months, but I knew I’d found my future, and I was sure she knew she’d found hers.

I told her again, right there, in the Adirondack chair, watching the turtles sun themselves.

“I love you, Amelie,” I said.

“And I you, John,” she echoed.

Chapter 22

Getting to Austin’s airport at four in the morning was a stretch, even for early risers like Amelie and me. But we slept on the plane, and we were loading our gear into the high-end rental car in Miami by nine-thirty. She was still tired and asked me to drive.

“Sleep, Amelie,” I said, as I wove through traffic on the way out of the airport.

“We need to talk first,” she said, sounding as though sleep was more urgent.

“It can wait, whatever it is,” I said. “Sleep.”

“Okay,” she said, settling down in her seat. “But we have to talk about sex again. After Mom and Dad and Katelyn leave on Sunday afternoon, we’ll have five days straight, all alone. That’s a first for us as a couple. And Mom and Dad will expect us to share a bedroom, just as naturally as your parents will expect us not to. So we need to talk. You can think about it while I sleep.”

I did think about it. Our seven-month anniversary of dating would be when we were at the Lake House. We’d modified our rules around physical intimacy a couple of times – and we’d needed those agreements when things got intense – but we were still not having sex. And Amelie was right: this would be our first natural opportunity to cohabitate, if only for a few days, and her parents would expect us to be together, just as I was sure they mistakenly assumed we were having sex.

I was mostly past the Southern Baptist strictness, and the Methodist church that Amelie and I attended faithfully every Sunday felt different – more compassionate, more grounded in real life. But the thought of disappointing my parents still weighed heavily, even with the mild resentment I felt toward them for the less-than-enthusiastic way they were treating Amelie.

I knew Amelie would happily go either way with me on this. Amelie could be fierce about almost everything, but she was careful with my values around sex. So far, she’d never pushed, never made me feel stupid for holding on to convictions she didn’t share. I felt the weight of being the one slowing us down and often needed to remind myself that she wasn’t in any hurry. It wasn’t that she was indifferent, nor that she lacked passion; on the contrary, she was sometimes aggressive, often seductive, and endlessly affectionate. She could dress to kill when she wanted to drive me crazy, and she didn’t hesitate to tease me, pushing both of us right to the edge of whatever agreement we had in place at the time. All that had been obvious from day one and had never changed.

But she still wouldn’t override my feeling of obligation to my parents. She loved that about me, which helped me take it seriously. In fact, if I were to suggest that we should go all the way, no doubt she’d sit me down and invite me to talk through it, just like her Dad did with her when she was facing a big decision.

I could already sense the kind of mother she would become – a lot like Pete. That was something I dearly wanted to see.

My mind rolled in slow circles for the two hours it took to reach my target halfway up on the east side of the Big O, as the locals liked to refer to Lake Okeechobee. I pulled over and woke Amelie up.

“I slept all the way?” she asked, yawning and stretching in a way that made it difficult to control myself.

“The map says this is Port Mayaca, but I don’t see much besides the lock.”

“We’re a couple of miles up on the left,” she said. “We should go to the Lake House first, see what food is there, make a list, and go shopping for everyone. We can get to supermarkets east to Indian Town, South to Pahoke, or north to Okeechobee, but all those options involve a lot of driving, so we want to get it right the first time. And we need to be back in time for Katelyn’s arrival around three.”

I pulled back onto route 441, running north along the east side of the canal. A few minutes later, I followed Amelie’s directions into a tree-shrouded property in the finger of land between the highway and the canal. I hadn’t seen the Big O once due to the way the dike on the west side of the canal blocked the view. It was a magnificent feat of engineering, and I’d studied it carefully ever since I’d learned that the Fosters had a property up here.

I steered the car through the little forest of trees until the property came into view. The Lake House was huge. I could see the canal beyond, and the dike beyond that, but not the lake itself. Of course, the Lake House was elevated so the Big O would be visible from the upstairs living level, though not from the downstairs bedroom level.

There was a detached three-car garage with living or working space up above, but I followed Amelie’s directions to the garage under the house. As soon as I stepped out of the car, I felt the difference in the air from Austin and San Antonio. This air was heavy and humid, and carried a vegetation and warm-water smell. Even the trees felt heavier, somehow.

“I know you’ve studied this house, John,” she said, “but do me a favor and put this on. Trust me, okay?” She handed me the sleep mask she’d used in the car, and I put it on, holding on to her arm as she led me up a long ramp to an elevator. I knew she’d be taking me to the main living area, two levels up. She led me out of the elevator and westwards toward the lake. I could picture what I was about to see because I was mentally at home with every inch of this property – thanks to Pete sharing blueprints with me, without me even asking.

“Take off the mask,” she said. I handed it to her as I opened my eyes.

Even knowing what to expect did not dim the impact of the view spread out before me. I was in the living room facing a glass wall that connected to a huge, elevated patio and a large pool beyond that and to one side, raised up off the ground thanks to a nice piece of engineering that was not uncommon around there. The entire outdoor living space was enclosed in insect-proof screening so thin it was essentially invisible until the sun caught it on just the right angle. Beyond that, I could see the canal, the dike, and the vast expanse of Lake Okeechobee. The sunsets had to be amazing from up here.

I walked out onto the patio area and around the pool and took in the back yard, which was over three acres of grass on the five-acre property. There was a broad path leading to a boat house on the canal, which I knew contained a boat. The boathouse was large enough for more than one.

When Amelie and I reunited in San Antonio, right before the spring semester began, she spent the ninety-minute drive back to campus explaining to me about her family’s wealth. I’d seen their magnificent home on Indian Creek Island in North Miami because of our video calls, so I knew they were well off. But I hadn’t realized that Pete’s nonprofit work was quietly running a very influential, almost hidden family foundation managing billions of dollars invested there by his parents – multi-generational family money. And I hadn’t known that Amelie was in McCombs preparing to help her father run the family office and the foundation.

I found it difficult to take in that type of wealth, but I was certainly gratified that neither Amelie nor her family was the least bit entitled. On the contrary, they worked hard and kept their philanthropic influence and impact out of the public eye. But I learned that they lived well, too. All the hints were there – Amelie’s clothes and car, the Indian Creek estate, the Lake House. But none of that conveyed the magnitude of the wealth.

That January drive taught me something about Amelie. The money weighed on her, same as it weighed on Pete. She was going to help him carry it, even if that meant giving up fashion and textiles – the thing she loved most.

I learned something about Pam, too. She’d married into inconceivable wealth, joining Pete in stubbornly resisting his parents’ objections to their marriage, the two of them willing to give up everything for each other. I might end up doing what she’d done, if I married into the Foster family. Of course, Pam and Pete heartily supported Amelie’s relationship with me, so I wouldn’t need to deal with being cut off from her parents. My admiration for Pam took another leap upwards, and I realized I needed to talk with her about how to adapt.

That January conversation with Amelie was sobering, in some ways. For one, I was hurt that we were five months in before Amelie shared that little nugget. I kicked myself up and down as soon as I detected such a childish reaction. The next day I shamefully confessed it to Amelie. She lovingly listened to my moralistic self-reproach and encouraged me to recognize both that my feelings were reasonable, and that she was constrained by family protocol and needed permission to talk with me about it, which she’d obtained over the semester break.

It was classic Amelie. She’d accepted my moralism without mocking me about it, she reasonably supported the very feelings that shamed me, and she straightforwardly explained why she’d waited so long to mention it.

She’d also seemed preoccupied during that conversation, which I had difficulty interpreting. I asked her about it. She brushed it off and immediately brightened up.

That cascade of memories poured through me as I experienced first-hand the practical meaning of extreme wealth. The Lake House was magnificent architecture, perfectly tuned to its location and inhabitants.

I became aware of Amelie watching me, off to my right. I immediately felt protective of her. Telling me about her family back in January had been a tender moment, and she’d been quietly nervous for the whole drive back to Austin. Showing me this house now was a risk, too. Taking me to the Miami family compound at some time in the future would be an even bigger risk.

Amelie desperately needed to know whether this would change things between us – I could sense it – but she would never say that out loud. So she hovered anxiously, pretending this was about the view. In reality, it was about whether I could handle who she really was.

I had to get this right.

I held my arms open to her and she quickly skittered into them, as though she were waiting for permission to hug me. Wrapping her up and holding her close, I said, “I love you, Amelie. I’ll adapt to all this. But however that goes, you are my heart’s home, and I’m profoundly grateful to be in your life.”

“Thank you, John.” It was a simple, sincere reply. Amelie really was grateful, and it humbled me.

Chapter 23

Amelie walked me downstairs to the bedroom level. From the blueprints, I knew this level also contained machinery for the house, lifted above the water level in the unlikely event of flooding. There were master suites at either end, both of which had shaded dens perched under the second-level deck with views of the canal. There were also two pairs of bedrooms sharing bathrooms in between, six bedrooms in all.

I knew it had been built for both sets of grandparents to share time with Pete and Pam and their girls. The two west-facing bedrooms looked out under the deck and to the metal body of the pool, which was braced above the ground so its surface was level with the patio above. The other two bedrooms and the two suites looked out on the grass and trees surrounding the property to the north, east, and south.

“This south-facing suite is Mom and Dad’s,” she said. “They’ll expect you and me to stay in the north-facing suite, and Katelyn to take one of the other four bedrooms. So we need to talk about us. And intimacy. Again.” She smiled sweetly.

I looked at her, frowning in confusion and feeling conflicted. It made her frown right back at me.

“Wait,” she said. “Let me try. There’s nothing you’d like more than to spend ten days shacked up with me in a Lake House suite. But you don’t want to mislead your parents. And part of you still believes that sex should wait until marriage.”

I looked at her, feeling an odd mixture of regret and gratitude. I nodded and lowered my head.

“Then you take the north suite. Katelyn and I will share the east pair of bedrooms.” She smiled kindly. “This’ll be nice. Now let’s take stock of the kitchen and go shopping.”

I recognized that I had no right to expect the level of perceptiveness and acceptance that Amelie had just displayed, but she was built for giving it – and not just to me, to everyone close to her. She could bend too far for other people. It might have been her biggest flaw, and it reminded me of Mom. But it was genuine, no question. And she was actually good at saying what she wanted, even if she chose to do something different.

My moralism was my great weakness. I was hard on myself. Not on other people – I could let most things go unless someone hurt a person I cared about. But inside, I was constantly judging myself, beating myself up, setting impossible standards. It sometimes paid off in architecture, so it wasn’t all bad. But Amelie worried about me being too demanding of myself and gently helped me accept my imperfections. She wasn’t afraid of them or disgusted by them. Her attitude helped me forgive myself when I screwed up.

As I watched her take stock of the kitchen and work on a shopping list, I thought back to my first studio project, during the first three weeks of the Fall semester. It was called “Body, Movement, Light” and designed to be small, abstract, and sensory. In other words, it was supposed to mess with the heads of innocent first-year BArch students. The syllabus described it as “An introductory exploration of form, space, and movement through iterative modeling of a simple human movement – its rhythm, tension, compression, release, and temporary balance.” We were supposed to study a movement and translate it into a three-dimensional spatial composition using only planes. Not a building. Not a structure. A translation.

The bit about iterative modeling was no joke. I tried and failed, again and again and again. I selected a movement Amelie makes when we walk together: the subtle shift of her weight when she leans in to look at something beside me. I did gesture studies, motion arcs, force diagrams, spatial rhythm drawings, and I built a model out of chipboard. It would be more accurate to say I built that model eight times. Eight hellish times. My fury at myself was motivating, I suppose, but mostly it was counterproductive. I was so ashamed I hid my agony from Amelie, which made me feel sick.

Professor Phillips told me I was drawing movement beautifully, but my models were too literal, too vertical, too symmetrical, and – this comment stayed with me verbatim – “too much building, not enough gesture.” I knew what he meant. I could see it for myself, which is why I was so frustrated.

It was nine in the evening and there were about twenty of us in the studio, all stuck on the project. I grew so desperate that there came a moment when I hated my entire upbringing – the moralistic perfectionism, the relentless self-criticism, the fear of making mistakes, of straying outside the borders of expectation. That’s when I couldn’t take it anymore. I ran to the bathroom on fifth floor of Simmons and threw up.

Sitting on the bathroom floor, I called Amelie and told her everything. Everything. From my failure to my hatred of my upbringing. The only thing I didn’t say was that she was my inspiration for the movement I was trying to understand. “Is that why you haven’t been eating properly?” she’d asked. She was right, but I was so distracted I hadn’t even noticed. “Do you remember my blue dress, the one with flowing light? Remember how it drapes? How it dances? How it exudes joy?” I started crying then. Stress overload, I guess. It was humiliating crying on the phone with my girlfriend over a school assignment. All I could think about was what my Dad would think. But Viking would cuddle with me. I breathed deeply while Amelie stayed silent on the phone, present, not demanding. I pictured that incredible dress. I felt the joy radiating from it as the light danced on its surfaces. Just before I hung up, she said, “You don’t have to hate where you came from to outgrow it, John.”

Still faintly nauseous, I dragged myself off the floor and back into the studio. I stared at my model for a minute. Then I crushed it with my fist.

“Easy, John,” someone had mumbled.

Just after one in the morning, something happened. I tilted a plane just a few degrees. The whole composition suddenly leaned – not to depict Amelie, but to evoke her balance, her weight shift, her presence. Within ten minutes, I had one anchoring vertical plane, which felt like my own body as reference, and a diagonally leaning plane, which felt like Amelie’s lovely gesture. There was a small counter plane behind it, which was the recoil motion of her body, balancing forces. The open negative space carved between her plane and mine was the intimacy of shared attention.

“Sweet Jesus!” I said, a bit loudly. Most of the fifteen people still in the studio chuckled quietly. They understood breakthrough moments and were looking for their own.

A few days later, during the show-and-tell-and-criticize, my classmates were talking about tectonics and balance. The TA pointed out the airy tension between the leaning and anchoring planes. Someone said it felt like two forces in dialogue. Prof. Phillips said it was restrained but confident. I felt exposed – and embarrassed by how accurate the comments were. I left the crit shaking. Maybe it was a reaction to feeling reshaped from the inside by this God-awful, impossibly painful, yet utterly majestic process. But it felt like there was an enormity inside me that was rattling me to my bones and surging to get out.

After the late-afternoon crit, I went straight to Amelie’s room to find her. She left with me and we went downstairs to the Joynes Reading Room, where we were alone. I was still shaking and I tried to explain the thing in me desperate to get out. I told her I thought it was my new self trying to get out of the dark prison of my upbringing. She was quiet the whole time I was talking. Eventually I fell silent, still shaking. I’ll never forget her words, or how she delivered them. She knelt on the floor in front of me, making herself small as I sat in a lounge chair. There, she held her hands out and I placed mine in hers. I stared at her eyes, which were full of serenity.

“A small part of this is about your past – letting that go. But most of what you’re feeling right now? That’s you finding out who you are as a creator. That’s the part of you that wants to make beautiful things, and it’s not going to stop trying to get out.”

It cracked me open. I was crying, holding her hands, looking right at her. I’d never felt so close to another person in my life. The shaking stopped as I realized I was sensing my soul’s sincere desire starting to germinate.

That exchange was the most sacred moment of my life to that point. I knew I could never let Amelie go. And I knew she’d never let me go. And I was going to keep those three planes forever.

Chapter 24

The memories poured through me until Amelie was ready to go shopping.

A couple of hours later, we’d finished unloading the groceries and unpacking our gear. Knowing we had about an hour until Katelyn was due to arrive, I grabbed a couple of water bottles and led Amelie to a pair of deck chairs on the patio. Instead of sitting down on hers, Amelie curled up alongside me on mine.

It hit me anew right then: Amelie was constantly affectionate. She craved physical and emotional closeness. Maybe it was compensation for the frustration associated with deferring sex for so long. But I thought it was innate. Whatever the reason, I loved it.

That day she wanted to talk.

“What are you, now, six-seven?”

“Mmmhmm,” I said. “Maybe I’ve got another inch in me but I’m nineteen and few people keep growing after twenty.”

“Another inch would be nice,” she said. Amelie knew that I knew she couldn’t care less how tall I was. But she said it anyway, aiming to touch the tender part of me that was self-conscious about my size.

“Katelyn will be here, soon,” she said, her head on my shoulder and her hand playing over my chest. “It’s going to be an interesting afternoon, John. There’s lots for you to discover. It could be complicated at times. Or funny. Or tender. Or shocking. She’s not easy to predict. But one thing is certain: as you get to know Katelyn, you and I can go deeper, too, because she and I are so close.”

“Okay,” I said, not really understanding what Amelie meant. I’d spent a lot of time on video calls with her sister, so I wasn’t starting from scratch.

“I’ve coached you on this before,” she continued, “but just to reiterate: Don’t help unless she asks. She won’t hesitate to request help, so you don’t need to worry that she might be hiding some unspoken need. For example, she’ll want help carrying her luggage, and you can do that, but wait until she asks. She’ll want to handle moving from the car to the wheelchair and getting inside the house herself.”

“Got it,” I said. I’d been working on picturing Katelyn’s fiercely independent streak, with lots of coaching from Amelie, so I hoped I wouldn’t screw up too badly.

“You’ll adapt quickly,” she said. “You always do. And remember, she and Mom and Dad already love you, and love how I am with you and how you are with me, so there’s no need to prove yourself to anyone. You’re already part of the family. We just need to get you accustomed to what Katelyn is like in person. She’s a lot, John, but she’s a beautiful soul.”

“I understand,” I said. “Honestly, I don’t think you need to be this worried. I’ll make mistakes, and she probably will too, and we’ll figure it out.”

“We will,” said Amelie. “I hope.”

“Amelie, sit up,” I said, frowning. She sat on my hips, bracing herself with her hands on my chest.

“Why are you so edgy?” I asked.

“Am I edgy?” she replied. I just looked at her and watched the silly denial crumble. “You’re both very important to me,” she said eventually. “I want this to go well.”

That didn’t seem to explain her anxiety and my frown didn’t disappear.

“John, don’t push me on this, okay? Just let me be a bit anxious until the three of us find our level with each other.”

I was stunned. In itself, it wasn’t a shocking thing to say. But I’d never seen Amelie set boundaries to keep me at a distance. What was going on?

“Sorry,” I said. “No pushing, okay?”

“No pushing is good. Thank you.” But her jaw was set and her eyes were shining. I was even more confused.

I handed her one of the water bottles and opened one for myself. We watched one another as we drank. Cautiously. She took another swig, her face locked on mine. She wasn’t going to explain, and I wasn’t going to ask again.

“Hug?” I asked.

“Yes please,” she said, and slowly folded herself down on top of me. We stayed there many minutes until her phone dinged.

“She’s early,” said Amelie, springing up.

We arrived in the ground-level parking area to see Katelyn’s car door open wider than normal car doors can – one of several adaptations in this car, I assumed. I watched her lean over to pull her folded chair from the passenger seat, across her body, to the ground beside the car, where she unfolded it.

“John!” cried Katelyn. “Damn, you really are tall. Get my bags, will you?”

“On it,” I said, as I watched her lock the chair in place and lever herself into it. She had a powerful upper body.

“Push me,” she said to Amelie, and I suspected it wasn’t because Katelyn needed help or Amelie wanted something to do. I thought it was a kind of intimacy. I followed the girls up the ramp to the elevator. When we were inside, she said, “Give me a hug, you two.” It was a tangle of arms and heads, but we did it.

“Put her gear in one of the east bedrooms,” said Amelie, as they dropped me off on the first level. “Join us in the Belvedere on the third floor in sixty minutes.”

Okay, that was weird. Sixty minutes? I’d done my homework on T8 spinal cord injuries, and knew Katelyn might need some time to herself after a trip like that, but sixty minutes?

I dropped off Katelyn’s roller bag and duffel and momentarily wondered whether I should be doing the valet thing and unpacking. Wait until asked, I reminded myself. Also, I didn’t want trying to be helpful crossing over into creepy territory. I walked to the northerly suite where I’d be staying, to pass the time.

There was a spacious bedroom, a sitting area, two walk-in closets, a luxurious bathroom, and my favorite feature: the den hovering under the second-level patio. I sat in a recliner with a view through the steel structural supports, past the vast elevated steel-braced pool container to my left, and across the lawn to the boathouse and the canal. The towering dike beyond was the backdrop, but I could picture the vista of the Big O that it hid.

Picturing the lake in my mind’s eye helped me calm down. I was edgy because Amelie was, and I was glad to have a few minutes to recenter. I closed my eyes and breathed. Katelyn and me meeting in person is important to Amelie, I told myself. Let her go through this in her own way.

Just before the one-hour mark, I climbed the stairs to the second level. I grabbed an orange from the fruit basket Amelie and I had just replenished and stood over the sink peeling it, taking in the view and mindlessly trying to manage my weirdly strong feeling of anxiety.

My phone dinged.

Amelie: watcha doin

John: orange. want 1?

Amelie: 2 pls

John: k

I walked up the stairs with three paper towels and three peeled oranges in three bowls. I found the girls sitting close together, half facing the lake, Amelie in a recliner and Katelyn in her chair. I couldn’t help noticing that Amelie had been crying. She was freaking me out today.

“Thanks,” they said, seeming glad for something refreshing to eat. I sat down on another recliner, already turned to face them and the lake, and ate the orange while taking in the magnificent view.

The vibe was friendly but strange, and Amelie’s tear-stained face was unnerving me. I averted my eyes and focused on the lake, feeling watched.

Eating the orange segment by segment was helping but I was finished when they were only half-way done. Strategic mistake.

I wiped my hands as I walked to the Belvedere windows. I felt the afternoon sun on my face, appreciating the glazing technology that was filtering out the most damaging rays.

“Shade?” I asked the girls, as the line of sunshine had already reached halfway up Katelyn’s body and would soon be in her eyes.

“A bit more shade would be nice,” said Katelyn.

I used the controls to move the shades out. That would buy some time as the horizon rose to meet the sun, without interfering with our view of the lake.

When the girls finished their oranges, they wiped their hands and I took the three bowls back to the kitchen. There I slowly washed the bowls and tried to settle myself.

Eventually, I slowly took the stairs back up and sat down, smiling at the two sisters to cover my nerves.

Chapter 25

“I wanna play a game,” said Katelyn. I watched Amelie roll her eyes. “I was thinking Truth or Dare.”

“We’re too old for that,” said Amelie. “And you’d just use it to cause trouble with outrageous dares.”

“True,” said Katelyn, a mischievous gleam in her eyes. “So how about Truth Not Dare? We can discover each other’s secrets. We’re basically honest people, especially me.”

Amelie said, “Yeah, especially you.” I found Amelie’s sarcasm reassuring. Maybe I was reading too much into this.

“Fine,” I said. “I’m an open book. But sex is out of bounds.”

“Harsh limitation!” said Katelyn. “All the best secrets have to do with sex. But I can live with it. You go first, John. Ask anyone anything. We can refuse to answer but that’s legitimate grounds for teasing about being chickenshit for the entire weekend.”

“Okay,” I said, but I just knew my question was going to be evaluated. “Katelyn, why did you ask Amelie to push you earlier? You didn’t need the help.”

“Oooo, a relational question,” said Katelyn. No doubt about it: I was being evaluated. “You’re as observant as Amelie says. Why do you think I did that?” she asked.

“Is asking a question to answer a question allowed?” I said, my attempt at rule-mongering ruined by the goofy smile on my face.

“I’m curious,” she said, as if that answered anything. I decided to play along.

“I thought it might be a way for you to settle in with each other after not being together for a while.”

“Score one for the big guy,” said Katelyn. She looked over to Amelie with raised eyebrows.

“I told you already, a hundred times,” said Amelie, rolling her eyes. “Your turn, Katelyn.”

“Okay,” she said, her eyes drifting up to ten o’clock, as if she didn’t already know exactly what she was going to ask. “What did you two think when you first saw each other?”

“That’s two questions!” said Amelie.

“It would be if you weren’t a couple, but you’re a couple so it’s one,” said Katelyn. That made zero sense, but I liked her impishness. I was already starting to get a better feel for this girl than I’d built over many video calls.

I looked over at Amelie. She was smiling at me, but I thought I detected a trace of uncertainty in that smile. Little sis, who looked nearly identical, seemed genuinely curious.

“You two really do look like twins,” I mused.

“No avoiding the question by flattering me,” said Katelyn, making Amelie roll her eyes again.

“She was standing in the Carothers dorm lobby waiting for a cart,” I began. “She was the only one without a family to help. Most people were looking at my height or my cart. When Amelie looked at me, it was drawn out. Not landing and eyes flicking away, and not rudely staring, either. It was more like studying. I was instantly attracted to her. A few minutes later, I asked if she wanted help. It was an outrageously assertive move for me. Something about her drew it out of me.”

Amelie’s smile broadened as her eyes softened.

“Good answer,” said Katelyn. “Go, sis.”

“I was standing there minding my own business when a sweat-soaked giant entered the lobby,” said Amelie. “He was effortlessly pushing a loaded cart toward the elevator. His tank top was sticking to his chest and back, and even his hair was dripping. I was afraid he might shake his head like a wet dog and shower all of us with sweat.”

“I would never!” I exclaimed, in mock outrage.

“No interrupting in the middle of a story, John,” said Katelyn.

“Yes, Ma’am,” I said, chuckling.

“I felt this tingle all through my body,” said Amelie. “Instant attraction. Handsome, serious, strong, even cute on the right angle.” I laughed at that, and Amelie continued.

“I reminded myself how many boys I’d been attracted to, who’d turned out to be jerks with defective character, and eventually managed to tear my eyes away. A few minutes later John returned with an empty cart. I looked up because of a rattling wheel and watched him apologize to the waiting crowd because he had another load. Then he walked right up to me. I’ll never forget his first words. ‘You’re the only one here without a family. If you need help, walk with me.’ I was caught on the fact that he’d noticed that I was alone and had offered to help. I thought I’d go along with it and see if he really was helpful, or if he was just using my vulnerable situation as an excuse for a stylish come-on.”

Katelyn cocked her head as if to assess whether I was even capable of a stylish come-on, but I knew that was not in my repertoire.

“As we walked to my car, bantering, something amazing happened,” said Amelie. “John accidentally let me know that he loved his parents and didn’t want to hurt them or mislead them. I embarrassed myself by blurting something out about him being kind, and he was really gracious about it. Seeing my embarrassment, he shared more of himself to even things up between us. Do you remember?” she asked smiling at me.

“Of course,” I said.

“That was almost-impossible-to-fake goodness,” she continued, “and I knew I needed to know more about this man. After that, things moved so fast. Something about the new environment, maybe, but I was way off my game, and I could tell John was, too. And that became a kind of theme, I guess – we’d do and say whatever we wanted and to hell with the normal dating protocols. The way he flowed with that helped me relax. It wasn’t long until I realized I’d stumbled onto an amazing person.”

“Aw, nice story, sis,” said Katelyn. “Two good answers,” she added. “You two are just perfect for each other, both so serious and boring.”

“Thank you, Katelyn,” said Amelie sarcastically. The only time I saw her descend into sarcasm was on calls to Katelyn, and it was usually followed by fits of giggling. “We’re serious, sure, sometimes. But there’s nothing boring about love at first sight and breaking all the rules to explore a relationship.”

“Point taken,” said Katelyn, smiling wonkily. “I’ll amend that to serious and mostly boring. Now, it’s the mostly boring sister’s turn to ask a question.”

Amelie turned to Katelyn. “The trip up here was a first for you. Mom was out-of-her-skin worried. What was it like driving alone for two hours?” Amelie obviously really wanted to know, and I got the sense that Katelyn’s independence was as important to caring big sis as it was to stubborn little sis. This drive up had been a big deal for the entire Foster family.

“Dad called it my ‘coming‑of‑age’ road trip,” said Katelyn. “And yeah, Mom was unbearable about it. But apparently I’m stubborn, so I pretended I wasn’t scared. And if you say anything to Mom and Dad about me faking my confidence, I’ll murder you in your sleep.”

She actually seemed serious. “Easy girl,” said Amelie, smiling gently, with the trace of a frown.

“Sorry, that was a bit over the top,” said Katelyn. “I just mean that two hours alone in the driver’s seat was a leap, and I was nervous about it. I’d been working up to it but still. If Mom had known the details, there’s no way she’d have agreed.”

Katelyn tapped her sternum lightly and looked at me. “The thing nobody tells you about driving with a T8 injury is that driving isn’t the hard part. My arms are plenty strong enough to steer and brake all day long. But keeping myself balanced for that long?” She shook her head. “Every little curve or gust of wind on the car forced me to catch myself with my shoulders. The extra belts help but, after the first hour, it felt like I was holding up the entire car with my arms.”

Amelie winced in sympathy, and I did too.

“And then there’s the bladder timing. And don’t even think about rolling your eyes – you asked.”

“I wasn’t rolling my eyes!” complained Amelie.

“T8 means the signals are all scrambled,” continued Katelyn. “So I did what every smart para does: planned like a general. Bathroom before leaving. Nothing to drink for an hour. Knew exactly where the accessible stops were. But the whole time, in the back of my mind, I’m going, please body, cooperate just this once.”

Amelie and I laughed softly. I really appreciated how open Katelyn was about something so personal.

“I know you and Mom were terrified,” she continued. “Dad was, too, though he pretended to be Mr. Goofy Stoic like usual. ‘We have to let the girls try,’ right? That’s what he kept saying. Over and over. I think he was trying to convince himself.”

I smiled a little at that. I understood the kind of father who tries to hide how much he loves and worries.

“But here’s the best part,” said Katelyn, turning her chair to face Amelie full-on. “Once I actually got going, after Miami faded behind me and the roads opened up, something shifted. I wasn’t scared. I wasn’t thinking about pressure relief, or fatigue, or what could go wrong if I needed help and no one was there.”

I could almost taste it. That feeling of just going somewhere by yourself, whenever you want. I’d never even thought about it. For Katelyn, it was everything.

“It felt like freedom. Real freedom,” she said. “Just me, music turned up, sun slanting through my window, chair folded on the seat beside me. I knew exactly what I was capable of, and for two straight hours, nothing – not the injury, not fear, not an overprotective mother – could tell me otherwise.”

Amelie’s eyes were soft now.

“And yeah,” Katelyn added, “by the time I pulled up to the Lake House, my shoulders were toast. The transfer out of the car felt more like a controlled fall. But I did it. All by myself. That drive was a good reminder that my life wasn’t going to be smaller because of what happened. Just different. And still mine. I’d do it again tomorrow. Or in a few days, anyway.”

Amelie held out her fist and Katelyn bumped it with hers, their fingers exploding in a slow-motion celebration.

“So John,” said Katelyn, “a more complete answer to your question about why I asked Amelie to push me when I arrived is that my shoulders and arms were worn out. The reconnection thing was the biggest part, and I could have moved myself, but it was nice to get some help.”

“Back to you, John,” said Amelie.

I wasn’t prepared. And maybe that’s why I bumbled into tender territory.

“Katelyn, Amelie told me you think she’s making a mistake going to business school, and that she should be focusing on fashion design and textiles. To me, it looks like she’s choosing a school because of you, a degree because of her family, and a minor because of me. Do you think Amelie’s thoughtfulness and generosity to others is harmful to her?”

I scrupulously avoided Amelie’s glare as I ended the question.

“Hell, yes!” said Katelyn, full of energy. “She’s like this powerhouse world-changer, yet she’s all tangled up in taking care of everyone around her.” Katelyn’s voice softened as she turned from me to Amelie. “It’s her character, in one way, which makes it beautiful. And I couldn’t be more grateful. But I also feel like I need to kick her gorgeous ass to make sure she takes care of herself.” The energetic edge returned as Katelyn looked at me. “It’s like deep in her. She’s as stubborn about that as I am about my independence, so it’ll be tough to talk her out of anything involving supporting someone she loves.”

“How do you encourage her to take care of herself?” I was still avoiding Amelie’s gaze.

“Mainly shopping,” said Katelyn, laughing. “I’ve found all her best outfits.”

Amelie snorted at that. I loved watching the two of them together. They could flip from serious to sarcastic in a second, then back again, and somehow it all felt natural.

“Your turn, Katelyn,” I said.

Chapter 26

“Amelie,” said Katelyn, “summarize your medical status.”

That was an extremely weird question, and it reduced the Belvedere to tense silence for quite a while. I was sure the girls were communicating with their eyes, but I had no idea what was happening. After a minute, Katelyn nodded ever so slightly and Amelie turned toward me.

“The day Katelyn had her fall, the reason Mom and Dad and I weren’t there is that we were at the hospital.”

Amelie turned to Katelyn, and I caught another micro-nod from the younger sister.

“Though I was a year older and had been developing through puberty normally in most ways,” said Amelie, “my period hadn’t begun. I was fourteen, and some girls don’t start until even older, but Katelyn had started two years earlier when she was eleven, so she and Mom and me started to get worried.”

Amelie looked down at her hands before looking at me. “Right as Katelyn fell, we found out that I have a congenital condition called MRKH Type 1, which means…” Amelie began to tear up. “It means I can never get pregnant.”

I was moving to touch her until Katelyn held up her hand to stop me, and I sat back.

Amelie took a calming breath, glanced at Katelyn for courage, and looked back at me.

“Okay… so MRKH,” she began quietly. “It stands for Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser syndrome. I have Type 1, which is the milder form. I’ll try to explain it without making any of us uncomfortable.” She gave a small, shaky laugh, and wiped her tears.

“Basically, when I was developing before birth, everything built normally on the outside, and all my hormones work just like anyone else’s. I went through puberty on time, I have normal ovarian function, normal hormone cycles, everything you’d expect – except one thing.” She swallowed. “I was born without a uterus.”

I felt my face shift, in concern. I still wanted to comfort her but held back.

“That means I don’t get periods, and I can’t carry a pregnancy. But otherwise my body works completely normally. Nothing about daily life is affected. I’m healthy, I’m not in pain, nothing is wrong with me in the medical sense… just different.”

Her voice was wavering, but she kept going.

“It’s not something you can see from the outside. It’s not something anyone would ever guess. The anatomical parts that matter for intimacy develop almost typically in Type 1. I didn’t even know anything was unusual until I didn’t get a period.”

I watched her brush another tear away, vigorously, seeming frustrated at herself for crying.

“It sounds so clinical when I say it like that. But when you’re fourteen and a doctor sits you down and tells you you’ll never be pregnant… it feels like a door slams shut before you even knew it was there. I’d just been assuming I’d have children one day.”

I watched Katelyn reach over and squeeze Amelie’s hand.

“I don’t think about it every day anymore. Honestly, most of the time I forget about it. My life is full and normal and good. But Katelyn and I talked, and we knew that one day, when someone started to matter to me…” – she looked at me directly now, eyes wet but voice steady – “I’d need to say something before it became a bigger secret than it needed to be.”

Amelie smiled weakly at me.

“That’s it. That’s the whole story. I’m fine – really. It’s just… a tender spot. A place I’d never show someone unless they’ve earned it. And you’re the first person I’ve told.”

No wonder Amelie had been so edgy, I thought. She and Katelyn had known that today was the day to reveal this secret.

What to say? I related most to Pete in this story. I pictured him worried about one girl and getting news that the other had broken her back in a fall.

“That must have been one hell of a day for your parents,” I said, looking at both girls.

“It was a bad day, yeah,” said Katelyn. “And it turned Mom from fun-loving coolness into a raging lunatic helicopter parent.”

Amelie frowned in disapproval.

“Big sis is way too understanding about that particular issue, as usual. Mom would chain me up to keep me safe if Dad would let her.”

“She would not!” exclaimed Amelie, obviously shocked. Katelyn watched her sister quietly, and I saw Amelie figure out what was happening. “Damn, girl,” she said quietly.

“A little distraction never hurts,” said Katelyn, ever so gently. Amelie nodded.

These two girls were great with each other. I felt honored to watch them. And I never sensed more strongly my longing for a sibling.

“Okay, so that was a bad day for everyone,” said Katelyn breezily. “But this game is called Truth Not Dare for a reason, and Amelie just lied.”

“I did not lie!’ said Amelie, plainly shocked.

“You said, ‘That’s the whole story.’ And that’s a lie,” said Katelyn.

“Katelyn!” whispered Amelie urgently, glancing at me out of the corner of her eye as she leaned toward her sister. “What are you doing?!”

They must have known I could hear everything they were saying. But they kept on whispering.

“He’s the one,” whispered Katelyn. “It’s time.”

“You can’t…” whispered Amelie.

“It’s okay,” said Katelyn.

“Oh God,” said Amelie, sitting up straight and facing me, looking pale, still holding Katelyn’s hand.

“The Very Bad Day occurred when Katelyn was thirteen and I was fourteen,” Amelie said. “Kinsey was lost and we two pseudo-twins were changed in the blink of an eye. Mom felt like her family was cursed for a while. Dad held everything together like usual. Katelyn’s rehab was grueling – for her, obviously, but also for the rest of us, and especially for Dad, who was with her almost all the time for that part of the recovery. Once we knew the T8 injury was complete, there was a lot for us to absorb, and Katelyn needed to learn a lot about how to live independently.”

I watched the two girls look at each other, smiling in a loving and determined way. I was trying to estimate where Amelie was headed, but I had no idea.

“Katelyn and I were together whenever I wasn’t at school in those days. When we weren’t crying and making each other laugh, we were talking, trying to figure out what these twin problems might mean for our lives. Eventually we decided what mattered most to us.”

Amelie stopped talking then, and looked from me to Katelyn. Katelyn nodded to encourage Amelie to continue, but Amelie gave an almost imperceptible shake of her head. Katelyn sighed and looked at me.

“What my nervous sister is trying to say is that we made twin promises to each other,” explained Katelyn. “Amelie would take care of me forever, and I would find a way to help her have children that we could raise together.”

“Wow,” I said, struggling for words.

“Girls are stupidly intense at that age,” said Katelyn. “We probably would have forgotten we ever made those promises except that Amelie is bizarrely loyal and dedicated, and she routinely sacrifices herself for everyone she loves, including me. So the twin promises became a really big deal for us. Mom and Dad don’t know about this, and that’s the way we’d like to keep it.”

“We talked about the kind of man who could fit with our promises,” said Amelie, picking up the story. “He had to be willing to share his life with both of us, go through the whole IVF thing with my eggs and Katelyn’s surrogate womb, and truly love me, and I him. We thought such a man would be hard to find, and my experience to date confirms that intuition.”

Finally, finally, the penny dropped for me. Amelie had been hunting for a man to fulfill this role in her and Katelyn’s life. That’s why she’d dated so many guys. That’s why I felt she’d been observing me, evaluating me. That’s why she’d been so aggressive when she discovered hints of my character.

And in the future? Was I supposed to live with both sisters in some kind of trio?! Married to one and caring for the other?! Raising children with both?! My parents would kill me! Why had Amelie waited so long to tell me this all-important fact about her?!! The scale of it was too big – marriage-big, family-big, forever-big.

I couldn’t take it in. The two girls were looking anxiously in my direction, both still holding hands.

“John?” It was Katelyn but I barely registered her voice.

Questions kept coming at me, one after another, like opponents crashing into me under the basket. Had I gotten the whole thing wrong? Was I just part of a plan they’d made years before I showed up? Was any of it real, or was everything set up from the beginning? What did they expect me to do?! I could feel my world crumbling, all my assumptions turned inside out and discarded like old socks tossed into a corner. Despite the all-around view of the Belvedere, I started to feel closed in, the air unbreathable. An almost unstoppable urge to get outside started to rise within me, like I was about to throw up.

“You chose me because of the twin promises?” I said to Amelie, finding my voice and trying to keep my rising panic and overwhelm under control. She was starting to look frightened.

“Yes, and because I love you,” she said quietly, the hand not clasping Katelyn’s fiddling with the hair above her ear.

“But…” I said, before losing track of my words.

The air conditioning kicked on in the silent room and made me jump.

“You…” I tried again and tumbled over my own thoughts.

I could feel myself on the edge of drowning in confusion, very likely to say something devastatingly hurtful. I couldn’t stay. I needed to get away from there so I could breathe.

Before I fully understood what I was doing, my mind in a dark vortex of confusion, I lost it. I stood up and walked to the stairs.

“No,” I heard from behind me, as Amelie broke down. “Not like this…”

I walked down the stairs, moving faster as I went. I ran to my suite to shoulder my backpack. Boots on, I took the stairs to the ground level and started marching away from the house.

Chapter 27

Being outside helped me breathe, and even the unpleasantly hot and humid Florida air was better than being trapped inside. I couldn’t have said what my plan was; I just focused on my boots crunching the gravel beneath my feet. It centered me, and I kept marching.

I was walking up the driveway when Amelie called after me.

“John! Wait!”

I turned around to look at her, eyes red from crying, standing on the edge of the big concrete pad under the house in bare feet. I smiled weakly. Then I turned away and trudged along the driveway.

I heard her running, squealing as she hurt her feet on the gravel.

“John!”

I stopped with my back to her. I heard her stop running.

“Is that all I get?” she asked. “No response? Not even a goodbye?”

I turned to face her. As confused as I felt, I knew I was too muddled to have this conversation.

“I’ll see you back in Austin,” I said. “I need some space.”

I turned away again and took a few steps.

“Wait!” This time she screamed and broke down in tears. I turned around yet again and took in the pitiful sight before me. Her feet were probably cut on the gravel, her heart was torn apart, and she was crying her eyes out, begging me for something more. But what more was there? I just needed time.

“You need to explain,” she sobbed. “You can’t just hear all of that – everything about me, about us, about Katelyn – and walk out without saying anything.”

“I’m not breaking up with you, Amelie,” I said. “We can talk in Austin. After I get my head clear.”

“But I was going to… we were finally going to… this week was a really big deal for me.”

What could I say to that? I just nodded, trying to convey that I understood.

“Are your feet okay?” I asked.

“I think I might have cut them,” said Amelie, between jagged breaths.

I walked back to her. “Come on,” I said as I picked her up and carried her over the fifty yards of gravel driveway to the house. She clung to me and nuzzled my neck as I held her.

“Katelyn will help with the cuts,” I said, as I set her down on the edge of the concrete pad under the house. Amelie was hobbled in pain until she sat down to take the weight off her ravaged feet.

“What will Katelyn do?” asked Katelyn, rolling down the ramp from the elevator lobby, sounding perfectly neutral.

“She ran on the gravel and cut her feet,” I said.

“I see you’re leaving,” she said, still sounding neutral. “Would you carry Amelie upstairs before you go?”

I stared at the two girls, one seeming calm, the other looking wretched.

I picked Amelie up and we walked into the elevator.

“Kitchen,” said Katelyn, and I hit the button for the second level.

We rode the slow elevator in silence. I felt Amelie clinging tightly to my neck and trying to calm her ragged breathing.

“Please John,” she said, as the elevator doors eased open on the living level. “I know it’s a lot. I know you must be angry and confused. But don’t leave. This is a big house. You need space. So we’ll give you space. As much as you want. We can talk again when you’re ready.”

I set her down gently on the kitchen counter and she bent her legs to look at the damage.

“Let me see your feet,” I said. It was as stupid as it was instinctive.

“I’ve got her,” said Katelyn. “Take some time, John. We’ll stay out of the Belvedere, your suite, and the grounds, and we’ll stay off the stairs. You’ll have all the space you need. You’re in shock and walking back to Austin with no money isn’t a rational response. When you’re ready, we’ll have a tribunal.”

“A tribunal?” said Amelie, looking down at her little sister’s face. My question exactly.

“Yeah,” said Katelyn. “Amelie goes on trial for deceiving her boyfriend and trapping him in an unfair situation, then dumping everything on him in an overwhelming way. We’ll decide on her punishment. And if you guys are going to break up over this, it’d be a healthy way to move past each other.”

“Would you stay, John? Long enough for a tribunal?” Amelie’s plea, made with a shuddering voice, moved me.

“There’s no point in a tribunal,” I said. “I already know the secret and I’m not going to condemn anyone, especially not two sisters who are being loyal and loving to each other. I’m going to my suite to calm down and figure out how to get home from here. Then you can take me to the nearest airport or whatever.”

“Okay,” said Amelie, accepting that even while in obvious despair.

“We’re good, John,” said Katelyn. “Go take a break and get your head clear. We’ll do a tribunal if you feel up to it. If you really want to leave, Amelie will take you wherever you want to go. And thanks for not leaving. Both of us would have been worried sick if you’d done that.”

I walked to the stairs and started down to the bedroom level.

“I’m sorry, John,” called Katelyn. I paused my descent but didn’t turn around. “Nothing about this is fair to you. We weren’t trying to hurt you, I promise, even though that’s how it turned out. We did the best we could.”

I nodded, my back to the girls, then walked down the stairs.

Chapter 28

In my suite, I violently threw my backpack on the bed and took refuge in the den, collapsing into a recliner, the sun hidden behind the giant patio above. I stared at the grounds, the boat house, the rest of the dock, the rim canal, the dike behind it, and the sliver of sky visible between the dike and the bottom of the patio deck.

I pictured the water behind the wall of dirt, probably six feet higher than the canal, an inland freshwater sea held back by careful engineering. I stared at that wall of dirt holding back all that water, and it felt like looking in a mirror. Everything dammed up inside me, held in place by years of training – feel but don’t spill.

And what was I thinking, just leaving like that?! Planner John, reduced to idiotic impulse by finding out something important about someone I loved.

I punched the arm of the recliner, hard, and leaned back, hard, the footrest rising. I lay there, closed my eyes, and tried to calm myself.

I needed Viking. If he’d been here, he’d have sensed my extreme agitation and laid his head on my leg to comfort me.

Without thinking about it, I called Dad.

“Hi son,” he said. “Did you make it to Florida okay?”

“Yes, sir,” I said. “I’m sitting here staring at an amazing feat of engineering and thinking about you and Mom and Viking. Is he there?”

“Of course,” said Dad. “I’ll get you up on the big screen and put you on speaker.”

A few seconds later, I watched through Dad’s phone camera as Viking nose-booped the television then lay down, staring at my image.

“Hey, boy,” I said. “Miss you.”

Dad turned the camera around to show me his face. “Viking will be glad to see you in a couple of weeks when you visit.” I knew what Dad meant: he and Mom were counting on me coming down to San Antonio two weekends from now. “Is Amelie coming?”

“I haven’t raised it with her yet,” I said. “But I’ll be there for sure.”

“It’ll be nice to see you either way,” he said.

“Dad, I heard something recently that… I guess it overwhelmed me. I didn’t act out or anything, don’t worry. But internally, I’m still roiled up about it. I’ve watched you manage stress on the job for years, and kind of copied you, I guess. When the stress is internal and emotional, though, how do you handle it?”

“I pray, son,” he said, looking at me sincerely. “That helps me remember what’s important, and I rededicate myself to it.”

I nodded, and we fell into silence, which was normal and comfortable for us, when Mom wasn’t around, anyway. And really, what was there to say? Dad was right. I needed to focus on what was most important.

“Thanks, Dad. I’ll see you in a couple of weeks. Bye boy,” I said, and ended the call.

I hadn’t prayed in a while. I guess I’d concluded that God wasn’t in the communication business. But I did care deeply about discerning God’s will – or what was good and true and beautiful, anyway, in case God wasn’t in the willing business, either.

So what was good and true and beautiful in this situation?

I loved Amelie with all my heart, no question. And at this point I knew part of me always would. I wasn’t the kind of guy who could stop loving someone, even if we weren’t together anymore.

I’d assumed Amelie loved me just as intensely, but I was a long way from being confident about that now. I was a mere fix, a solution to a problem that predated me, a problem that had driven her through almost thirty boys until she landed on me. And I’d suspected nothing, at least until her nervousness on this trip, which had been bothering me.

How was I supposed to love her if she didn’t love me for me?

At some level, though, I knew that Amelie was not a deceptive person. The first secret she’d hidden from me was about Katelyn’s injury, and she told me when she had permission, which was very early.

The second secret she withheld from me was her family’s wealth, but she told me when her parents were confident in her relationship with me, at the five-month mark, and gave their permission.

This third secret? Her parents didn’t even know about it. That was just for the two girls and me, apparently, and was supposed to remain that way, for now at least. The girls must have been calculating when to tell me. Amelie must have been stressed about hiding it from me, but she needed to wait until it was the right time in their sisters-come-first dynamic.

Seven months in, they felt ready to tell me. Because they believed they could trust me with their most tender truth. Because Amelie had become confident that I represented the solution they’d been searching for.

I was suddenly hit by an awful vision: Amelie catching my eye on campus as she was heading out on a date with another man. I knew what she most wanted: me. But I’d forced her to keep looking for the right man. I saw the grief and sadness in her eyes. Then she turned away.

That would be absolutely unbearable!!

But how could I be confident in her love? I’d be haunted by uncertainty forever if we stayed together. Just like I’d be haunted by her forever if I let her go.

“Breathe, John,” I said out loud. I looked down at my fingers, dug hard into the arm rest, knuckles white. I relaxed my hands and arms, my neck and shoulders, my twisted gut and abs, my tense legs. Even my toes were tight and I let them unclench. “Breathe,” I said, and closed my eyes.

“What’s most important, John?” I whispered.

But I didn’t know.

Mercifully, as I relaxed, sleep came, and offered respite from my emotional turmoil.

Chapter 29

It was still light when I woke from that nap. I felt more settled. Confused and uncertain, but calm, for the moment anyway.

I reached for my phone. Almost five-thirty. I’d been looking forward to watching the sunset colors in and above the lake, which was half the point of the architecture of this amazing building. Now I wasn’t sure I could enjoy it.

I had unread messages from Amelie and Katelyn. I felt my gut clench again. I really didn’t want to read them. But I checked Katelyn’s.

“Tribunal. 6pm.”

Without thinking too much about it, I moved to the bathroom and took a long shower to wash away the day’s sweat. But I couldn’t wash away my confusion.

Afterwards, I shaved and dressed in a pair of nice shorts with a belt and a button-down short-sleeved shirt. It was all hand-me-downs from Dad. I laughed when I looked at myself in the mirror and realized I’d been dressing on autopilot with no conscious plan. Maybe I was dressing for the tribunal.

In the bedroom I stared at my phone again. I couldn’t help myself. I opened Amelie’s messages. There were just two.

“I’m sorry.”

“I love you. I promise.”

I sighed. It was five to six. If we were going to do this tribunal thing, now was the time.

I dragged myself along the hallway then up the stairs to the living level, dreading what I’d find there. The sun almost blinded me, and my eyes took a few moments to adjust. I knew the filtering built into the glazing was doing its job, but that was still a lot of sun. I should have brought my shades.

The girls weren’t in the living area so I walked to the patio door. I saw them beside the pool. Amelie was in a chair in front of Katelyn, and the two of them were leaning forward, foreheads touching.

Their closeness – it was almost too much.

I took my eyes off the girls and focused on the lake, artificially raised by a giant dike-and-lock system, holding the water in place. Hold it back, John, I ordered myself.

I slid open the door and was hit hard by the heat and humidity and that water-earth-plant smell, like everything living was on the verge of disintegrating. I watched the girls separate as they turned to see me. I slowly walked across the patio deck, under the vast screen-supporting structure.

As I approached, I tried to imagine the dark day when Pete discovered that both his precious girls had far more challenging lives ahead of them than he’d assumed to that point. I tried to picture Pam’s transformation into an anxiously protective mother. I tried to grasp the way these two young women were irrevocably welded to one another, promising the nearly impossible and burdening one another with keeping those promises.

I’d been standing in the middle of an emotional minefield for seven months and never suspected a thing. Now I knew exactly where I was but couldn’t see a safe way to stay or leave. I was frozen in fear and resorting to what I knew: doing what was expected, like the good boy I was.

“Nice duds,” said Katelyn lightly. Extremely incongruous. “Pull up a chair.” I did as she asked and sat down. “Closer, silly,” she said. “This is a knees-touching tribunal.”

In my increasingly agitated state, I wondered how much of Katelyn’s seemingly innocent playing I could take before just exploding. I now knew full well that this girl’s moves were never innocent. She saw everything and was constantly calculating. She’d set this whole day up with Amelie, who was almost as calculating herself. And Katelyn had gotten me to stay by promising a ridiculous tribunal.

But I had to admit that she did everything not to hurt but to help, not mainly to amuse herself, but mainly to help her sister. She was even trying to help me. Her apology as I descended the stairs a couple of hours earlier floated back to me. I believed that she didn’t want to hurt me.

I got over my stupid resistance and gave her what she asked for: I pulled forward until my knees were touching the two girls, our thighs forming a star shape, my much longer legs distorting the star – an apt reminder that I’d never fit in.

I noticed Amelie’s feet covered in bulging socks, holding bandages in place. It was a blunt reminder that, whatever else was true about this situation, my girlfriend had been beyond upset when I’d started to leave and desperately wanted me to stay.

“It’s six,” said Katelyn. “Sunset is at seven thirty, and the light should start getting interesting shortly after seven because of the lake surface. So we’ve got one hour until seven for this tribunal. Regardless of how it goes, we all stay for the sunset and dinner. Then Amelie will take John wherever he wants to go and get him back to Austin on her dime. Or John can stay here if he wants. But nobody leaves here until eight this evening no matter what. Okay?”

“Okay,” said Amelie.

I was slow to answer and both girls looked at me.

“That’s a reasonable compromise, John,” said Katelyn. “You’ll actually get home safely this way. And surely you can bear our company for a couple of hours until you leave.”

“Fine.” As soon as I said it, I worried that I sounded like a moody teenager, annoyed at everything. Don’t you dare go that way, John, I ordered myself. “That’s a good arrangement,” I added, in a more constructive tone of voice.

Katelyn smiled at me then. It was a smile I hadn’t seen on her before. I thought it was grateful. And yes, a little fragile. I was suddenly hit by what this situation must mean from her point of view. Everything was on the line for her. She was framing this ridiculous tribunal as if Amelie were the one who had deliberately seduced and deceived me to solve their longstanding “twin-promises” problem. But Katelyn was hugely invested in the outcome.

How does an eighteen-year-old paraplegic picture meeting someone, falling in love, and raising children? However complicated that might be, the twin promises meant that she’d hitched the star of her hopes for a loving family to Amelie’s wagon.

Once again, I felt out of my depth with these two. I felt the restlessness that comes with worrying about being manipulated and controlled. I felt the urge to run again, afraid that if I didn’t it might be too late.

But I was out of time. Katelyn was ready to begin.

Chapter 30

“This knees-touching tribunal is hereby called to order,” said Katelyn.

Amelie and I both looked at her in mild disbelief.

“Hey, this is a miserable situation,” said Katelyn. “I’m just trying to have some fun with it. You two are so boring. Moving on… Amelie is charged with hiding something huge from a good man, dumping it all on him at once, and making him wonder whether she actually loves him. Katelyn is facing charges of plotting with Amelie to withhold the information, of helping Amelie decide when and how to reveal it, and of benefitting from the situation to such a degree that her renowned impartiality might be suspect. And John is charged with losing his mind and trying to walk from Florida to Texas with no money.”

We looked blankly at Katelyn.

“Oh come on, you two, that was funny. And being stupid was the worst thing I could think of for John.”

“I was confused and just needed to get some space,” I said, slightly huffy at being called stupid when I’d been under such stress.

“Don’t worry, John,” said Katelyn. “Like I said before, at eight this evening, if you still want to leave, Amelie will make sure you get home safely. So we can set your charges aside. We can set aside the charges against me, too, because I’m a survivor of a spinal cord injury and everyone has to feel sorry for me and let me get away with misbehaving. But Amelie is older and wiser, and her brain works fine even without a uterus, so she’s in deep shit.”

Amelie gasped in shock. “My brain works fine even without a uterus? Are you serious right now?!”

“Well, doesn’t it?” said Katelyn. “Stop being so ridiculous. You didn’t get all outraged when I made fun of the paralyzed girl and the stupid boy.”

“I just didn’t get around to it,” said Amelie dryly.

“Whatever. Stay focused, people,” said Katelyn. “When we’ve discussed this situation over the years…”

“You knew this would happen?!” I said.

“We knew this might happen,” said Katelyn. “If it did happen, we figured that the man in question would feel manipulated, and thus justifiably hurt and angry. More importantly, though, he wouldn’t know whether to trust that Amelie truly loved him, as against liked him well enough because he solved the twin-promises problem. All that’s made worse by Amelie’s deplorable tendency to sacrifice herself for the wellbeing of others, so she might be capable of convincing herself that she loves the guy even though she’s settling for second best for the sake of the promises. Do those worries sound familiar, John?”

“Yes,” I said, shocked to learn that the sisters had already analyzed this situation and had been thinking about it for years. No wonder Katelyn had stated my concerns so accurately.

“The solution to this problem is simple,” she announced. “Amelie just needs to answer one question convincingly. Amelie, do you love John for John, regardless of the twin promises?”

“Yes,” said Amelie, looking deeply into Katelyn’s eyes, as though I wasn’t even present. “I adore John for who he is. Seven months in, I’m certain that I can’t be who I’m meant to be, who I want to be, without him.”

I felt the mood change. Katelyn looked back at Amelie just as intensely. I’d quickly become irrelevant to this exchange, but I watched, fascinated, trying to understand what was being transacted between the two sisters.

“But you would sacrifice yourself for me, and John now knows that. So you might convince yourself that you love John with all your soul just for my sake. People who love as intensely as you do have done weirder things.”

“That’s not what it feels like in here,” said Amelie, patting her chest above her heart.

“But Amelie, we hid the truth from John for seven long months, which sends a very clear message about what’s most important to you, to us.” Katelyn was speaking quietly, but her words were unmasking every last possibility of self-deception in her sister and naming my doubts, point for point.

“It’s both,” said Amelie. “I love him. I love you. There is no competition, no conflict.”

“Then why did you wait so long to tell him about our twin promises?”

“You know very well why,” said Amelie. “Because it is too large a secret to absorb until we know one another well enough.”

“But this secret grew larger, outpacing the growth in the relationship, increasing the pain and harming trust all the more.”

“Then I’m trapped!” said Amelie. “If I say something too early, a beautiful, life-changing relationship ends. If I wait until the relationship is strong, revealing the secret is devastating to everyone. And then you’ll point out my apparently enormous capacity for self-deception and tell me I could be talking myself into being in love with John for your sake and for the sake of our promises.”

“Exactly,” said Katelyn.

Amelie roared in frustration and stormed away. As soon as she started moving, though, she was hobbled. She gingerly worked her way to the far corner of the deck and collapsed into a chair. I’d never seen her behave that way. I could certainly understand her frustration about feeling trapped in a no-win situation – it’s exactly how I felt about the leave or stay thing, doomed to doubt and misery either way.

“The tribunal will recess for a few minutes,” said Katelyn. “Please find a neutral corner.”

Chapter 31

I carried a chair to the opposite corner of the patio and sat down heavily, my back to the two girls, the bright sun out of my direct line of vision, the northern part of the lake spread out before me.

That was such a strange exchange. Why was Katelyn pushing Amelie so hard?

I tried to imagine Amelie’s relationship history, three-and-a-half years of dating with a purpose, evaluating each boy with a defined goal in mind. That was serious dedication. And she’d approached me exactly the same way, except that things worked out instead of collapsing.

Katelyn had to be driving this interrogation because she believed there was a chance that Amelie really might talk herself into loving me for the sake of their promises. And she didn’t want that for Amelie any more than she wanted that for me.

And how could Amelie feel truly confident herself? She would know that she could talk herself into being in love with a man who could make the promises work – loving him because of the function he could perform rather than because of who he was. Katelyn wanted her to be confident in her love.

I realized, then, why I felt irrelevant in that conversation. Despite superficial appearances, this really wasn’t about me and my ability to trust. It was about Katelyn trying to protect Amelie from herself, from her self-sacrificial tendencies.

I sat there for ten minutes, watching the lake and wondering what Amelie was thinking, until Katelyn called us back.

I watched Amelie hobble back and we resumed the knees-touching tribunal. There was a pregnant pause.

“The question before us is how you and John can be confident in your love given the context of the twin promises,” said Katelyn. “And while we’re at it, we have the usual problem, family wealth, which can also make assessing sincerity difficult.”

That hadn’t occurred to me. Amelie could have doubts just as strong as mine for that reason.

We both turned to Amelie, but she only had eyes for Katelyn.

“Katelyn,” she said, “I would break my promise to you if that’s how I had to keep John in my life.”

Katelyn gasped.

I was beyond shocked.

I’d never seen Katelyn cry, but she was close to tears now.

“This whole situation has made it clear to me,” said Amelie. “There’s no way for us to resolve John’s uncertainty about my feelings toward him – or my uncertainty either, if you’re right that I could deceive myself about that – unless I’m willing to make him number one and leave the twin promises behind. Only then can he and I know for sure how important he is to me. After that, if he wants, we pick up the promises, together, and fulfill them as a couple. If he doesn’t want that kind of life, then we don’t, and we find another solution to my fertility challenge. And we find another solution to your need for a family and some degree of ongoing care. Either way, we still deal with the problems the promises were intended to solve, but maybe not in the way the promises aimed to solve them.”

A single tear ran down Katelyn’s cheek.

“You can see that, logically, right?” asked Amelie, reaching out her hand.

“That wasn’t…” she said, her lower lip trembling. “We never even imagined this.”

“It’s the plan now,” said Amelie.

“Really?” said Katelyn, weakly.

“Really,” said Amelie, softly. “But you know I love you, and that will never change. And we will solve both of our problems, one way or another, even if we set aside the twin promises.”

Katelyn nodded bravely. “So the knees-touching tribunal is over,” she said, her voice cracking and the tears flowing as she wheeled herself to a corner of the patio, staring out at the Big O, her face shielded from the bright sunshine by one of the pillars holding up the vast screen canopy.

“John, if you don’t understand now how much I love you, then you’ll never get it.” There was steel in her voice. I sensed an ultimatum in there somewhere.

“Amelie, I’m adapting as fast as I can. I didn’t ask for any of this.”

“You kind of did,” she said, leaning forward in a vaguely threatening way.

“What do you mean?” I asked, feeling a touch outraged now, on top of everything else.

“You could have trusted our feelings for each other, John. You know we love each other totally. You know it.”

Her eyes were blazing.

“You expect me to take a brick to the head and not feel dizzy?” I could feel myself pleading with her to calm down.

“I just hurt her, like I never have, and I did it for you. For us.” Damn, those eyes were aflame. She was in some kind of rage – I’d never seen her like this – and I was definitely intimidated.

I wanted to say that I didn’t ask her to hurt Katelyn, but that would just take us back to, “you kind of did.” So I just stared at her, hoping she’d calm down.

“But I can’t blame you for your reaction,” she said, sitting back, still staring at me.

That sounded like a tiny concession. Thank God. Damn, but this girl was intense. Especially in the way she loved. We looked at one another, trying to find our way back to where we both wanted to be. I felt the urge to bring her closer competing with the powerful urge to complain that she wasn’t being fair to me. I closed my eyes and swallowed the half-formed complaint. Don’t whine, John. Do like Dad. Be constructive.

“Are you sure you can do this?” I asked. “The twin promises have been a guiding light for a long time.”

“You’re my number one, John,” she said. “You and I decide what to do together, about everything, including Katelyn.”

Her number one?! I think I was in shock, again, winning a battle for Amelie’s loyalty when I hadn’t even realized I’d been fighting. “But Amelie,” I said, “this now puts me in a competition with Katelyn for your love, which feels all wrong to me.”

“This is not about love at all, John,” she said. The steel was back. “You can’t stop me loving my family any more than I can stop you loving yours. This is about lifestyle. If we do the triad thing, you and I are still married, period. Faithful to each other. Katelyn is family, not… she’s not in our bed. That’s a hard line.”

I was tempted to express my further shock that we were now talking matter-of-factly about marriage, as if it were a foregone conclusion, just like she’d talked about dating in that way seven months ago. And about sexual boundaries, which hadn’t even occurred to me! But I was afraid that showing my shock might trigger something in Amelie – a deeper fury, maybe. She was willing to give up her most fundamental ethical pillar for me, so I needed to be agile enough to realize we were talking on the scale of lifelong commitment. I gulped, swallowing whatever words I’d been about to utter. Again. In this mood, Amelie was awe-inspiring and flat-out terrifying.

“I started this conversation feeling like I was on the outside and in doubt about everything,” I said. “Now I’m feeling protective of Katelyn. That was a big bomb you just dropped. You just switched number ones and neither of us had any warning.”

“There’s no other way,” Amelie said. “When Katelyn and I used to talk about this situation, everything was abstract. We devised ways to convince the man that my love is true. But now we’re actually in the situation, and dealing with a real man with real feelings, none of that stuff will work. And she’s wrong about me deceiving myself; I know exactly what I’m feeling. There’s only one way through here. And that’s the path I’m defining for us.”

“She went from controlling a tribunal to completely deferring to you when you made that decision,” I said.

“It’s my role to drive, to decide,” she said. “Katelyn keeps me honest, and sometimes she needs to push hard to do it. But when I really make up my mind, she backs off. She trusts me – maybe too much – so I’m careful about when I put my foot down. But when I do, it’s done. She knows that about me, and she counts on it.”

“Now it’s on me to decide what kind of relationship we have with Katelyn, right?”

“Yes,” said Amelie. “But the decision is about lifestyle. Do we embrace the triad lifestyle or not? I want that, but I want you more. The compensation for the stress around that decision is that we have each other, locked in, rock solid. I hope to have biological children. Maybe we’ll adopt. Katelyn will manage her life, one way or another. She and I will be unbreakably close, regardless.”

I reached for her hand.

“I wonder if the way I’m feeling is the way your Mom felt when your Dad walked away from his family to marry her.”

“Maybe,” said Amelie. “Are you absolutely convinced of my love the way Mom was about Dad’s?”

More flaming steel in the eyes, but at least she was still holding my hand.

“I am now, yes,” I said, “just like I was until the… the revelation.”

“So it’s probably like the way Mom felt. Dad, too, because he would have been anxious about Mom marrying him for his money no matter how much he told himself otherwise. His parents’ cruelty turned out to be a huge gift, strengthening Mom and Dad’s confidence in each other.”

“Are you worried about that with me? The money thing?” I asked.

“No,” she said. “I understand your values, your priorities.”

I thought back to when I first met this extraordinary person, to the moment when she nodded and walked out of the lobby with me and my empty cart. I’d known it then: Amelie was a woman who knows how to make a decision.

Chapter 32

I looked across the deck at Katelyn, still staring out over the lake.

“Amelie, I don’t know how to think about a triad lifestyle, raising children together. You girls have had years to imagine it, but it’s very new to me and I’m sure I have only the weakest concept of what it means. I get that you and I will have a traditional, faithful marriage, so the triad doesn’t involve blurring sexual boundaries that are important to me.”

“Important to me, too,” she said. I nodded, glad we were on the same page about that.

“And I get the surrogacy plan. I guess we’d share a house. I guess our children would have three parents. Beyond that, I’m grasping at straws.”

“John, this is not something we know how to do. I think nobody really knows how to do it. There is a lot of wisdom about polyamorous relationships, and some of that might help us figure out communication and roles, but we’re not doing polyamory. If we decide to do the triad thing, we’d need to create it from scratch. And we’d need to adapt, because none of us will stay static.”

“Maybe I should be doing some reading about this,” I said uncertainly.

“I’m glad you said that,” she said. “Katelyn and I have a little reading list. You and I can talk about it. If you want, the three of us can talk together at some point.”

“I’m up for that,” I said. “But what if Katelyn falls in love with someone and wants to have her own home and her own family?”

“Then you and I would revert to a conventional two-parent lifestyle with crazy Aunt Kat a big part of our children’s lives,” said Amelie.

“Kat?” I asked.

“That’s what Dad calls her,” said Amelie. “You and I need to talk through the triad lifestyle in detail to get a feel for it. When we get deep into it, I might decide I don’t want it. Everything’s up for grabs, John. Everything except you and me.”

I smiled gratefully. “If we’re solid, I can face anything,” I said. “And now I’m going to chat with Katelyn for a bit.”

“Good,” she said. “I’ll work on dinner.”

As Amelie hobbled inside, I carried a chair to Katelyn, where she was still staring out across the lake, a vertical bar of shadow shielding her face. I sat down beside her, my back to the sun.

“So that was unexpected,” I said.

“Are you happy, now, John?” she asked, staring straight ahead, the hurt she was feeling front and center. “I feel like my world has been knocked off its axis.”

“Same here,” I said, smiling gently at her.

“You get how much Amelie loves you, now, right?” I nodded. “I don’t know why you ever doubted it. She’s never been like this. With anyone. Ever. Not remotely close.”

“I don’t have that long history with her like you do,” I said.

“I know, but John, inside, you must feel it, like with absolute certainty.”

“I did until the twin-promises thing a few hours ago.”

She nodded, seeming frustrated that I hadn’t been able to respond better than I had to that bombshell.

“I am what I am, Katelyn,” I said. “Maybe some men would have kept a clear, logical head and adapted fast. I got seriously confused and just… lost it.”

“And tried to walk to Texas,” she said, looking at me for the first time and smirking, despite how upset she must have been feeling.

I chuckled wryly. “Yeah, but getting out of there was better than saying or doing something I’d regret.”

“I feel like I should turn over my ‘Amelie’s top priority’ badge to you,” she said, “except I don’t have one.”

“That girl makes decisive moves in a crisis, doesn’t she?” I said, looking past Katelyn to the house but unable to see anything except the blazing sun reflected in the glass.

“She does,” said Katelyn. “She drives everything. She always has. And you’re what she’s been missing – something solid underneath her. I’m the fun, like bubbles in champagne or sprinkles on ice cream.”

“You are fun,” I said. “But Amelie depends on you to tell her the truth, to see the few things she misses, which are sometimes the most important things, especially when they’re about her. What you did in the tribunal was… loving. Beautiful.”

Katelyn’s eyes teared up as she nodded. “She sometimes needs me for that. But what do you need me for, John?”

“With some time, we’ll figure that out,” I said. “However it works out, you are in my life forever. We start by getting to know each other.

“We must have had, like, fifty video calls by now,” she said. “It’s not like we’re just meeting for the first time.”

I laughed. “Amelie told me this morning that you’re a lot in person, and she wasn’t wrong. We’re going to figure this out, okay?”

“Okay,” she said. “Can you push me inside, please?”

“Sure,” I said. “Is this like a peace offering?”

“Don’t make a big deal out of it,” she said, her mouth smirking, her eyes warm.

I stood, a hand resting on her shoulder, which she quickly covered with her own hand. Then I pushed her inside, feeling the gift of it. The privilege of a simple kind of intimacy.

The three of us watched the sunset from the dining room over Amelie’s grilled salmon and my salad. The lake lit up with reflections twenty minutes before the sun dipped below the horizon. It was a cloudless sky, so the sunset was simple, the colors reaching over the full expanse of the horizon defined by the huge lake. We finished out on the deck with bowls of ice cream and fresh strawberries, watching the embers yield to darkness.

“Imagine being on the moon,” I said. “Right on the ring between the light side and the dark side. It’d be perpetual sunset.”

I saw the girls look at each other, then tried to suppress their laughter.

“What?” I asked.

“You’re adorable,” said Amelie. “But there’d be no atmosphere, so no refraction and not much of a sunset, right?”

“Oh, yeah,” I said, embarrassed that I’d said something so stupid, especially when I was trying to be… kind of romantic.

“Double geek alert,” complained Katelyn. “You two deserve each other.” But her eyes were gleaming as she said it.

All three of us were still raw – the emotional equivalent of Amelie’s ravaged feet. But I started to feel hopeful that we’d find a good way forward after this challenging day. All of us.

Chapter 33

“Mom, Dad, please meet John Anderson,” said Amelie. “John, please meet Pete and Pam Foster, my parents.”

My head was spinning with the quick shift from yesterday’s twin-promises revelation and tribunal to today’s parent-meeting moment. I knew how important this was for Amelie and I needed to keep my head in the game.

“Very nice to meet you in person, Mr. Foster, Mrs. Foster,” I said, shaking both their hands. I towered over both of them. She was smaller than Amelie, probably five-two, and he was smaller than average for a man, maybe five-six. None of that had been evident in our video calls. I guess my height hadn’t been obvious, either.

“It’ll be Pete and Pam, if that suits you, John,” said Mr. Foster, “same as always.”

“Yes sir,” I said, making him chuckle. “May I help with luggage?”

“Sure. I’d appreciate another pair of hands,” he said.

As I collected bags, I overheard the conversation between Pam and Amelie.

“Where’s Katelyn?”

“Still in bed, I think,” said Amelie.

“Why are you in socks and hobbling around?”

“I stupidly ran out on the gravel and cut my feet up.”

“Amelie! I’ve warned you a hundred times about that gravel!” said Pam.

I smiled at the display of over-anxious parenting, and Pete caught my smile. He chuckled. That communicated a lot about how sharply observant he was. He was accepting, too, letting Pam do her thing. I’d always liked Pete but now, in an instant, I felt drawn to him. I wondered if Amelie would prove to be correct about her father and me becoming “best buds.”

A few minutes later, with their gear in the southerly suite, and some additional food in the kitchen, the four of us were out on the deck, sitting around a table, and enjoying a beautiful Saturday morning. It was still before eight so they must have left Miami well before six, wanting to make the most of their time away.

“Show me,” commanded Pam, and Amelie lifted her feet into her mother’s lap. Pam carefully peeled off the socks and inspected the bandages. “Antibiotic cream?” Amelie nodded. “I need to change these dressings.” We waited quietly, taking in the lake, until Pam returned with a bowl of water and supplies and got to work.

Amelie wasn’t even a tiny bit resistant, whereas Katelyn would have complained through the entire exercise. I knew a lot more about that difference now. Katelyn would have been defending her independence. Amelie would have been supporting her mother. Both sisters would allow Pam to do what she needed to do, but one fought and the other flowed.

I was sitting beside Amelie and she leaned over, tucking herself into me as Pam did her medical thing. I knew Pete liked the way Amelie and I were together, in theory, but being in person was telling. Now I could see him smiling as he watched his daughter being affectionate. We made him happy.

Amelie and I had never felt comfortable displaying any kind of physical affection in front of my parents. I felt awkward about it, and Amelie sensed it and stayed formal around them. I felt another flash of resentment. Why couldn’t they welcome her as warmly as I felt welcomed by the Fosters?!

Yet another part of me appreciated the tiny touches Mom and Dad used to express affection. It was all so understated but very real. Just different. I could see the little gestures. I could understand the tender glances. But I wanted this, not that.

“Amy,” said Pete, “are you still attending the church near your dorm?”

“Yes,” she said. “Methodist. Weird name. We’ve been going every week when we’re in town. John’s parents aren’t happy about it.”

“But I thought…” began Pete.

“Yes,” said Amelie, “you’d think that religious parents would be happy that their son was independently settling into a churchgoing rhythm after he leaves home for college, and going to church with his girlfriend no less. But apparently the Methodists are a suspiciously loosey-goosey variety of church according to conservative Southern Baptists. Who knew there was so much infighting?”

“What’s it like for you, Amy?” asked Pete.

“The community is beautiful, though it takes a while to break into it,” said Amelie. “The ritual part is interesting. I’m not into the singing, really, but I love the altar cloths and the robes. The fabric textures and hanging banners are lovely, and the colors and symbols have rich meanings. The sermons are mostly practical. Like, we read a bit of this really ancient book – you know, the Bible – then the minister-pastor-preacher lady tells us what she thinks about it. It gets me thinking about what’s important and helps me focus on my priorities. I guess it makes me a bit more deliberate about how I live.”

“What about all of their beliefs and doctrines and what not?” asked Pete.

“Mmm, not so much,” said Amelie, smiling up at me in a charming way. We all laughed. “John and I seem to be pretty aligned on that, despite our contrasting backgrounds. But that church is the kind of place where you can keep your private opinions to yourself and still belong, which is nice. They have a group for college-age students and we meet with them when we can. There are a couple of dozen of us. Not many couples like John and me. Last week we went bowling. Sometimes we read something and discuss it together. It’s a good way to make friends. John misses his basketball buddies and Viking, so this helps.”

“Viking?” asked Pete.

“Family dog,” I said.

“Best pal, more like,” said Amelie, patting my chest. “And a real-life Texas hero. Viking is an explosives detection dog, recently retired. He’s saved a lot of lives. And John is his best friend, so the dog’s been messed up since John moved to Austin. John might be a bit messed up, too. He had a lot of routines built around Viking.”

Damn if I wasn’t almost driven to tears by Amelie’s matter-of-fact summary of my relationship with Viking. This girl got me, really got me.

“So your father’s a K-9 officer,” said Pete.

“Yes,” I said. “He moved into a training role when Viking retired, so his schedule is a lot more predictable. I think part of him misses the excitement.”

“What does your mother do?” asked Pam.

“She was an elementary school teacher before I arrived, and she’s going back to teaching now that I’m not in the house,” I said.

Chapter 34

“Morning everyone,” said Katelyn, struggling through the door to the deck.

“Gotta get an auto-opener on that heavy door,” mumbled Pete.

“Hi sweetie!” called Pam, as Katelyn rolled toward her and gave her Mom a kiss.

“I see you couldn’t keep your hands off Amelie’s feet,” said Katelyn.

“You did a good job yesterday,” said Amelie, deflecting her sister’s provocation.

“You know how that happened, right?” she said to her parents.

My heart was in my throat in an instant. But Amelie looked relaxed.

“We were talking about textiles and fashion and Amelie ran screaming out of the house, horrified that she was dedicating her life to her family instead of following her first love. She wasn’t thinking and she was like fifty yards from the house with cut-up feet when she ground to a halt, unable to move. I had to get John to carry her into the kitchen so I could tend to her.”

Amelie snorted in derision. “It was stupid, sure. But I like what I’m studying, and I’m going to be taking some textiles and fashion-design classes.”

“John said it best,” said Katelyn. “Amelie is choosing a major because of her family, a minor because of him, and a school because of me.”

“It’s kind of early in the morning for you to be pushing me to reform my character, isn’t it?” said Amelie – rather agreeably, I thought, given Katelyn’s aggression.

“Would you like coffee, Katelyn?” I asked, standing with my own cup.

“Yes please,” she said.

“Refills, anyone?”

“I’d like a warm-up,” said Pam, still focused on Amelie’s feet.

Pete followed me to the kitchen.

“You deflected Katelyn, just like Amelie does,” he observed. His directness surprised me, and I was momentarily caught off guard.

“I’ve only known Katelyn a few months, obviously,” I said, “but she’s never completely wrong. Amelie really is organizing her life around helping other people. Katelyn sees it and says it. It’s kind of refreshing.”

“I tried to discuss the fashion-design thing with her,” said Pete, as if this were somehow his fault.

“Amelie treasures those conversations, sir,” I said. “Pete.” I smiled. “She misses you and talks about how important your chats were. It’s not my place to have an opinion about this…”

“Yes, it is,” he said, like he really wanted to hear.

“It might seem like Amelie’s sacrificing herself for people she loves. But she’s choosing, eyes wide open. I think Katelyn knows that. She’s just checking to make sure Amelie’s really okay with it. The provocative teasing looks like caring to me, sir.” I smiled again. “Pete. Sorry. It’s just the way I was raised. I’ll get it right eventually.”

We had the coffees sorted but we were still standing there.

“Amelie says you like to run,” said Pete.

“Yes sir,” I said.

“This area’s not great for running. We’ve got snakes and gators on trails near the canal. We’ve got bugs by the billion. The running path on top of the levee is hard to get to and it’s windy and exposed, so it’s a cool-morning option involving a drive to Port Mayaca. Running on 441 is flat-out dangerous. For us, it’s normally twin treadmills or running around the property, trying to stay ahead of the bugs. We treat but the mosquitoes and no-see-ums always win.” He smiled in that goofy way I liked. “That said, would you like to run the border of our place?”

“Sure,” I said.

“Let’s drop off these coffees and get going.”

Chapter 35

Five minutes later, Pete and I set out toward the east edge of the huge lawn, on the other side of the house from the lake.

“We’re on five acres here,” he said, “and we’ve got the woods for privacy on three sides. The trail I’ve worn into the grass weaves around a bit but it’s about four-tenths of a mile. So five loops is two miles. I usually do ten loops for four miles, and I usually get it done in the low-thirties. Does that sound okay to you?”

I calculated in my head. “Almost eight miles an hour might be a bit brisk for me, but I’d enjoy the challenge,” I said. “My four-mile pace would normally be almost forty minutes, a touch over six miles per hour.”

“Let’s take it at your pace, then,” he said, and we set out running. I followed the trail and he ran alongside me on the grass. I tried to run a bit faster than normal to fit in with him but eventually pulled back to my normal pace, which is also how Amelie liked to run.

“Gators and snakes?”

“Sure,” said Pete. “There are gators and snakes everywhere water touches land. The lake isn’t safer than the canal, either. The rule is simple: stay out of the water, watch the edges, and don’t be careless. That’s why we shave the long grass down to nothing along the canal. Water moccasins like long grass. That’s also why there’s no swimming or floating or hanging out near the water. Bug’s aside, that’s advertising food to a gator. When we go out on the lake, we make a lot of noise. Some people waterski but we don’t even do that. The boat is for fishing and driving, period. The wild things can pick on someone else’s children.”

I got the message: Pete’s children had gone through enough hardship already. I felt like I needed to close the loop with him.

“Yesterday, Amelie told me about MRKH – did I get the name right?”

“Yep,” said Pete. “She must trust you, John. That’s a tender spot for her. For all of us.”

“I was honored, sir,” I said.

“Well, you didn’t run off, anyway,” he said.

In fact, I did run off, momentarily, but I’d taken the MRKH revelation in stride. It was the twin promises that made me lose my mind.

“Sir, honestly, I don’t think anything could claw me away from Amelie at this point.”

“She feels the same, John. I’ve never seen her so happy and purposeful.”

I pulled up as we completed the first loop, and Pete pulled up alongside me. My heart was pounding but I needed to do this.

“If I were to ask Amelie to marry me, would I have your support and Pam’s? I know we’re young, but I gather you’ve been in a similar situation yourself.”

“You’d have my wholehearted support, John,” said Pete. “Pam’s too, though I suspect she’d be happiest with a long engagement.”

“Thank you, sir,” I said. “I haven’t discussed this with Amelie yet, but she speaks as if we’re spending our whole lives together, so it won’t come as a surprise.”

“John…” his voice trailed off and he looked back to the house – maybe to make sure he wasn’t being overheard, though we weren’t close to the east-facing bedrooms. I waited for him to gather his thoughts.

“Amy and Kat are very close,” he said, frowning and looking for words. “Do you know about Kinsey?”

“Yes sir. I was really upset when Amelie told me about that, picturing what it must have been like for you and Pam.”

“Thank you. Do you know how we raised the two girls?”

“As twins. Yes sir.”

“They’re very close,” he said, frowning and looking up at me intensely as if he wanted me to understand what he was saying without having to actually put it into words.

“I’m an only child,” I said, “but watching those two during the last seven months has made me wish I had a sibling. They’re amazing together.”

“They are. And they’re a handful,” said Pete. “Kat’s been talking about you for months, so excited because Amy is excited.”

“I just learned she’s going to the same college as her sister,” I said.

“Yep,” said Pete. “And from what I hear, she’ll be living with you two in an apartment or a house that we’re buying or renting.”

“Seriously? I thought that was a brand-new idea,” I said.

“These girls plan a long way ahead, John. You’ll get used to it.”

Pete wasn’t finished, though. Now he was frowning and looking at the ground in front of him. “They’ll always be extremely close, I think,” he said. “And it’s going to become a permanent factor in your life if you become Amelie’s husband.”

I watched him staring at me.

“I’m invested, sir. Could you break it down for me? Make it practical.”

I think he appreciated the question. I saw him breathe deeply and he seemed to relax – like he felt I was helping him rather than passively resisting whatever advice he was trying to share.

“It’s really two things. On the one hand, Katelyn will always require some degree of care. We’re prepared to handle that, but she might prefer to receive the necessary support from her sister. On the other hand, Katelyn might have trouble letting Amelie go, or sharing her with another person.”

He was staring at me intensely again. It was obvious he didn’t know about the twin promises and how both girls had been hunting for a man to solve their problems. He didn’t know about their vision of a triad, a shared home with three parents. I didn’t know what to say, so I played it safe.

“I appreciate the alert, sir.” I winced. “Damn, sorry. Pete. Most of the time at home I’m supposed to call my own father sir; I’m not used to the informality.”

He laughed. “Can you imagine those girls calling me sir?!”

“No sir. I mean, Pete.” We both grinned at that. “If you don’t mind me asking, you’re the only one who calls the girls Kat and Amy – that I’ve heard, anyway. They call each other by their full first names so I’ve been doing that, assuming that Amelie would have a quiet word with me if I’m off base.”

“Smart,” said Pete. “They say they prefer their full names and pretty much everyone close to them complies. But they let me get away with the shortened versions. As far as I know, it’s a unique privilege.”

“Sweet,” I said.

Without saying anything further, we resumed our run.

Chapter 36

While Pete and I cooked over the barbecue that evening, with the smell of hamburgers and vegetables displacing the lakeside aromas, he told me about his work of running the family foundation that his parents had established, and thus his move into philanthropy from a career in law. He and I discussed my plans to become an architect, and the kinds of design work I was most drawn to; what we knew of Amelie’s plans to put her business degree to work in nonprofit management, and eventually to help Pete run the family foundation; and Katelyn’s vague plan to study creative writing, which we knew by then would be at UT Austin with Amelie and me.

During dinner, Pam described rebooting her career as an acquisitions editor for a children’s book publisher – a career that was about to intensify with Katelyn heading off to college.

After dinner, charades was a blast. It was the younger generation against the older, and I was completely useless. My irrelevance to the game wasn’t because I couldn’t mime, or because I couldn’t guess; it was because Pete and Pam were mind readers of each other, and Amelie and Katelyn were equally mind readers. The game was played at such a high level that I was constantly flummoxed, which provoked gales of laughter.

The only interesting times where when I had to act something out, because my mind-meld with the girls wasn’t established well enough to match the one they had with each other. As a result, the parents won, and I designated myself as the weakest link, to which Amelie said, “That’s a different game, babe.” There was laughter all around at my expense, which I interpreted as a sign of acceptance.

After that, Amelie dragged me out onto the back deck, where we sat watching the dark lake, which was mysterious and captivating in the light of a nearly full moon. Her head on my shoulder, she mentioned that her Mom had said there was no need for girlfriend and boyfriend to sleep in separate bedrooms.

“I thought we already decided,” I said, confused, as Katelyn wheeled herself in our direction.

“We have, and I’m not trying to change our arrangement,” whispered Amelie. “I’m just letting you know how they think.”

“I figured,” I said, as Katelyn arrived.

“Oooo, sangria!” said the girls simultaneously, catching sight of the tray Pete was carrying. I didn’t drink, so I nursed my little glass of fruity red wine and brandy while the Foster family worked their way through the jug, mostly telling stories about growing up. I realized what this was: time to get to know the family history, just as they’d gotten to know me a little earlier in the day. They were easygoing about it, with no formal agenda, but I could sense there’d been planning behind the scenes.

Nobody was pressuring me, but I could sense everyone was hopeful that Amelie and I would work out, no doubt because that’s what she’d told her family. I know what that hope looked like in Katelyn – agonizing, despite the fun exterior. I wondered what it looked like in Pete and Pam. Hopefully it was less anguished.

Fortunately, no one was giving me the “if you hurt our daughter…” treatment. Knowing what I’d learned about the girls this weekend, protective threats would have been completely unnecessary pressure. I was painfully aware of how high the girls’ hopes were that I was the solution to their life-happiness problem. I needed to make a difficult triad-lifestyle decision, and that was pressure enough.

When Pete and Pam left the deck carrying an empty jug and glasses – Katelyn had drunk mine – they asked Katelyn to come with them. Maybe they wanted to talk with her, or maybe they wanted to create space for the young couple away from the intrusive younger sister. Katelyn was obviously reluctant, but she left with her parents.

“You doing okay?” asked Amelie quietly. She’d been gently checking in with me all day – not hovering, not obsessing, but letting me know that she cared about me and communicating that she understood the pressure I was feeling.

“How does Katelyn react when her parents drag her away from us like they just did?”

“I’m a little worried that she’s feeling left out,” said Amelie. “I’ll check with her; don’t worry. She’ll be touched by your concern; that’ll mean a lot to her. I know she seems all light and fun, but…”

“I know,” I said. “I can read her better now. Now that she’s letting me see how scared she is of getting close to people, I find it incredibly tender. Seeing that side of her – the soft part she hides – I just adore it. Meeting in person has been a revelation, about her more than anything. I can see why you love her so much. She’s complex, sensitive, fun, intelligent, gorgeous, and her love for you seems, like, infinite.”

I watched Amelie’s eyes gleam as I described her sister. She just nodded, probably afraid that she’d get emotional if she said anything.

“And you are both weirdly good at communication. I guess it’s all those years of plotting and planning.”

“Exactly. Just wait until you and I have a real fight. I’ll run rings around you. But it will be for your own good. I’m kind, even when I’m fighting.”

“Can’t wait,” I said drily.

Amelie glanced at the kitchen window and, seeing no one, kissed me. It was passionate but also full of longing, a little anxious maybe. Perhaps I was reading too much into it.

“Bedtime,” she said, but only a fraction of an inch way from my aching lips. I might have groaned quietly in response, but I was so distracted I wasn’t sure. Whatever I did, Amelie giggled softly.

“Come,” she said, and led me by the hand back into the house. We found nobody on the main level so we switched off the lights and descended the stairs. I kissed her once more just outside Katelyn’s bedroom and said good night. She opened the door and I glimpsed Katelyn in bed.

“He was worried about you feeling left out,” she whispered tossing her head back to where I was standing in the doorway.

“That’s sweet, John. Now I’m worried about you feeling left out,” said Katelyn.

“He’ll be fine,” said Amelie, disappearing into the bathroom shared between their two bedrooms.

“She’s right,” I said. “Good night, Katelyn. Thanks for being such amazing company today.”

“Back at you, big guy,” she said. “Sleep well.”

Chapter 37

Pam and Pete liked fishing together, but it wasn’t a pastime that had ever appealed to the two sisters. My grandfather and father loved fishing, and Granddad taught me. I was one of those kids who really did grow up fishing with Granddad, until his death less than a year earlier – the first of my grandparents to die, and the one to whom I was closest as a teenager. I explained this when Pam asked about fishing, and the two parents immediately nabbed me for a fishing trip on Sunday after breakfast.

The girls declined to come. Katelyn looked at me as though I had just stupidly fallen into a trap. So, instead of spending some much-needed alone time with the two girls, I was leaving them in the Lake House and going off with their parents. Into the middle of the lake. Where apparently I would be surrounded by gators and cottonmouths. No escape.

I was fairly comfortable with Pete by then, but I’d exchanged not a single word with Pam aside from pleasantries and games and answering questions – all in groups. I was nervous and the girls could tell. Their sympathetic goodbye waves made it worse.

The boat house was large and clean, all concrete and decking, no dirt or grass. Hurricane-strong, too, Pete told me. I couldn’t see any dangerous critters, and after the previous day’s run with Pete I was looking whenever I got close to the water. Pete boarded first and looked around calmly, including under the console. He shooed out a little lizard, then Pam boarded, and I followed with one of the coolers she’d asked me to carry.

“I always fished on docks with Granddad and Dad,” I said. “Never had a reason to get to know boats.”

“It’s a mid-sized bay, 24-foot, center console, single engine,” said Pete. “It’ll run around sixty, depending on the wind. Low draft, so we can safely sneak into the reedy areas where we might catch a largemouth bass for dinner. It’s got everything we want for fishing.”

“We just need fresh bait,” said Pam, pointing to her cooler. “And drinks and food,” she added, pointing to the larger cooler I’d been carrying.

Pete thumbed the remote on the console to open the garage roll-a-door and steered the boat away from the dock. Then we took the canal north to the nearest lock. One last wave to the girls up on the deck, looking down on us from inside the giant domed netting structure, and we were off.

We couldn’t easily talk while the boat was moving, and talking while fishing was bad form because it scared the fish away – at least that’s what Granddad said – so maybe this would be a quiet morning. Even if there was conversation, how bad could it be? Pam and Pete seemed like great people to me.

What I really needed to do was just calm down.

Soon we were idling, waiting for our turn at what Pete called the J&S lock, with one boat ahead of us. By the time we made it inside the lock for the transition from canal to lake, there were three boats waiting. Everyone seemed patient with the routine.

Pete and I chatted about the lake while we waited. I knew the system from my research by then, amazed by this piece of public infrastructure.

“Back in the day, I guess a century ago,” said Pete, this area was fed from the north by the Kissimmee River, and then emptied south into the Everglades. Flooding was inconvenient and made the land almost impossible to occupy. Then the Army Corps of Engineers went to work, and two decades later we had an effective system both for controlling floods and for creating habitable spaces.”

“I saw the St. Lucie River that drains to the east when we drove through Port Mayaca,” I said. “I believe you can take that all the way to Atlantic, right?”

“Yep,” Pete said. “You’ve gotta get from the canal into the lake, first, but then you can run east along the St. Lucie River to the Atlantic or west along the Caloosahatchee River to the Gulf. Couple of locks either way. The lake’s the hinge for the system. But both trips are long.”

“We’ve gone both ways, exactly once,” said Pam. “Just to see what it’s like. But it was too long for the girls, so we left them with Pete’s parents.”

“It’s a case of been there, done that,” said Pete. “Nice to know it’s possible. No interest in making a habit out of it.”

“Everything about this place is trying to kill you,” I said. “Bugs, gators, snakes, storms, floods – it’s like the land doesn’t want people here. But someone built all of this – the dike, the canals, the locks – and made it work.”

“Still have to be careful, but yeah,” said Pete. “This kind of place is hard-won. You sound like a regional planner as much as an architect, John.” He was smiling appreciatively.

Through the lock, and past the speed-limited zones, we headed into the lake. It was a calm day with not much chop, so Pete had the boat moving fast. But everything about Pete was calm and cautious. I could tell he did not improvise where risk is concerned.

“My favorite morning fishing spot,” said Pete as he cut the engine and tossed the anchor into the lake.

The three of us worked on the fishing gear for a bit, prepping lines and idly chatting about nothing in particular. But I knew that couldn’t last.

“Pete tells me you asked him for his blessing to propose to Amelie,” said Pam.

“I hope that’s okay,” I said. “Maybe I should have spoken with both of you.”

“You did good, John,” she said. “I wanted to discuss timing, if you do go ahead and propose.”

“Timing?”

“You’re both nineteen, just finishing your first year of college,” said Pam as she skewered a piece of shrimp on a hook, despite seeming relaxed. Some kind of symbolism there, I thought. “That’s young for any couple to marry. You’ve been dating for seven months, which is not nothing, but this might be a situation for a good long engagement, until you’ve both grown up a bit.”

“So don’t rush into anything?”

“Exactly,” said Pam, as if she already had me persuaded.

“Mrs. Foster, I mean Pam, I’m not trying to dodge anything, but honestly, I don’t think I’ll be the one deciding the timing of the wedding, or anything else about it.”

Pete chuckled beside me, which made me feel better.

“If I do propose,” I continued, “maybe you could chat with Amelie about timing. She trusts your perspective on things.”

“I’ll speak with her, then, if the proposal happens.”

“There’s a timing limitation you should both probably be aware of,” I said. “While I’m not quite like my parents anymore, they are strongly religious, and they’re opposed to cohabitation before marriage. Amelie seems determined for us to live together this summer, in whatever place you arrange for her and Katelyn, but that’ll cause a problem with my family, even if you two are okay with it. She and I need to sort through that regardless of the proposal question. She’s got some things to figure out, but I think she sees those as puzzles, not problems. She’s very… um… determined.”

Pete chuckled again.

“Is this why you decided not to share the northerly suite?” asked Pam.

“Partly,” I said. “That’s not really cohabitation, because it’s only for a week, but it would still make my parents uncomfortable. I respect my Mom and Dad and don’t want to mislead them, let alone lie to them if they ask directly.”

With a slight flicker of her eyebrows, Pam nodded her understanding. If I had to guess, she seemed mildly surprised.

“Anyway,” I said, “the timing of anything beyond the proposal just isn’t my call. I don’t mind insisting on something if I think it’s absolutely critical, and I think Amelie is perfectly reasonable and listens to alternative perspectives, but I also don’t want to spoil her big plans.”

“I get it, John; don’t worry about it,” said Pam. “I’ll talk with Amelie. Between us, I happen to know that our conspiratorial daughters both have Amelie’s wedding completely planned out. And I do mean completely.”

We all had a good laugh about that.

“How old were you two when you got married?” I asked, knowing perfectly well the answer.

Pete cleared his throat and cast his line into the lake.

“Well,” said Pam, “we married right out of high school. But times have changed, I think.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said, to which Pete outright snorted before getting his laughter under control. Even Pam smiled at that as she reddened. Then she shrugged cutely. I couldn’t help seeing Amelie in that adorable display.

Chapter 38

We returned to the Lake House with two medium bass for dinner, having released another half dozen. Pete quietly made sure that one of the fish we kept was one I caught.

Something about returning home with protein for the family appealed to the cave-man provider in me. I knew if I said anything about that, the girls would laugh their heads off, and it’d be fodder for years of teasing, so I kept it to myself. I still savored the feeling.

That afternoon, Pete and Pam claimed the belvedere while the girls and I took over the pool. Amelie and Katelyn appeared on the deck with identical pink string bikini tops and ruffled pink swim-shorts. Dressed the same, they really did look close to identical. It felt surreal.

“John,” said Katelyn, “would you carry me into the water?”

I completely failed to keep the look of shock off my face. Katelyn smiled sweetly and said, “There’s no lift in this pool and a bit of help makes the transition easier.” Amelie chuckled and nodded, so I gathered Katelyn into my arms and walked her down the steps into the pool.

After that, she swam around in the water with joyful ease. I’d seen it before on video calls but in person it was a delight to watch her moving, so free and agile.

Amelie floated into my arms as Katelyn’s powerful upper body drove her under the water, heading to the far end of the pool.

“She trusts you,” Amelie said quietly, her legs wrapped around my hips and her chest pressed against mine.

“I can’t picture the details of living together, though,” I whispered, making sure only Amelie could hear me, as I moved us to the stairs. I sat down and Amelie sat on my lap, both of us facing the pool and watching Katelyn, the water up to our necks. “I get that she’s mostly independent, but sometimes she needs help. You’ll almost always be around for that but sometimes she might need me. I don’t understand how much help she’d need, or what kind.”

“You’re right, John,” Amelie admitted. “We need to figure that out. As fiercely independent as Katelyn is, she sometimes wants to be wheeled or carried or touched, just like anyone would. She could fall out of her chair and, depending on the circumstances, might not be able to get back up. Sometimes she gets sick and the autonomic disruption that comes with SCIs can make things bad, so she might need intensive help for a bit. And sometimes she needs very personal help, stuff she’d rather not delegate, like skin checks and toileting routines.”

Amelie paused and turned around to look at me, trying to assess my readiness for personal details, I thought.

“Katelyn and I imagine she and you both getting comfortable with you helping. It’d always be on Katelyn’s terms, and it wouldn’t be burdensome for you. But there’d be a learning curve, for all of us. What makes everything easier is that Katelyn is totally matter-of-fact about this. She’s not ashamed to need occasional help, she’s not embarrassed to ask for it, and she’s not concerned about receiving it. At least from Mom and Dad and me, and from professional helpers. With time, I’m sure you’d be in the same bucket.”

“Can we leave her alone for long periods of time?” I asked. “Like, could we travel?”

“Someone always needs to be on call. If we went away for longer than a usual workday, then it’d be smart to make sure someone else was physically around to help. But we’ll make relationships with specialist home-care people in Austin for that, same as we do in Miami. And she has a phone and a wrist band that brings emergency help if she needs it.”

“Okay,” I said. “That helps me picture it a bit better.”

“Watcha talking about?” asked Katelyn, popping up in front of us and moving back and forth for a few seconds before using one arm to lean on the edge beside us.

“We’re imagining life with you in Austin,” said Amelie.

“You mean trying to decide if I’m too much trouble?” she asked, but there was a twinkle in her eyes.

“We already assume you’re too much trouble,” said Amelie, rolling her eyes. “We were thinking through how much John would have to get involved in care activities.”

“You and I have spent years thinking through that in the abstract,” said Katelyn. No surprise there, I thought. “It’s nice to know it’s John. He’ll never have trouble moving me if I need that kind of help. Even Dad struggles a bit now that I’m fully grown. You, too, and Mom’s so tiny she can’t lift me, even though she can support me in transfers.”

“He is big and strong, isn’t he?” said Amelie, twisting around to smile cutely at me.

“John,” said Katelyn, “what do you think it would be like if I fell over and couldn’t get back in my chair? I mean, if you were right there and nobody else was around?”

“I’d get you sorted quickly,” I said frowning.

“But I mean emotionally. What would it feel like?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Like a brief but manageable emergency, no panic, just get it done?”

“Yes, but add laughter,” said Katelyn. “And teasing.”

“You’d tease me for helping you?” I asked, confused.

“If I could think of a good way to do it, of course,” said Katelyn. “But I’d be laughing and you’d be teasing the para girl about incompetent chair driving, or something similar.”

Amelie giggled.

“So, in this scenario, I’m supposed to be teasing you, and we’re both supposed to be laughing about it?!”

“Now you’ve got it,” she said. “And if I get sick and throw up before I can get to the toilet, then we laugh about that, too. I make fun of you for being my house boy, cleaning up after me, and you make fun of me for uncontrolled projectile vomiting.”

“She really is a lot of fun when she needs, help,” said Amelie. “Even when she’s feeling sick as a dog.”

“Do you ever get grumpy?” I asked. “Seems like feeling sick and throwing up would be a good time for it.”

“I get grumpy, sure,” said Katelyn. “I don’t get irritable, really. But I do get sulky sometimes.”

“And it’s very attractive,” added Amelie, her friendly sarcasm back.

“You seem to tolerate it okay,” said Katelyn. Then the two girls did that fist-bump thing again, their fingers slowly exploding in celebration.

Chapter 39

Early dinner that Sunday evening felt completely relaxed. Everyone seemed to have found their level with me, and I with them. The conversation flowed freely and there was lots of laughter. I realized I loved the way Amelie’s family was together, the easy way they talked and laughed. It was so different from how I’d grown up, and I knew which one I wanted. I knew it was just different back home, not wrong or worse, but the absolute certainty of my preference caught me by surprise.

Pete and I handled the bass. He was good with fish on the barbecue. Back home, Dad and I would mostly do steaks and racks of ribs, and I had those techniques down cold. Fish was quite different, and I studied Pete’s methods closely.

After dinner, as we migrated to the lounge room, Katelyn asked me to move her from her chair so she could cuddle with her mom. Pam seemed momentarily shocked, and Pete and Amelie both suppressed laughter. It was a reminder that Katelyn’s ongoing battle with her mother over independence and helicopter parenting, though real and painfully obvious at times, wasn’t the whole story.

As we chatted, watching the horizon draw close to the sun, Katelyn lay with her head in her mom’s lap, and Pam combed her little girl’s hair with her fingers. At one point, Katelyn reached for her mom’s hand and kissed it before allowing it to return to her hair.

Amelie was cuddling with me in an armchair, sitting sideways in my lap.

“You two going to be okay for the week?” asked Pete, addressing Amelie and me.

“We’ve got everything we need,” said Amelie happily.

“Well, we’ve got to make tracks here, soon,” he said. “Katelyn has school in the morning, and apparently we’re giving her a lift back to Miami.”

“Don’t say it, any of you!” said Katelyn. “I’m hitching a lift back home with Mom and Dad and leaving my car here. They’ll bring me back here next weekend and I’ll drive back to Miami in a convoy.”

“Sensitive, are we?” teased Amelie.

“No,” said Katelyn. “I’m taking advantage of my unsuspecting parents and a convenient mode of transport.”

“Well, I’m happy about it,” said Pam, using her fingers to transfer a kiss to Katelyn’s forehead.

Before the sunset began, they’d left.

Amelie drew me out to the deck. She lay me down on a cushioned deck chair and folded herself alongside me.

“What I really want to do is strip off and skinny dip in the pool with you,” she said.

“That’s in scope for our current agreement,” I said eagerly.

“But it’d also be in scope for the security cameras on the property,” she said, reaching up to kiss my cheek.

“Damn,” I said. “So you guys have a record of me nervously looking for gators and snakes when I ran the circuit this morning.”

“That’ll make for some good watching,” she said. “And I suppose we could skinny dip, anyway. It’s not like we’re super private about stuff like that, though everyone’s been careful around you so far.”

“Speak for you and your family,” I said. “I’ll keep my pants on if you want to do that.”

“Cuddling here is nice, too,” said Amelie. “What are we going to do all week?”

“Good question,” I said. “We’ve both got homework. And I’ve got some tough studio nuts to crack. And doing anything with you is enjoyable, even homework.”

“Is the studio project still messing with your sleep?” she said, running fingers through my hair.

“Mmmhmm,” I said, closing my eyes to focus on the movement of her fingers.

“At least you’re eating properly again. You kind of list it there for a while.”

“Mmmhmm.”

“Wouldn’t it be nice to make love all week, as often as we want?”

My eyes sprang open and took in her beaming face. We’d been doing this since the beginning. No matter what rules we had about how far we’d go, one of us would start imagining out loud what it’d be like to just forget all of it. By now it wasn’t pressure and it wasn’t risky. It was just this thing we did that said I want you so badly without crossing any of our personal lines.

“Delicious,” I said. “Just thinking about it gets me…” But I wasn’t able to finish the thought before Amelie rolled on top of me and kissed me aggressively.

“MRKH affects sex,” she said, coming up for air. “Or it might. It’s complicated. We’d need to take it slow and figure it out together. It could be just fine. Or we might need a period of adjustment.”

“Are you nervous about that?” I asked, frowning.

“Well, duh,” she said, kissing me again. “Especially after I saw you naked the first time.”

“The makeup mirror,” I said, belatedly realizing the true reason she had peeked and why she made such a big deal out of it afterwards. “Well, we’re not changing our current arrangement this week so we can worry about that later,” I added, eliciting a nod of agreement.

“Originally, after the MRKH reveal, I thought we’d be spending this week, you know…”

“Figuring it out now rather than later?”

She nodded shyly. She seemed vulnerable in that moment, which was just so unusual for Amelie, normally so confident and driven.

A few minutes later, up in the belvedere, we celebrated our week alone by making out as the sun set and the lake glowed beneath us. On this occasion, the clouds made the perfect screen for the refracting colors, setting both sky and lake ablaze. And the architecture did its job, bringing the outside in, while keeping out the bugs and humidity.

It was a memorable week. Quiet and intimate. We talked a lot about the future. About Katelyn. About their plans to live together, with me if I’d agree. But I still needed to make the all-important decision about a triad, which was weighing on me.

Chapter 40

Amelie and I had navigated another week of classes, and we were taking the Saturday after spring break to skip down to San Antonio to visit my parents – a consolation for them after I abandoned them over the vacation.

Viking was waiting for me when I opened the front door, and he leapt up like a puppy instead of the old-age veteran he was. He was very familiar with Amelie by then, and he let her cuddle him.

“We’re here!” I called as I led Amelie into my childhood home, leaving our shoes in the entryway. The aroma of a cooked lunch competed for my attention with the familiar homey smells of leather and gun oil and Viking. My parents came into the front entry from different directions, mom in an apron and wiping her hands on a cloth, dad carrying a newspaper. Classic division of labor right there.

Amelie stepped forward and shook both of their hands. “Lovely to see you again, Mr. and Mrs. Anderson. Thanks for inviting us to lunch.” It was just like her to find a graceful way to head off any uncertainty about how to greet one another on this occasion, which was the seventh time the four of us had been together in person.

The greetings were warm and formal, as usual. Amelie took it all in stride. Of course, Amelie had dressed more conservatively than usual. Her outfit still looked like southern Texas, but she’d picked out a shirt with rolled-up long sleeves instead of her usual tank, and the shorts were longish instead of the distractingly sexy numbers she would sometimes wear. I think she was already better at handling my parents than I was.

“Come on through,” said mom. “Lunch is ready. We can chat while we eat.” At the entry to the kitchen, I ran my hand over the marked-up measuring post my mom had used to track my growth over the years. Amelie noticed and smiled warmly.

“Stand there,” she said, which I did.

“Mrs. Anderson,” she called, “your son is clearing the last mark by at least an inch.”

Mom came over with a ruler and the traditional marker and updated the scale. “Over six-seven, now,” she said. “Still not finished growing.” She smiled at me so lovingly my heart almost burst. She patted my chest and transferred a kiss to my check with a tender hand.

Like the previous half dozen times we’d visited, the dining room was laid out for a formal lunch with way too much delicious food. Viking lay down between Amelie and me, his head on my shoe. That felt perfect, and it hurt to feel anew how much I missed him.

I watched Amelie take very small servings, eat slowly, pose a lot of questions, and make a point of asking to have each bowl or platter passed in her direction for seconds. My mother beamed at the implied compliment. I could tell Dad appreciated how polite she was being.

The first time she’d come here, back in the fall, there’d been surprises – things you just can’t pick up on video calls. For one thing, Amelie had no idea that my father was so tall, a point she’d whispered on our way to the dining room. I guess she must have realized my height came from somewhere, but video calls mask such details, and my father was an imposing figure in person. I was almost six-seven at the time, only an inch taller than him, and he had a barrel chest to boot. He was a vast human being, by any standards, but still dedicated to his workout routine and very fit. I was committed to working out, too, but could only hope to be as fit as him at his age.

Mom asked Amelie about spring break.

“We were at my parents’ Lake House,” said Amelie. “It’s a beautiful home with an amazing view. John’s room looked toward the lake, as does Mom and Dad’s, but from the bedrooms you can’t actually see further than the canal because of the dike holding the lake in place. My room and my sister’s faced the opposite direction, but we have a nice view of the trees surrounding the property. It’s a special place for my family. We went swimming and ate barbecued largemouth bass, which John caught for us.”

“I went fishing with Mr. and Mrs. Foster while the two girls stayed home one day, and the three of us all caught bass,” I clarified, noticing that Amelie had stretched the truth a bit, as she was inclined to do with my parents.

I also noted how naturally Amelie helped my parents understand that she and I had been sleeping in different bedrooms, and that her whole family had been present. She was artful, no question. I felt like kissing her passionately but sat there, happy to watch her charm mom and dad.

“It sounds lovely, dear,” said mom. She was full of what sounded like platitudes, but that was misleading; she was a sincere person and meant everything she said.

Dad launched into a fishing story. It was about the only time he was more than monosyllabic. Then I caught up on his work, which involved training a new generation of bomb-sniffing dogs and their handlers. He tried to be forthcoming about his new lifestyle, and I appreciated the effort. Mom told us about her teacher-recertification process. Just as dad had predicted, the teacher shortage meant she’d landed a job while she was retraining. They found out how my architecture classes were going, and tried to give them some insights into the agonizing studio process. They learned more about Amelie’s business degree in nonprofit management. When dad asked if I had a good study routine set up, I replied, “Yes sir.” A solid workout routine? “Yes sir. Running, weights, stretching.” A church home? “Yes sir.”

“The Methodists, right?” asked mom. I sensed danger.

“Yes, ma’am,” said Amelie, leaping into the fray. “We visited the church closest to the dorm and found that they have a good young adults’ program, with people mostly college age. We meet with them once a week, and of course we’re in church on Sunday morning. It’s a good community – very caring. Impressive actually. And they have programs a bit like the one you volunteer in, Mrs. Anderson.”

“Really?” mom asked.

“Yes – a group for young moms. The women who run that group are amazingly dedicated. They also have services for unhoused families. They really act out their faith – you know, practice what they preach about love for everyone.”

I watched mom relax and absorb the indirect compliment Amelie paid about her volunteering efforts over many years. Somehow, without being blatant about it, Amelie had made mom feel seen. I watched dad take in mom and Amelie, and a tiny smile crooked one side of his mouth as he looked down at his plate.

After lunch the four of us walked around the neighborhood, my parents taking turns talking to each of us in pairs. Life in my house was less games and shared activities, as with the Fosters, and more parallel play.

“Dad,” I said, when I had him alone, “I want to ask a question. A delicate one, maybe.”

“Go ahead, son,” he said.

I hesitated. I couldn’t believe it when I felt Dad’s arm around my shoulders. When had he ever done that?!

“It’s okay with us if you ask Amelie to marry you,” he said. “Just saying.”

“Yes sir,” I said, my eyes flicking to his face ever so briefly. “Thanks, Dad.”

After the walk, dad suggested I give Amelie a tour of my hometown’s local highlights, which is something I’d never done on previous visits. I read it as a kind of acceptance of my choice of partner, but that might have been an over-read. Regardless, I took the hint and drove Amelie around in her car, showing her my high school, my scout troop’s meeting hall, my first girlfriend’s home, and the places I played basketball, took piano lessons, and went to church.

“I want to see the church,” she said, suddenly excited.

“Seriously?”

“Yes!” she said. “It’s old hat to you, but to me all this church stuff is still new and strange and fascinating.”

So I gave her a tour of the Baptist church where I grew up. Rev. Warren wasn’t there at the time, but the newly appointed church secretary was glad to meet Donna and Felix Anderson’s only child. Everyone knew Donna and Felix.

After I showed Amelie around the large complex, she took me into the main sanctuary and sat down with me in a bank of pews, holding my hand.

“What happens here?” she asked. “Is it different than the Methodists?”

“Not that different, no,” I said, frowning. There’s music and singing. There are public prayers. There are bible readings and a sermon. There’s a collection for money to support the church. So I guess it’s the same.”

“But there must be something different or they wouldn’t be separate brands, or whatever.”

“Denominations,” I said. “I guess the worldviews are different. The people here read the Bible literally, for one thing. At our church in Austin, they take the Bible seriously but not quite as literally.”

“You did Sunday school and youth groups and a youth band, right?”

“Yes.”

“That sounds like fun,” she said, sounding wistful.

“It was,” I said. “I didn’t realize how bad I was at playing the bass in the band at first. Better at catching ’em than plucking ’em, if you know what I mean.” She rolled her eyes at my fishing joke. “I got better but painfully slowly. Everyone was really kind about it. I was the anchor dragging us down, so we didn’t get to perform in the live church service very often.” I chuckled at the memory.

“The worldview thing… how is it different?”

“I don’t know how to answer that,” I said honestly. “But I never found it convincing, and some parts I found extremely offensive. But I do miss the community part. I think that’s stronger here than in our Methodist church. Probably because there are so many students in Austin, so people are constantly moving through and are mostly young and healthy. Here, when someone gets seriously ill, everyone prays for them, asking God for healing, and they often arrange to deliver food to the struggling family.”

“That’s so beautiful!” she cried. “I’d love that. Are you allowed to belong here if you don’t believe the story part?”

“In Southern Baptist churches, not so much. In our church back in Austin, it seems okay to fudge a bit.”

“The community thing is just so special. I want to be a part of it. Growing up I had school friends and sports teams, but I didn’t have anything like this community. I realize now that I regret it – even with all the complexities that must come along with belonging to a group.”

We walked for a while after that, hand in hand, arm in arm, or my arm around her shoulders and hers around my waist. We wandered through the center of town, which fascinated her almost as much as the church had.

“It’s lovely!” she said, skipping through the park at the center of town and dragging me along with her.

“It’s like you’ve been deprived your whole life!” I said.

“Well, maybe I have,” she said thoughtfully, pulling up and facing me. “All these experiences you took for granted feel new and important to me. When you come to our main house, I’ll show you what I mean. It’s in the middle of a city but quite isolated, even from neighbors, and there’s a golf course across the road. The only time you see people is when you’re out jogging on the road, and even then it’s usually professional dog walkers because most residents run in their home gyms. I’m sure you’ll feel the difference.”

I pulled Amelie into my arms, where she pressed herself into my chest and looked up at me, humming happily. As was often the case, I was imagining a life with this irresistible young woman.

We shared afternoon tea with mom and dad that Saturday, then hit the road. On the way out, mom stepped forward and hugged me then Amelie. You could have knocked me over with a feather. Dad stood back watching, that tiny micro smile not quite pushing into the side of his mouth. He’d told mom about my unasked question, about marrying Amelie, and now mom was picturing Amelie as her daughter.

My eyebrows flicked upwards in surprise, and dad caught it. It wasn’t much but it was enough to liberate that smile he’d confined in the corner of his mouth. Then I was half smiling, too, watching these two amazing, completely different women embrace each other. I nodded slightly to send my gratitude dad’s way, and he micro-nodded back. Thanks Dad. For trying. For accepting the love of my life.

Amelie and I had navigated another week of classes, and we were taking the Saturday after spring break to skip down to San Antonio to visit my parents – a consolation for them after I abandoned them over the vacation.

Viking was waiting for me when I opened the front door, and he leapt up like a puppy instead of the old-age veteran he was. He was very familiar with Amelie by then, and he let her cuddle him.

“We’re here!” I called as I led Amelie into my childhood home, leaving our shoes in the entryway. The aroma of a cooked lunch competed for my attention with the familiar homey smells of leather and gun oil and Viking. My parents came into the front entry from different directions, mom in an apron and wiping her hands on a cloth, dad carrying a newspaper. Classic division of labor right there.

Amelie stepped forward and shook both of their hands. “Lovely to see you again, Mr. and Mrs. Anderson. Thanks for inviting us to lunch.” It was just like her to find a graceful way to head off any uncertainty about how to greet one another on this occasion, which was the seventh time the four of us had been together in person.

The greetings were warm and formal, as usual. Amelie took it all in stride. Of course, Amelie had dressed more conservatively than usual. Her outfit still looked like southern Texas, but she’d picked out a shirt with rolled-up long sleeves instead of her usual tank, and the shorts were longish instead of the distractingly sexy numbers she would sometimes wear. I think she was already better at handling my parents than I was.

“Come on through,” said mom. “Lunch is ready. We can chat while we eat.” At the entry to the kitchen, I ran my hand over the marked-up measuring post my mom had used to track my growth over the years. Amelie noticed and smiled warmly.

“Stand there,” she said, which I did.

“Mrs. Anderson,” she called, “your son is clearing the last mark by at least an inch.”

Mom came over with a ruler and the traditional marker and updated the scale. “Over six-seven, now,” she said. “Still not finished growing.” She smiled at me so lovingly my heart almost burst. She patted my chest and transferred a kiss to my check with a tender hand.

Like the previous half dozen times we’d visited, the dining room was laid out for a formal lunch with way too much delicious food. Viking lay down between Amelie and me, his head on my shoe. That felt perfect, and it hurt to feel anew how much I missed him.

I watched Amelie take very small servings, eat slowly, pose a lot of questions, and make a point of asking to have each bowl or platter passed in her direction for seconds. My mother beamed at the implied compliment. I could tell Dad appreciated how polite she was being.

The first time she’d come here, back in the fall, there’d been surprises – things you just can’t pick up on video calls. For one thing, Amelie had no idea that my father was so tall, a point she’d whispered on our way to the dining room. I guess she must have realized my height came from somewhere, but video calls mask such details, and my father was an imposing figure in person. I was almost six-seven at the time, only an inch taller than him, and he had a barrel chest to boot. He was a vast human being, by any standards, but still dedicated to his workout routine and very fit. I was committed to working out, too, but could only hope to be as fit as him at his age.

Mom asked Amelie about spring break.

“We were at my parents’ Lake House,” said Amelie. “It’s a beautiful home with an amazing view. John’s room looked toward the lake, as does Mom and Dad’s, but from the bedrooms you can’t actually see further than the canal because of the dike holding the lake in place. My room and my sister’s faced the opposite direction, but we have a nice view of the trees surrounding the property. It’s a special place for my family. We went swimming and ate barbecued largemouth bass, which John caught for us.”

“I went fishing with Mr. and Mrs. Foster while the two girls stayed home one day, and the three of us all caught bass,” I clarified, noticing that Amelie had stretched the truth a bit, as she was inclined to do with my parents.

I also noted how naturally Amelie helped my parents understand that she and I had been sleeping in different bedrooms, and that her whole family had been present. She was artful, no question. I felt like kissing her passionately but sat there, happy to watch her charm mom and dad.

“It sounds lovely, dear,” said mom. She was full of what sounded like platitudes, but that was misleading; she was a sincere person and meant everything she said.

Dad launched into a fishing story. It was about the only time he was more than monosyllabic. Then I caught up on his work, which involved training a new generation of bomb-sniffing dogs and their handlers. He tried to be forthcoming about his new lifestyle, and I appreciated the effort. Mom told us about her teacher-recertification process. Just as dad had predicted, the teacher shortage meant she’d landed a job while she was retraining. They found out how my architecture classes were going, and tried to give them some insights into the agonizing studio process. They learned more about Amelie’s business degree in nonprofit management. When dad asked if I had a good study routine set up, I replied, “Yes sir.” A solid workout routine? “Yes sir. Running, weights, stretching.” A church home? “Yes sir.”

“The Methodists, right?” asked mom. I sensed danger.

“Yes, ma’am,” said Amelie, leaping into the fray. “We visited the church closest to the dorm and found that they have a good young adults’ program, with people mostly college age. We meet with them once a week, and of course we’re in church on Sunday morning. It’s a good community – very caring. Impressive actually. And they have programs a bit like the one you volunteer in, Mrs. Anderson.”

“Really?” mom asked.

“Yes – a group for young moms. The women who run that group are amazingly dedicated. They also have services for unhoused families. They really act out their faith – you know, practice what they preach about love for everyone.”

I watched mom relax and absorb the indirect compliment Amelie paid about her volunteering efforts over many years. Somehow, without being blatant about it, Amelie had made mom feel seen. I watched dad take in mom and Amelie, and a tiny smile crooked one side of his mouth as he looked down at his plate.

After lunch the four of us walked around the neighborhood, my parents taking turns talking to each of us in pairs. Life in my house was less games and shared activities, as with the Fosters, and more parallel play.

“Dad,” I said, when I had him alone, “I want to ask a question. A delicate one, maybe.”

“Go ahead, son,” he said.

I hesitated. I couldn’t believe it when I felt Dad’s arm around my shoulders. When had he ever done that?!

“It’s okay with us if you ask Amelie to marry you,” he said. “Just saying.”

“Yes sir,” I said, my eyes flicking to his face ever so briefly. “Thanks, Dad.”

After the walk, dad suggested I give Amelie a tour of my hometown’s local highlights, which is something I’d never done on previous visits. I read it as a kind of acceptance of my choice of partner, but that might have been an over-read. Regardless, I took the hint and drove Amelie around in her car, showing her my high school, my scout troop’s meeting hall, my first girlfriend’s home, and the places I played basketball, took piano lessons, and went to church.

“I want to see the church,” she said, suddenly excited.

“Seriously?”

“Yes!” she said. “It’s old hat to you, but to me all this church stuff is still new and strange and fascinating.”

So I gave her a tour of the Baptist church where I grew up. Rev. Warren wasn’t there at the time, but the newly appointed church secretary was glad to meet Donna and Felix Anderson’s only child. Everyone knew Donna and Felix.

After I showed Amelie around the large complex, she took me into the main sanctuary and sat down with me in a bank of pews, holding my hand.

“What happens here?” she asked. “Is it different than the Methodists?”

“Not that different, no,” I said, frowning. There’s music and singing. There are public prayers. There are bible readings and a sermon. There’s a collection for money to support the church. So I guess it’s the same.”

“But there must be something different or they wouldn’t be separate brands, or whatever.”

“Denominations,” I said. “I guess the worldviews are different. The people here read the Bible literally, for one thing. At our church in Austin, they take the Bible seriously but not quite as literally.”

“You did Sunday school and youth groups and a youth band, right?”

“Yes.”

“That sounds like fun,” she said, sounding wistful.

“It was,” I said. “I didn’t realize how bad I was at playing the bass in the band at first. Better at catching ’em than plucking ’em, if you know what I mean.” She rolled her eyes at my fishing joke. “I got better but painfully slowly. Everyone was really kind about it. I was the anchor dragging us down, so we didn’t get to perform in the live church service very often.” I chuckled at the memory.

“The worldview thing… how is it different?”

“I don’t know how to answer that,” I said honestly. “But I never found it convincing, and some parts I found extremely offensive. But I do miss the community part. I think that’s stronger here than in our Methodist church. Probably because there are so many students in Austin, so people are constantly moving through and are mostly young and healthy. Here, when someone gets seriously ill, everyone prays for them, asking God for healing, and they often arrange to deliver food to the struggling family.”

“That’s so beautiful!” she cried. “I’d love that. Are you allowed to belong here if you don’t believe the story part?”

“In Southern Baptist churches, not so much. In our church back in Austin, it seems okay to fudge a bit.”

“The community thing is just so special. I want to be a part of it. Growing up I had school friends and sports teams, but I didn’t have anything like this community. I realize now that I regret it – even with all the complexities that must come along with belonging to a group.”

We walked for a while after that, hand in hand, arm in arm, or my arm around her shoulders and hers around my waist. We wandered through the center of town, which fascinated her almost as much as the church had.

“It’s lovely!” she said, skipping through the park at the center of town and dragging me along with her.

“It’s like you’ve been deprived your whole life!” I said.

“Well, maybe I have,” she said thoughtfully, pulling up and facing me. “All these experiences you took for granted feel new and important to me. When you come to our main house, I’ll show you what I mean. It’s in the middle of a city but quite isolated, even from neighbors, and there’s a golf course across the road. The only time you see people is when you’re out jogging on the road, and even then it’s usually professional dog walkers because most residents run in their home gyms. I’m sure you’ll feel the difference.”

I pulled Amelie into my arms, where she pressed herself into my chest and looked up at me, humming happily. As was often the case, I was imagining a life with this irresistible young woman.

We shared afternoon tea with mom and dad that Saturday, then hit the road. On the way out, mom stepped forward and hugged me then Amelie. You could have knocked me over with a feather. Dad stood back watching, that tiny micro smile not quite pushing into the side of his mouth. He’d told mom about my unasked question, about marrying Amelie, and now mom was picturing Amelie as her daughter.

My eyebrows flicked upwards in surprise, and dad caught it. It wasn’t much but it was enough to liberate that smile he’d confined in the corner of his mouth. Then I was half smiling, too, watching these two amazing, completely different women embrace each other. I nodded slightly to send my gratitude dad’s way, and he micro-nodded back. Thanks Dad. For trying. For accepting the love of my life.

Early dinner that Sunday evening felt completely relaxed. Everyone seemed to have found their level with me, and I with them. The conversation flowed freely and there was lots of laughter. I realized I loved the way Amelie’s family was together, the easy way they talked and laughed. It was so different from how I’d grown up, and I knew which one I wanted. I knew it was just different back home, not wrong or worse, but the absolute certainty of my preference caught me by surprise.

Pete and I handled the bass. He was good with fish on the barbecue. Back home, Dad and I would mostly do steaks and racks of ribs, and I had those techniques down cold. Fish was quite different, and I studied Pete’s methods closely.

After dinner, as we migrated to the lounge room, Katelyn asked me to move her from her chair so she could cuddle with her mom. Pam seemed momentarily shocked, and Pete and Amelie both suppressed laughter. It was a reminder that Katelyn’s ongoing battle with her mother over independence and helicopter parenting, though real and painfully obvious at times, wasn’t the whole story.

As we chatted, watching the horizon draw close to the sun, Katelyn lay with her head in her mom’s lap, and Pam combed her little girl’s hair with her fingers. At one point, Katelyn reached for her mom’s hand and kissed it before allowing it to return to her hair.

Amelie was cuddling with me in an armchair, sitting sideways in my lap.

“You two going to be okay for the week?” asked Pete, addressing Amelie and me.

“We’ve got everything we need,” said Amelie happily.

“Well, we’ve got to make tracks here, soon,” he said. “Katelyn has school in the morning, and apparently we’re giving her a lift back to Miami.”

“Don’t say it, any of you!” said Katelyn. “I’m hitching a lift back home with Mom and Dad and leaving my car here. They’ll bring me back here next weekend and I’ll drive back to Miami in a convoy.”

“Sensitive, are we?” teased Amelie.

“No,” said Katelyn. “I’m taking advantage of my unsuspecting parents and a convenient mode of transport.”

“Well, I’m happy about it,” said Pam, using her fingers to transfer a kiss to Katelyn’s forehead.

Before the sunset began, they’d left.

Amelie drew me out to the deck. She lay me down on a cushioned deck chair and folded herself alongside me.

“What I really want to do is strip off and skinny dip in the pool with you,” she said.

“That’s in scope for our current agreement,” I said eagerly.

“But it’d also be in scope for the security cameras on the property,” she said, reaching up to kiss my cheek.

“Damn,” I said. “So you guys have a record of me nervously looking for gators and snakes when I ran the circuit this morning.”

“That’ll make for some good watching,” she said. “And I suppose we could skinny dip, anyway. It’s not like we’re super private about stuff like that, though everyone’s been careful around you so far.”

“Speak for you and your family,” I said. “I’ll keep my pants on if you want to do that.”

“Cuddling here is nice, too,” said Amelie. “What are we going to do all week?”

“Good question,” I said. “We’ve both got homework. And I’ve got some tough studio nuts to crack. And doing anything with you is enjoyable, even homework.”

“Is the studio project still messing with your sleep?” she said, running fingers through my hair.

“Mmmhmm,” I said, closing my eyes to focus on the movement of her fingers.

“At least you’re eating properly again. You kind of list it there for a while.”

“Mmmhmm.”

“Wouldn’t it be nice to make love all week, as often as we want?”

My eyes sprang open and took in her beaming face. We’d been doing this since the beginning. No matter what rules we had about how far we’d go, one of us would start imagining out loud what it’d be like to just forget all of it. By now it wasn’t pressure and it wasn’t risky. It was just this thing we did that said I want you so badly without crossing any of our personal lines.

“Delicious,” I said. “Just thinking about it gets me…” But I wasn’t able to finish the thought before Amelie rolled on top of me and kissed me aggressively.

“MRKH affects sex,” she said, coming up for air. “Or it might. It’s complicated. We’d need to take it slow and figure it out together. It could be just fine. Or we might need a period of adjustment.”

“Are you nervous about that?” I asked, frowning.

“Well, duh,” she said, kissing me again. “Especially after I saw you naked the first time.”

“The makeup mirror,” I said, belatedly realizing the true reason she had peeked and why she made such a big deal out of it afterwards. “Well, we’re not changing our current arrangement this week so we can worry about that later,” I added, eliciting a nod of agreement.

“Originally, after the MRKH reveal, I thought we’d be spending this week, you know…”

“Figuring it out now rather than later?”

She nodded shyly. She seemed vulnerable in that moment, which was just so unusual for Amelie, normally so confident and driven.

A few minutes later, up in the belvedere, we celebrated our week alone by making out as the sun set and the lake glowed beneath us. On this occasion, the clouds made the perfect screen for the refracting colors, setting both sky and lake ablaze. And the architecture did its job, bringing the outside in, while keeping out the bugs and humidity.

It was a memorable week. Quiet and intimate. We talked a lot about the future. About Katelyn. About their plans to live together, with me if I’d agree. But I still needed to make the all-important decision about a triad, which was weighing on me.

We returned to the Lake House with two medium bass for dinner, having released another half dozen. Pete quietly made sure that one of the fish we kept was one I caught.

Something about returning home with protein for the family appealed to the cave-man provider in me. I knew if I said anything about that, the girls would laugh their heads off, and it’d be fodder for years of teasing, so I kept it to myself. I still savored the feeling.

That afternoon, Pete and Pam claimed the belvedere while the girls and I took over the pool. Amelie and Katelyn appeared on the deck with identical pink string bikini tops and ruffled pink swim-shorts. Dressed the same, they really did look close to identical. It felt surreal.

“John,” said Katelyn, “would you carry me into the water?”

I completely failed to keep the look of shock off my face. Katelyn smiled sweetly and said, “There’s no lift in this pool and a bit of help makes the transition easier.” Amelie chuckled and nodded, so I gathered Katelyn into my arms and walked her down the steps into the pool.

After that, she swam around in the water with joyful ease. I’d seen it before on video calls but in person it was a delight to watch her moving, so free and agile.

Amelie floated into my arms as Katelyn’s powerful upper body drove her under the water, heading to the far end of the pool.

“She trusts you,” Amelie said quietly, her legs wrapped around my hips and her chest pressed against mine.

“I can’t picture the details of living together, though,” I whispered, making sure only Amelie could hear me, as I moved us to the stairs. I sat down and Amelie sat on my lap, both of us facing the pool and watching Katelyn, the water up to our necks. “I get that she’s mostly independent, but sometimes she needs help. You’ll almost always be around for that but sometimes she might need me. I don’t understand how much help she’d need, or what kind.”

“You’re right, John,” Amelie admitted. “We need to figure that out. As fiercely independent as Katelyn is, she sometimes wants to be wheeled or carried or touched, just like anyone would. She could fall out of her chair and, depending on the circumstances, might not be able to get back up. Sometimes she gets sick and the autonomic disruption that comes with SCIs can make things bad, so she might need intensive help for a bit. And sometimes she needs very personal help, stuff she’d rather not delegate, like skin checks and toileting routines.”

Amelie paused and turned around to look at me, trying to assess my readiness for personal details, I thought.

“Katelyn and I imagine she and you both getting comfortable with you helping. It’d always be on Katelyn’s terms, and it wouldn’t be burdensome for you. But there’d be a learning curve, for all of us. What makes everything easier is that Katelyn is totally matter-of-fact about this. She’s not ashamed to need occasional help, she’s not embarrassed to ask for it, and she’s not concerned about receiving it. At least from Mom and Dad and me, and from professional helpers. With time, I’m sure you’d be in the same bucket.”

“Can we leave her alone for long periods of time?” I asked. “Like, could we travel?”

“Someone always needs to be on call. If we went away for longer than a usual workday, then it’d be smart to make sure someone else was physically around to help. But we’ll make relationships with specialist home-care people in Austin for that, same as we do in Miami. And she has a phone and a wrist band that brings emergency help if she needs it.”

“Okay,” I said. “That helps me picture it a bit better.”

“Watcha talking about?” asked Katelyn, popping up in front of us and moving back and forth for a few seconds before using one arm to lean on the edge beside us.

“We’re imagining life with you in Austin,” said Amelie.

“You mean trying to decide if I’m too much trouble?” she asked, but there was a twinkle in her eyes.

“We already assume you’re too much trouble,” said Amelie, rolling her eyes. “We were thinking through how much John would have to get involved in care activities.”

“You and I have spent years thinking through that in the abstract,” said Katelyn. No surprise there, I thought. “It’s nice to know it’s John. He’ll never have trouble moving me if I need that kind of help. Even Dad struggles a bit now that I’m fully grown. You, too, and Mom’s so tiny she can’t lift me, even though she can support me in transfers.”

“He is big and strong, isn’t he?” said Amelie, twisting around to smile cutely at me.

“John,” said Katelyn, “what do you think it would be like if I fell over and couldn’t get back in my chair? I mean, if you were right there and nobody else was around?”

“I’d get you sorted quickly,” I said frowning.

“But I mean emotionally. What would it feel like?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Like a brief but manageable emergency, no panic, just get it done?”

“Yes, but add laughter,” said Katelyn. “And teasing.”

“You’d tease me for helping you?” I asked, confused.

“If I could think of a good way to do it, of course,” said Katelyn. “But I’d be laughing and you’d be teasing the para girl about incompetent chair driving, or something similar.”

Amelie giggled.

“So, in this scenario, I’m supposed to be teasing you, and we’re both supposed to be laughing about it?!”

“Now you’ve got it,” she said. “And if I get sick and throw up before I can get to the toilet, then we laugh about that, too. I make fun of you for being my house boy, cleaning up after me, and you make fun of me for uncontrolled projectile vomiting.”

“She really is a lot of fun when she needs, help,” said Amelie. “Even when she’s feeling sick as a dog.”

“Do you ever get grumpy?” I asked. “Seems like feeling sick and throwing up would be a good time for it.”

“I get grumpy, sure,” said Katelyn. “I don’t get irritable, really. But I do get sulky sometimes.”

“And it’s very attractive,” added Amelie, her friendly sarcasm back.

“You seem to tolerate it okay,” said Katelyn. Then the two girls did that fist-bump thing again, their fingers slowly exploding in celebration.

Pam and Pete liked fishing together, but it wasn’t a pastime that had ever appealed to the two sisters. My grandfather and father loved fishing, and Granddad taught me. I was one of those kids who really did grow up fishing with Granddad, until his death less than a year earlier – the first of my grandparents to die, and the one to whom I was closest as a teenager. I explained this when Pam asked about fishing, and the two parents immediately nabbed me for a fishing trip on Sunday after breakfast.

The girls declined to come. Katelyn looked at me as though I had just stupidly fallen into a trap. So, instead of spending some much-needed alone time with the two girls, I was leaving them in the Lake House and going off with their parents. Into the middle of the lake. Where apparently I would be surrounded by gators and cottonmouths. No escape.

I was fairly comfortable with Pete by then, but I’d exchanged not a single word with Pam aside from pleasantries and games and answering questions – all in groups. I was nervous and the girls could tell. Their sympathetic goodbye waves made it worse.

The boat house was large and clean, all concrete and decking, no dirt or grass. Hurricane-strong, too, Pete told me. I couldn’t see any dangerous critters, and after the previous day’s run with Pete I was looking whenever I got close to the water. Pete boarded first and looked around calmly, including under the console. He shooed out a little lizard, then Pam boarded, and I followed with one of the coolers she’d asked me to carry.

“I always fished on docks with Granddad and Dad,” I said. “Never had a reason to get to know boats.”

“It’s a mid-sized bay, 24-foot, center console, single engine,” said Pete. “It’ll run around sixty, depending on the wind. Low draft, so we can safely sneak into the reedy areas where we might catch a largemouth bass for dinner. It’s got everything we want for fishing.”

“We just need fresh bait,” said Pam, pointing to her cooler. “And drinks and food,” she added, pointing to the larger cooler I’d been carrying.

Pete thumbed the remote on the console to open the garage roll-a-door and steered the boat away from the dock. Then we took the canal north to the nearest lock. One last wave to the girls up on the deck, looking down on us from inside the giant domed netting structure, and we were off.

We couldn’t easily talk while the boat was moving, and talking while fishing was bad form because it scared the fish away – at least that’s what Granddad said – so maybe this would be a quiet morning. Even if there was conversation, how bad could it be? Pam and Pete seemed like great people to me.

What I really needed to do was just calm down.

Soon we were idling, waiting for our turn at what Pete called the J&S lock, with one boat ahead of us. By the time we made it inside the lock for the transition from canal to lake, there were three boats waiting. Everyone seemed patient with the routine.

Pete and I chatted about the lake while we waited. I knew the system from my research by then, amazed by this piece of public infrastructure.

“Back in the day, I guess a century ago,” said Pete, this area was fed from the north by the Kissimmee River, and then emptied south into the Everglades. Flooding was inconvenient and made the land almost impossible to occupy. Then the Army Corps of Engineers went to work, and two decades later we had an effective system both for controlling floods and for creating habitable spaces.”

“I saw the St. Lucie River that drains to the east when we drove through Port Mayaca,” I said. “I believe you can take that all the way to Atlantic, right?”

“Yep,” Pete said. “You’ve gotta get from the canal into the lake, first, but then you can run east along the St. Lucie River to the Atlantic or west along the Caloosahatchee River to the Gulf. Couple of locks either way. The lake’s the hinge for the system. But both trips are long.”

“We’ve gone both ways, exactly once,” said Pam. “Just to see what it’s like. But it was too long for the girls, so we left them with Pete’s parents.”

“It’s a case of been there, done that,” said Pete. “Nice to know it’s possible. No interest in making a habit out of it.”

“Everything about this place is trying to kill you,” I said. “Bugs, gators, snakes, storms, floods – it’s like the land doesn’t want people here. But someone built all of this – the dike, the canals, the locks – and made it work.”

“Still have to be careful, but yeah,” said Pete. “This kind of place is hard-won. You sound like a regional planner as much as an architect, John.” He was smiling appreciatively.

Through the lock, and past the speed-limited zones, we headed into the lake. It was a calm day with not much chop, so Pete had the boat moving fast. But everything about Pete was calm and cautious. I could tell he did not improvise where risk is concerned.

“My favorite morning fishing spot,” said Pete as he cut the engine and tossed the anchor into the lake.

The three of us worked on the fishing gear for a bit, prepping lines and idly chatting about nothing in particular. But I knew that couldn’t last.

“Pete tells me you asked him for his blessing to propose to Amelie,” said Pam.

“I hope that’s okay,” I said. “Maybe I should have spoken with both of you.”

“You did good, John,” she said. “I wanted to discuss timing, if you do go ahead and propose.”

“Timing?”

“You’re both nineteen, just finishing your first year of college,” said Pam as she skewered a piece of shrimp on a hook, despite seeming relaxed. Some kind of symbolism there, I thought. “That’s young for any couple to marry. You’ve been dating for seven months, which is not nothing, but this might be a situation for a good long engagement, until you’ve both grown up a bit.”

“So don’t rush into anything?”

“Exactly,” said Pam, as if she already had me persuaded.

“Mrs. Foster, I mean Pam, I’m not trying to dodge anything, but honestly, I don’t think I’ll be the one deciding the timing of the wedding, or anything else about it.”

Pete chuckled beside me, which made me feel better.

“If I do propose,” I continued, “maybe you could chat with Amelie about timing. She trusts your perspective on things.”

“I’ll speak with her, then, if the proposal happens.”

“There’s a timing limitation you should both probably be aware of,” I said. “While I’m not quite like my parents anymore, they are strongly religious, and they’re opposed to cohabitation before marriage. Amelie seems determined for us to live together this summer, in whatever place you arrange for her and Katelyn, but that’ll cause a problem with my family, even if you two are okay with it. She and I need to sort through that regardless of the proposal question. She’s got some things to figure out, but I think she sees those as puzzles, not problems. She’s very… um… determined.”

Pete chuckled again.

“Is this why you decided not to share the northerly suite?” asked Pam.

“Partly,” I said. “That’s not really cohabitation, because it’s only for a week, but it would still make my parents uncomfortable. I respect my Mom and Dad and don’t want to mislead them, let alone lie to them if they ask directly.”

With a slight flicker of her eyebrows, Pam nodded her understanding. If I had to guess, she seemed mildly surprised.

“Anyway,” I said, “the timing of anything beyond the proposal just isn’t my call. I don’t mind insisting on something if I think it’s absolutely critical, and I think Amelie is perfectly reasonable and listens to alternative perspectives, but I also don’t want to spoil her big plans.”

“I get it, John; don’t worry about it,” said Pam. “I’ll talk with Amelie. Between us, I happen to know that our conspiratorial daughters both have Amelie’s wedding completely planned out. And I do mean completely.”

We all had a good laugh about that.

“How old were you two when you got married?” I asked, knowing perfectly well the answer.

Pete cleared his throat and cast his line into the lake.

“Well,” said Pam, “we married right out of high school. But times have changed, I think.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said, to which Pete outright snorted before getting his laughter under control. Even Pam smiled at that as she reddened. Then she shrugged cutely. I couldn’t help seeing Amelie in that adorable display.

While Pete and I cooked over the barbecue that evening, with the smell of hamburgers and vegetables displacing the lakeside aromas, he told me about his work of running the family foundation that his parents had established, and thus his move into philanthropy from a career in law. He and I discussed my plans to become an architect, and the kinds of design work I was most drawn to; what we knew of Amelie’s plans to put her business degree to work in nonprofit management, and eventually to help Pete run the family foundation; and Katelyn’s vague plan to study creative writing, which we knew by then would be at UT Austin with Amelie and me.

During dinner, Pam described rebooting her career as an acquisitions editor for a children’s book publisher – a career that was about to intensify with Katelyn heading off to college.

After dinner, charades was a blast. It was the younger generation against the older, and I was completely useless. My irrelevance to the game wasn’t because I couldn’t mime, or because I couldn’t guess; it was because Pete and Pam were mind readers of each other, and Amelie and Katelyn were equally mind readers. The game was played at such a high level that I was constantly flummoxed, which provoked gales of laughter.

The only interesting times where when I had to act something out, because my mind-meld with the girls wasn’t established well enough to match the one they had with each other. As a result, the parents won, and I designated myself as the weakest link, to which Amelie said, “That’s a different game, babe.” There was laughter all around at my expense, which I interpreted as a sign of acceptance.

After that, Amelie dragged me out onto the back deck, where we sat watching the dark lake, which was mysterious and captivating in the light of a nearly full moon. Her head on my shoulder, she mentioned that her Mom had said there was no need for girlfriend and boyfriend to sleep in separate bedrooms.

“I thought we already decided,” I said, confused, as Katelyn wheeled herself in our direction.

“We have, and I’m not trying to change our arrangement,” whispered Amelie. “I’m just letting you know how they think.”

“I figured,” I said, as Katelyn arrived.

“Oooo, sangria!” said the girls simultaneously, catching sight of the tray Pete was carrying. I didn’t drink, so I nursed my little glass of fruity red wine and brandy while the Foster family worked their way through the jug, mostly telling stories about growing up. I realized what this was: time to get to know the family history, just as they’d gotten to know me a little earlier in the day. They were easygoing about it, with no formal agenda, but I could sense there’d been planning behind the scenes.

Nobody was pressuring me, but I could sense everyone was hopeful that Amelie and I would work out, no doubt because that’s what she’d told her family. I know what that hope looked like in Katelyn – agonizing, despite the fun exterior. I wondered what it looked like in Pete and Pam. Hopefully it was less anguished.

Fortunately, no one was giving me the “if you hurt our daughter…” treatment. Knowing what I’d learned about the girls this weekend, protective threats would have been completely unnecessary pressure. I was painfully aware of how high the girls’ hopes were that I was the solution to their life-happiness problem. I needed to make a difficult triad-lifestyle decision, and that was pressure enough.

When Pete and Pam left the deck carrying an empty jug and glasses – Katelyn had drunk mine – they asked Katelyn to come with them. Maybe they wanted to talk with her, or maybe they wanted to create space for the young couple away from the intrusive younger sister. Katelyn was obviously reluctant, but she left with her parents.

“You doing okay?” asked Amelie quietly. She’d been gently checking in with me all day – not hovering, not obsessing, but letting me know that she cared about me and communicating that she understood the pressure I was feeling.

“How does Katelyn react when her parents drag her away from us like they just did?”

“I’m a little worried that she’s feeling left out,” said Amelie. “I’ll check with her; don’t worry. She’ll be touched by your concern; that’ll mean a lot to her. I know she seems all light and fun, but…”

“I know,” I said. “I can read her better now. Now that she’s letting me see how scared she is of getting close to people, I find it incredibly tender. Seeing that side of her – the soft part she hides – I just adore it. Meeting in person has been a revelation, about her more than anything. I can see why you love her so much. She’s complex, sensitive, fun, intelligent, gorgeous, and her love for you seems, like, infinite.”

I watched Amelie’s eyes gleam as I described her sister. She just nodded, probably afraid that she’d get emotional if she said anything.

“And you are both weirdly good at communication. I guess it’s all those years of plotting and planning.”

“Exactly. Just wait until you and I have a real fight. I’ll run rings around you. But it will be for your own good. I’m kind, even when I’m fighting.”

“Can’t wait,” I said drily.

Amelie glanced at the kitchen window and, seeing no one, kissed me. It was passionate but also full of longing, a little anxious maybe. Perhaps I was reading too much into it.

“Bedtime,” she said, but only a fraction of an inch way from my aching lips. I might have groaned quietly in response, but I was so distracted I wasn’t sure. Whatever I did, Amelie giggled softly.

“Come,” she said, and led me by the hand back into the house. We found nobody on the main level so we switched off the lights and descended the stairs. I kissed her once more just outside Katelyn’s bedroom and said good night. She opened the door and I glimpsed Katelyn in bed.

“He was worried about you feeling left out,” she whispered tossing her head back to where I was standing in the doorway.

“That’s sweet, John. Now I’m worried about you feeling left out,” said Katelyn.

“He’ll be fine,” said Amelie, disappearing into the bathroom shared between their two bedrooms.

“She’s right,” I said. “Good night, Katelyn. Thanks for being such amazing company today.”

“Back at you, big guy,” she said. “Sleep well.”

Five minutes later, Pete and I set out toward the east edge of the huge lawn, on the other side of the house from the lake.

“We’re on five acres here,” he said, “and we’ve got the woods for privacy on three sides. The trail I’ve worn into the grass weaves around a bit but it’s about four-tenths of a mile. So five loops is two miles. I usually do ten loops for four miles, and I usually get it done in the low-thirties. Does that sound okay to you?”

I calculated in my head. “Almost eight miles an hour might be a bit brisk for me, but I’d enjoy the challenge,” I said. “My four-mile pace would normally be almost forty minutes, a touch over six miles per hour.”

“Let’s take it at your pace, then,” he said, and we set out running. I followed the trail and he ran alongside me on the grass. I tried to run a bit faster than normal to fit in with him but eventually pulled back to my normal pace, which is also how Amelie liked to run.

“Gators and snakes?”

“Sure,” said Pete. “There are gators and snakes everywhere water touches land. The lake isn’t safer than the canal, either. The rule is simple: stay out of the water, watch the edges, and don’t be careless. That’s why we shave the long grass down to nothing along the canal. Water moccasins like long grass. That’s also why there’s no swimming or floating or hanging out near the water. Bug’s aside, that’s advertising food to a gator. When we go out on the lake, we make a lot of noise. Some people waterski but we don’t even do that. The boat is for fishing and driving, period. The wild things can pick on someone else’s children.”

I got the message: Pete’s children had gone through enough hardship already. I felt like I needed to close the loop with him.

“Yesterday, Amelie told me about MRKH – did I get the name right?”

“Yep,” said Pete. “She must trust you, John. That’s a tender spot for her. For all of us.”

“I was honored, sir,” I said.

“Well, you didn’t run off, anyway,” he said.

In fact, I did run off, momentarily, but I’d taken the MRKH revelation in stride. It was the twin promises that made me lose my mind.

“Sir, honestly, I don’t think anything could claw me away from Amelie at this point.”

“She feels the same, John. I’ve never seen her so happy and purposeful.”

I pulled up as we completed the first loop, and Pete pulled up alongside me. My heart was pounding but I needed to do this.

“If I were to ask Amelie to marry me, would I have your support and Pam’s? I know we’re young, but I gather you’ve been in a similar situation yourself.”

“You’d have my wholehearted support, John,” said Pete. “Pam’s too, though I suspect she’d be happiest with a long engagement.”

“Thank you, sir,” I said. “I haven’t discussed this with Amelie yet, but she speaks as if we’re spending our whole lives together, so it won’t come as a surprise.”

“John…” his voice trailed off and he looked back to the house – maybe to make sure he wasn’t being overheard, though we weren’t close to the east-facing bedrooms. I waited for him to gather his thoughts.

“Amy and Kat are very close,” he said, frowning and looking for words. “Do you know about Kinsey?”

“Yes sir. I was really upset when Amelie told me about that, picturing what it must have been like for you and Pam.”

“Thank you. Do you know how we raised the two girls?”

“As twins. Yes sir.”

“They’re very close,” he said, frowning and looking up at me intensely as if he wanted me to understand what he was saying without having to actually put it into words.

“I’m an only child,” I said, “but watching those two during the last seven months has made me wish I had a sibling. They’re amazing together.”

“They are. And they’re a handful,” said Pete. “Kat’s been talking about you for months, so excited because Amy is excited.”

“I just learned she’s going to the same college as her sister,” I said.

“Yep,” said Pete. “And from what I hear, she’ll be living with you two in an apartment or a house that we’re buying or renting.”

“Seriously? I thought that was a brand-new idea,” I said.

“These girls plan a long way ahead, John. You’ll get used to it.”

Pete wasn’t finished, though. Now he was frowning and looking at the ground in front of him. “They’ll always be extremely close, I think,” he said. “And it’s going to become a permanent factor in your life if you become Amelie’s husband.”

I watched him staring at me.

“I’m invested, sir. Could you break it down for me? Make it practical.”

I think he appreciated the question. I saw him breathe deeply and he seemed to relax – like he felt I was helping him rather than passively resisting whatever advice he was trying to share.

“It’s really two things. On the one hand, Katelyn will always require some degree of care. We’re prepared to handle that, but she might prefer to receive the necessary support from her sister. On the other hand, Katelyn might have trouble letting Amelie go, or sharing her with another person.”

He was staring at me intensely again. It was obvious he didn’t know about the twin promises and how both girls had been hunting for a man to solve their problems. He didn’t know about their vision of a triad, a shared home with three parents. I didn’t know what to say, so I played it safe.

“I appreciate the alert, sir.” I winced. “Damn, sorry. Pete. Most of the time at home I’m supposed to call my own father sir; I’m not used to the informality.”

He laughed. “Can you imagine those girls calling me sir?!”

“No sir. I mean, Pete.” We both grinned at that. “If you don’t mind me asking, you’re the only one who calls the girls Kat and Amy – that I’ve heard, anyway. They call each other by their full first names so I’ve been doing that, assuming that Amelie would have a quiet word with me if I’m off base.”

“Smart,” said Pete. “They say they prefer their full names and pretty much everyone close to them complies. But they let me get away with the shortened versions. As far as I know, it’s a unique privilege.”

“Sweet,” I said.

Without saying anything further, we resumed our run.

“Morning everyone,” said Katelyn, struggling through the door to the deck.

“Gotta get an auto-opener on that heavy door,” mumbled Pete.

“Hi sweetie!” called Pam, as Katelyn rolled toward her and gave her Mom a kiss.

“I see you couldn’t keep your hands off Amelie’s feet,” said Katelyn.

“You did a good job yesterday,” said Amelie, deflecting her sister’s provocation.

“You know how that happened, right?” she said to her parents.

My heart was in my throat in an instant. But Amelie looked relaxed.

“We were talking about textiles and fashion and Amelie ran screaming out of the house, horrified that she was dedicating her life to her family instead of following her first love. She wasn’t thinking and she was like fifty yards from the house with cut-up feet when she ground to a halt, unable to move. I had to get John to carry her into the kitchen so I could tend to her.”

Amelie snorted in derision. “It was stupid, sure. But I like what I’m studying, and I’m going to be taking some textiles and fashion-design classes.”

“John said it best,” said Katelyn. “Amelie is choosing a major because of her family, a minor because of him, and a school because of me.”

“It’s kind of early in the morning for you to be pushing me to reform my character, isn’t it?” said Amelie – rather agreeably, I thought, given Katelyn’s aggression.

“Would you like coffee, Katelyn?” I asked, standing with my own cup.

“Yes please,” she said.

“Refills, anyone?”

“I’d like a warm-up,” said Pam, still focused on Amelie’s feet.

Pete followed me to the kitchen.

“You deflected Katelyn, just like Amelie does,” he observed. His directness surprised me, and I was momentarily caught off guard.

“I’ve only known Katelyn a few months, obviously,” I said, “but she’s never completely wrong. Amelie really is organizing her life around helping other people. Katelyn sees it and says it. It’s kind of refreshing.”

“I tried to discuss the fashion-design thing with her,” said Pete, as if this were somehow his fault.

“Amelie treasures those conversations, sir,” I said. “Pete.” I smiled. “She misses you and talks about how important your chats were. It’s not my place to have an opinion about this…”

“Yes, it is,” he said, like he really wanted to hear.

“It might seem like Amelie’s sacrificing herself for people she loves. But she’s choosing, eyes wide open. I think Katelyn knows that. She’s just checking to make sure Amelie’s really okay with it. The provocative teasing looks like caring to me, sir.” I smiled again. “Pete. Sorry. It’s just the way I was raised. I’ll get it right eventually.”

We had the coffees sorted but we were still standing there.

“Amelie says you like to run,” said Pete.

“Yes sir,” I said.

“This area’s not great for running. We’ve got snakes and gators on trails near the canal. We’ve got bugs by the billion. The running path on top of the levee is hard to get to and it’s windy and exposed, so it’s a cool-morning option involving a drive to Port Mayaca. Running on 441 is flat-out dangerous. For us, it’s normally twin treadmills or running around the property, trying to stay ahead of the bugs. We treat but the mosquitoes and no-see-ums always win.” He smiled in that goofy way I liked. “That said, would you like to run the border of our place?”

“Sure,” I said.

“Let’s drop off these coffees and get going.”

“Mom, Dad, please meet John Anderson,” said Amelie. “John, please meet Pete and Pam Foster, my parents.”

My head was spinning with the quick shift from yesterday’s twin-promises revelation and tribunal to today’s parent-meeting moment. I knew how important this was for Amelie and I needed to keep my head in the game.

“Very nice to meet you in person, Mr. Foster, Mrs. Foster,” I said, shaking both their hands. I towered over both of them. She was smaller than Amelie, probably five-two, and he was smaller than average for a man, maybe five-six. None of that had been evident in our video calls. I guess my height hadn’t been obvious, either.

“It’ll be Pete and Pam, if that suits you, John,” said Mr. Foster, “same as always.”

“Yes sir,” I said, making him chuckle. “May I help with luggage?”

“Sure. I’d appreciate another pair of hands,” he said.

As I collected bags, I overheard the conversation between Pam and Amelie.

“Where’s Katelyn?”

“Still in bed, I think,” said Amelie.

“Why are you in socks and hobbling around?”

“I stupidly ran out on the gravel and cut my feet up.”

“Amelie! I’ve warned you a hundred times about that gravel!” said Pam.

I smiled at the display of over-anxious parenting, and Pete caught my smile. He chuckled. That communicated a lot about how sharply observant he was. He was accepting, too, letting Pam do her thing. I’d always liked Pete but now, in an instant, I felt drawn to him. I wondered if Amelie would prove to be correct about her father and me becoming “best buds.”

A few minutes later, with their gear in the southerly suite, and some additional food in the kitchen, the four of us were out on the deck, sitting around a table, and enjoying a beautiful Saturday morning. It was still before eight so they must have left Miami well before six, wanting to make the most of their time away.

“Show me,” commanded Pam, and Amelie lifted her feet into her mother’s lap. Pam carefully peeled off the socks and inspected the bandages. “Antibiotic cream?” Amelie nodded. “I need to change these dressings.” We waited quietly, taking in the lake, until Pam returned with a bowl of water and supplies and got to work.

Amelie wasn’t even a tiny bit resistant, whereas Katelyn would have complained through the entire exercise. I knew a lot more about that difference now. Katelyn would have been defending her independence. Amelie would have been supporting her mother. Both sisters would allow Pam to do what she needed to do, but one fought and the other flowed.

I was sitting beside Amelie and she leaned over, tucking herself into me as Pam did her medical thing. I knew Pete liked the way Amelie and I were together, in theory, but being in person was telling. Now I could see him smiling as he watched his daughter being affectionate. We made him happy.

Amelie and I had never felt comfortable displaying any kind of physical affection in front of my parents. I felt awkward about it, and Amelie sensed it and stayed formal around them. I felt another flash of resentment. Why couldn’t they welcome her as warmly as I felt welcomed by the Fosters?!

Yet another part of me appreciated the tiny touches Mom and Dad used to express affection. It was all so understated but very real. Just different. I could see the little gestures. I could understand the tender glances. But I wanted this, not that.

“Amy,” said Pete, “are you still attending the church near your dorm?”

“Yes,” she said. “Methodist. Weird name. We’ve been going every week when we’re in town. John’s parents aren’t happy about it.”

“But I thought…” began Pete.

“Yes,” said Amelie, “you’d think that religious parents would be happy that their son was independently settling into a churchgoing rhythm after he leaves home for college, and going to church with his girlfriend no less. But apparently the Methodists are a suspiciously loosey-goosey variety of church according to conservative Southern Baptists. Who knew there was so much infighting?”

“What’s it like for you, Amy?” asked Pete.

“The community is beautiful, though it takes a while to break into it,” said Amelie. “The ritual part is interesting. I’m not into the singing, really, but I love the altar cloths and the robes. The fabric textures and hanging banners are lovely, and the colors and symbols have rich meanings. The sermons are mostly practical. Like, we read a bit of this really ancient book – you know, the Bible – then the minister-pastor-preacher lady tells us what she thinks about it. It gets me thinking about what’s important and helps me focus on my priorities. I guess it makes me a bit more deliberate about how I live.”

“What about all of their beliefs and doctrines and what not?” asked Pete.

“Mmm, not so much,” said Amelie, smiling up at me in a charming way. We all laughed. “John and I seem to be pretty aligned on that, despite our contrasting backgrounds. But that church is the kind of place where you can keep your private opinions to yourself and still belong, which is nice. They have a group for college-age students and we meet with them when we can. There are a couple of dozen of us. Not many couples like John and me. Last week we went bowling. Sometimes we read something and discuss it together. It’s a good way to make friends. John misses his basketball buddies and Viking, so this helps.”

“Viking?” asked Pete.

“Family dog,” I said.

“Best pal, more like,” said Amelie, patting my chest. “And a real-life Texas hero. Viking is an explosives detection dog, recently retired. He’s saved a lot of lives. And John is his best friend, so the dog’s been messed up since John moved to Austin. John might be a bit messed up, too. He had a lot of routines built around Viking.”

Damn if I wasn’t almost driven to tears by Amelie’s matter-of-fact summary of my relationship with Viking. This girl got me, really got me.

“So your father’s a K-9 officer,” said Pete.

“Yes,” I said. “He moved into a training role when Viking retired, so his schedule is a lot more predictable. I think part of him misses the excitement.”

“What does your mother do?” asked Pam.

“She was an elementary school teacher before I arrived, and she’s going back to teaching now that I’m not in the house,” I said.

I looked across the deck at Katelyn, still staring out over the lake.

“Amelie, I don’t know how to think about a triad lifestyle, raising children together. You girls have had years to imagine it, but it’s very new to me and I’m sure I have only the weakest concept of what it means. I get that you and I will have a traditional, faithful marriage, so the triad doesn’t involve blurring sexual boundaries that are important to me.”

“Important to me, too,” she said. I nodded, glad we were on the same page about that.

“And I get the surrogacy plan. I guess we’d share a house. I guess our children would have three parents. Beyond that, I’m grasping at straws.”

“John, this is not something we know how to do. I think nobody really knows how to do it. There is a lot of wisdom about polyamorous relationships, and some of that might help us figure out communication and roles, but we’re not doing polyamory. If we decide to do the triad thing, we’d need to create it from scratch. And we’d need to adapt, because none of us will stay static.”

“Maybe I should be doing some reading about this,” I said uncertainly.

“I’m glad you said that,” she said. “Katelyn and I have a little reading list. You and I can talk about it. If you want, the three of us can talk together at some point.”

“I’m up for that,” I said. “But what if Katelyn falls in love with someone and wants to have her own home and her own family?”

“Then you and I would revert to a conventional two-parent lifestyle with crazy Aunt Kat a big part of our children’s lives,” said Amelie.

“Kat?” I asked.

“That’s what Dad calls her,” said Amelie. “You and I need to talk through the triad lifestyle in detail to get a feel for it. When we get deep into it, I might decide I don’t want it. Everything’s up for grabs, John. Everything except you and me.”

I smiled gratefully. “If we’re solid, I can face anything,” I said. “And now I’m going to chat with Katelyn for a bit.”

“Good,” she said. “I’ll work on dinner.”

As Amelie hobbled inside, I carried a chair to Katelyn, where she was still staring out across the lake, a vertical bar of shadow shielding her face. I sat down beside her, my back to the sun.

“So that was unexpected,” I said.

“Are you happy, now, John?” she asked, staring straight ahead, the hurt she was feeling front and center. “I feel like my world has been knocked off its axis.”

“Same here,” I said, smiling gently at her.

“You get how much Amelie loves you, now, right?” I nodded. “I don’t know why you ever doubted it. She’s never been like this. With anyone. Ever. Not remotely close.”

“I don’t have that long history with her like you do,” I said.

“I know, but John, inside, you must feel it, like with absolute certainty.”

“I did until the twin-promises thing a few hours ago.”

She nodded, seeming frustrated that I hadn’t been able to respond better than I had to that bombshell.

“I am what I am, Katelyn,” I said. “Maybe some men would have kept a clear, logical head and adapted fast. I got seriously confused and just… lost it.”

“And tried to walk to Texas,” she said, looking at me for the first time and smirking, despite how upset she must have been feeling.

I chuckled wryly. “Yeah, but getting out of there was better than saying or doing something I’d regret.”

“I feel like I should turn over my ‘Amelie’s top priority’ badge to you,” she said, “except I don’t have one.”

“That girl makes decisive moves in a crisis, doesn’t she?” I said, looking past Katelyn to the house but unable to see anything except the blazing sun reflected in the glass.

“She does,” said Katelyn. “She drives everything. She always has. And you’re what she’s been missing – something solid underneath her. I’m the fun, like bubbles in champagne or sprinkles on ice cream.”

“You are fun,” I said. “But Amelie depends on you to tell her the truth, to see the few things she misses, which are sometimes the most important things, especially when they’re about her. What you did in the tribunal was… loving. Beautiful.”

Katelyn’s eyes teared up as she nodded. “She sometimes needs me for that. But what do you need me for, John?”

“With some time, we’ll figure that out,” I said. “However it works out, you are in my life forever. We start by getting to know each other.

“We must have had, like, fifty video calls by now,” she said. “It’s not like we’re just meeting for the first time.”

I laughed. “Amelie told me this morning that you’re a lot in person, and she wasn’t wrong. We’re going to figure this out, okay?”

“Okay,” she said. “Can you push me inside, please?”

“Sure,” I said. “Is this like a peace offering?”

“Don’t make a big deal out of it,” she said, her mouth smirking, her eyes warm.

I stood, a hand resting on her shoulder, which she quickly covered with her own hand. Then I pushed her inside, feeling the gift of it. The privilege of a simple kind of intimacy.

The three of us watched the sunset from the dining room over Amelie’s grilled salmon and my salad. The lake lit up with reflections twenty minutes before the sun dipped below the horizon. It was a cloudless sky, so the sunset was simple, the colors reaching over the full expanse of the horizon defined by the huge lake. We finished out on the deck with bowls of ice cream and fresh strawberries, watching the embers yield to darkness.

“Imagine being on the moon,” I said. “Right on the ring between the light side and the dark side. It’d be perpetual sunset.”

I saw the girls look at each other, then tried to suppress their laughter.

“What?” I asked.

“You’re adorable,” said Amelie. “But there’d be no atmosphere, so no refraction and not much of a sunset, right?”

“Oh, yeah,” I said, embarrassed that I’d said something so stupid, especially when I was trying to be… kind of romantic.

“Double geek alert,” complained Katelyn. “You two deserve each other.” But her eyes were gleaming as she said it.

All three of us were still raw – the emotional equivalent of Amelie’s ravaged feet. But I started to feel hopeful that we’d find a good way forward after this challenging day. All of us.

I carried a chair to the opposite corner of the patio and sat down heavily, my back to the two girls, the bright sun out of my direct line of vision, the northern part of the lake spread out before me.

That was such a strange exchange. Why was Katelyn pushing Amelie so hard?

I tried to imagine Amelie’s relationship history, three-and-a-half years of dating with a purpose, evaluating each boy with a defined goal in mind. That was serious dedication. And she’d approached me exactly the same way, except that things worked out instead of collapsing.

Katelyn had to be driving this interrogation because she believed there was a chance that Amelie really might talk herself into loving me for the sake of their promises. And she didn’t want that for Amelie any more than she wanted that for me.

And how could Amelie feel truly confident herself? She would know that she could talk herself into being in love with a man who could make the promises work – loving him because of the function he could perform rather than because of who he was. Katelyn wanted her to be confident in her love.

I realized, then, why I felt irrelevant in that conversation. Despite superficial appearances, this really wasn’t about me and my ability to trust. It was about Katelyn trying to protect Amelie from herself, from her self-sacrificial tendencies.

I sat there for ten minutes, watching the lake and wondering what Amelie was thinking, until Katelyn called us back.

I watched Amelie hobble back and we resumed the knees-touching tribunal. There was a pregnant pause.

“The question before us is how you and John can be confident in your love given the context of the twin promises,” said Katelyn. “And while we’re at it, we have the usual problem, family wealth, which can also make assessing sincerity difficult.”

That hadn’t occurred to me. Amelie could have doubts just as strong as mine for that reason.

We both turned to Amelie, but she only had eyes for Katelyn.

“Katelyn,” she said, “I would break my promise to you if that’s how I had to keep John in my life.”

Katelyn gasped.

I was beyond shocked.

I’d never seen Katelyn cry, but she was close to tears now.

“This whole situation has made it clear to me,” said Amelie. “There’s no way for us to resolve John’s uncertainty about my feelings toward him – or my uncertainty either, if you’re right that I could deceive myself about that – unless I’m willing to make him number one and leave the twin promises behind. Only then can he and I know for sure how important he is to me. After that, if he wants, we pick up the promises, together, and fulfill them as a couple. If he doesn’t want that kind of life, then we don’t, and we find another solution to my fertility challenge. And we find another solution to your need for a family and some degree of ongoing care. Either way, we still deal with the problems the promises were intended to solve, but maybe not in the way the promises aimed to solve them.”

A single tear ran down Katelyn’s cheek.

“You can see that, logically, right?” asked Amelie, reaching out her hand.

“That wasn’t…” she said, her lower lip trembling. “We never even imagined this.”

“It’s the plan now,” said Amelie.

“Really?” said Katelyn, weakly.

“Really,” said Amelie, softly. “But you know I love you, and that will never change. And we will solve both of our problems, one way or another, even if we set aside the twin promises.”

Katelyn nodded bravely. “So the knees-touching tribunal is over,” she said, her voice cracking and the tears flowing as she wheeled herself to a corner of the patio, staring out at the Big O, her face shielded from the bright sunshine by one of the pillars holding up the vast screen canopy.

“John, if you don’t understand now how much I love you, then you’ll never get it.” There was steel in her voice. I sensed an ultimatum in there somewhere.

“Amelie, I’m adapting as fast as I can. I didn’t ask for any of this.”

“You kind of did,” she said, leaning forward in a vaguely threatening way.

“What do you mean?” I asked, feeling a touch outraged now, on top of everything else.

“You could have trusted our feelings for each other, John. You know we love each other totally. You know it.”

Her eyes were blazing.

“You expect me to take a brick to the head and not feel dizzy?” I could feel myself pleading with her to calm down.

“I just hurt her, like I never have, and I did it for you. For us.” Damn, those eyes were aflame. She was in some kind of rage – I’d never seen her like this – and I was definitely intimidated.

I wanted to say that I didn’t ask her to hurt Katelyn, but that would just take us back to, “you kind of did.” So I just stared at her, hoping she’d calm down.

“But I can’t blame you for your reaction,” she said, sitting back, still staring at me.

That sounded like a tiny concession. Thank God. Damn, but this girl was intense. Especially in the way she loved. We looked at one another, trying to find our way back to where we both wanted to be. I felt the urge to bring her closer competing with the powerful urge to complain that she wasn’t being fair to me. I closed my eyes and swallowed the half-formed complaint. Don’t whine, John. Do like Dad. Be constructive.

“Are you sure you can do this?” I asked. “The twin promises have been a guiding light for a long time.”

“You’re my number one, John,” she said. “You and I decide what to do together, about everything, including Katelyn.”

Her number one?! I think I was in shock, again, winning a battle for Amelie’s loyalty when I hadn’t even realized I’d been fighting. “But Amelie,” I said, “this now puts me in a competition with Katelyn for your love, which feels all wrong to me.”

“This is not about love at all, John,” she said. The steel was back. “You can’t stop me loving my family any more than I can stop you loving yours. This is about lifestyle. If we do the triad thing, you and I are still married, period. Faithful to each other. Katelyn is family, not… she’s not in our bed. That’s a hard line.”

I was tempted to express my further shock that we were now talking matter-of-factly about marriage, as if it were a foregone conclusion, just like she’d talked about dating in that way seven months ago. And about sexual boundaries, which hadn’t even occurred to me! But I was afraid that showing my shock might trigger something in Amelie – a deeper fury, maybe. She was willing to give up her most fundamental ethical pillar for me, so I needed to be agile enough to realize we were talking on the scale of lifelong commitment. I gulped, swallowing whatever words I’d been about to utter. Again. In this mood, Amelie was awe-inspiring and flat-out terrifying.

“I started this conversation feeling like I was on the outside and in doubt about everything,” I said. “Now I’m feeling protective of Katelyn. That was a big bomb you just dropped. You just switched number ones and neither of us had any warning.”

“There’s no other way,” Amelie said. “When Katelyn and I used to talk about this situation, everything was abstract. We devised ways to convince the man that my love is true. But now we’re actually in the situation, and dealing with a real man with real feelings, none of that stuff will work. And she’s wrong about me deceiving myself; I know exactly what I’m feeling. There’s only one way through here. And that’s the path I’m defining for us.”

“She went from controlling a tribunal to completely deferring to you when you made that decision,” I said.

“It’s my role to drive, to decide,” she said. “Katelyn keeps me honest, and sometimes she needs to push hard to do it. But when I really make up my mind, she backs off. She trusts me – maybe too much – so I’m careful about when I put my foot down. But when I do, it’s done. She knows that about me, and she counts on it.”

“Now it’s on me to decide what kind of relationship we have with Katelyn, right?”

“Yes,” said Amelie. “But the decision is about lifestyle. Do we embrace the triad lifestyle or not? I want that, but I want you more. The compensation for the stress around that decision is that we have each other, locked in, rock solid. I hope to have biological children. Maybe we’ll adopt. Katelyn will manage her life, one way or another. She and I will be unbreakably close, regardless.”

I reached for her hand.

“I wonder if the way I’m feeling is the way your Mom felt when your Dad walked away from his family to marry her.”

“Maybe,” said Amelie. “Are you absolutely convinced of my love the way Mom was about Dad’s?”

More flaming steel in the eyes, but at least she was still holding my hand.

“I am now, yes,” I said, “just like I was until the… the revelation.”

“So it’s probably like the way Mom felt. Dad, too, because he would have been anxious about Mom marrying him for his money no matter how much he told himself otherwise. His parents’ cruelty turned out to be a huge gift, strengthening Mom and Dad’s confidence in each other.”

“Are you worried about that with me? The money thing?” I asked.

“No,” she said. “I understand your values, your priorities.”

I thought back to when I first met this extraordinary person, to the moment when she nodded and walked out of the lobby with me and my empty cart. I’d known it then: Amelie was a woman who knows how to make a decision.

Latest rollup post featuring chapters 01-30

(Note that some email clients might truncate a long post like this one, but you can read the whole post at WildWordFiction.substack.com.)

Prologue

Amelie walked out to the pool deck of her family’s compound on North Miami’s Indian Creek Island. Her younger sister Katelyn was slipping around in the pool like a happy fish. Except Amelie knew Katelyn wasn’t happy.

Amelie walked down the stairs into the pool and lazily side-stroked her way to Katelyn. The pool was designed with a hot tub on one side at close to the same water level, so it was easy to slide from the cold water into the warm. Amelie went first and Katelyn followed.

“Jets?” asked Amelie.

Katelyn shook her head.

“We’ve known this has been coming for years, and we’ve been preparing,” said Amelie.

“I know,” said Katelyn. “But when you were a year ahead in a different school, we still lived at home together. This time you’re going more than halfway across the country for college and leaving me here to finish twelfth grade. It’s going to be unbearable.”

“But we’ll talk every day,” said Amelie. “And a year from now you’ll be with me in Austin.”

“If I get in,” said Katelyn.

“When you get in,” corrected Amelie with an encouraging smile. “And if it doesn’t happen, we’ll go somewhere else together.”

“I hate this,” said the younger sister.

“But this is the beginning of everything we’ve been planning,” said Amelie.

“What are the chances, though?” said Katelyn. “You’ve crossed out every guy on our list. Almost thirty. I’m not even sure the man we’re looking for exists.”

“That just means I need to look somewhere new,” said Amelie. “And that’s my number one priority in Austin.”

“You’ll get caught up in your studies, date for fun, and completely forget about our plans,” sulked Katelyn.

“Seriously, sis? Does that sound like me?”

“No,” grumbled Katelyn. “Just don’t forget about me, alright?”

“Never,” said Amelie. “A promise is a promise.”

“And twin promises are twin promises,” said Katelyn.

Part 1: Amelie

Chapter 01

It was blazing hot, the kind of August heat that presses on you like a heavy blanket and sucks out rubber and oil aromas from the concrete. Sweat soaked through my shirt as I hugged Mom goodbye. She tried to smile, but her chin trembled.

Dad offered his hand. I shook it, another part of the ritual.

“You be good now, son, you hear?”

“Yes sir,” I said.

Something just gave way inside me, and I pulled him into a hug before he could object. He held tight for a long moment, his fists bunching the fabric at my back. The intensity of it was almost enough to crack something open, but I kept it together. He stepped back, nodded once, lips tight. That was us. We felt things, but we didn’t let them show. Once, when I’d been upset as a pre-teen, Dad had called it “The Anderson Way” – feel, but don’t spill. It’d stuck with me.

I’d already said goodbye to Viking back in San Antonio, the big dog confused and anxious about my departure. Living without him was going to be every bit as difficult as being away from Mom and Dad. Still, I was only ninety minutes away and could catch a bus back home for a weekend now and then.

Mom waved as Dad eased the truck into the garage traffic. I stood watching until the taillights vanished behind a concrete pillar.

Just like that, I was on my own.

My arrival in the University of Texas at Austin had begun with a hiccup: Dad’s truck never got close to Carothers Hall. Mooov‑In congestion on Whitis Avenue meant staff waved us straight into the garage. I’d thought arriving a week before classes would spare us the chaos, but apparently not.

Still, I had my student ID from orientation during an earlier visit, my Mooov‑In envelope, my dorm room key, and my parents’ company, which steadied me. By some miracle, the Carothers front desk had a cart available, so I’d grabbed it and headed toward the garage. I’d read the instructions and knew I wasn’t supposed to take the cart that far away, but I didn’t know what else to do in the circumstances, so I’d hustled toward the garage before anyone could stop me.

Mom and Dad had walked alongside, their heads pivoting to take in the buildings. This was hard for them, I’d thought at the time. Their only child was leaving home to attend college, and an empty nest awaited them when they got back to San Antonio. At least they’d have Viking, who was retiring from police K-9 duty at the same time.

After my parents drove off, and I’d braved the heat while pushing a fully loaded cart, the Carothers lobby AC felt like stepping into heaven. The cart’s front-right wheel wobbled like it was trying to detach itself, announcing me with a clatter as I crossed the floor. I probably looked like I did after a high‑school basketball game – like I needed to be wrung out.

That’s when I saw her.

She stood near a loose cluster of students and families waiting for carts – sun‑blond hair, blue-green eyes, athletic, self‑possessed. Shorts, tank top, backpack slung easily over one shoulder. Not trying to draw attention, not posing, just… there. Something about her clarity hit me like a shot to the chest.

Clarity?! I forced myself to stop projecting – there’s no way I could figure out her character from a quick glance – and I kept moving.

People stared at me all the time – six‑six and and a big build will do that – but today they were mostly eyeing the cart I was pushing. She looked too, but not with the hungry, half‑desperate cart‑lust the parents had. And not, I thought, because I was oddly large. Something different. Curious, maybe. Her gaze lingered – on me, not the cart, like she was searching for something – before looking away. She seemed… deliberate.

More projection. Get a grip, John! I ordered myself.

Upstairs, I claimed a bed, took in the view of the quad green from the window, and unloaded my stuff. My roommate wasn’t there yet – just his name on the door and a text from earlier, promising a mini-fridge, which I hadn’t even considered, and couldn’t have afforded to do anything about even if I had. The room felt as bare as it looked. It smelled musty, too, making me question why the air conditioning ducts weren’t clearing out stale air.

I knocked back a warm bottle of water and pushed the empty cart back to the lobby.

The cart‑hopeful crowd had grown. People perked up when they saw me exit the elevator with an empty cart, and I felt the weight of their optimism. She was still there, now closer to the front, alone and patient in a way that made her stand out even more.

I don’t do impulsive. Not historically. I’m a planner. But something nudged me, and before I could talk myself out of it, I said to the room at large:

“Sorry – got another load.”

The collective groan was guilt-inducing.

Then I stepped toward her and lowered my voice. “You’re the only one here without a family. If you need help, walk with me.”

I don’t think I’d ever done something that bold, off the basketball court, anyway. She blinked once, processing, maybe evaluating, then nodded and followed me out the door. Yes, deliberate. Definitely. And decisive. This was a girl who knew how to make a decision.

“Where’s your stuff?” I asked once we were out on the street.

“San Antonio garage,” she said.

“I just came from there.”

She fell into step beside me. “Queue‑jumping is frowned on, you know.”

I glanced at her. She was smiling. Dry humor’s good. But the smile didn’t quite reach her eyes, so I got the sense that she was evaluating as well as enjoying herself. Well, to be fair, who wasn’t on the first day of college?

“We’re not allowed to take the carts this far, either,” I said.

“Queue jumping, flaunting rules on carts; we’re renegades,” she said.

“John Anderson,” I said.

“Amelie Foster.”

“Third floor, Carothers.”

“Second floor, Carothers,” she said, amused. She liked the banter, I thought. We traded majors next.

“First year. Plan II Honors and Architecture in a five-year program,” I said.

“First year. Business Honors at McCombs,” she said. “Plus some social‑impact coursework through the RGK Center.”

“Shouldn’t a university with a world‑class business school have a more efficient Mooov‑In system?”

“Maybe buy more than six carts for the whole building,” she said.

“Revolutionary thinking.”

She laughed, and the sound unclenched something in me. She suddenly seemed more relaxed, too. Maybe I’d passed some kind of test.

We found her Jeep – a brand‑new Grand Wagoneer, immaculate, shockingly expensive. I didn’t comment on it. It didn’t matter; what mattered to me in the moment was the way Amelie moved – steady, competent, focused on the moment rather than the spectacle, which in my experience was unusual for an unquestionably beautiful girl. I watched her glance at me when we reached the car – assessing again but trying not to show it, I thought. I was glad I’d said nothing about the luxury vehicle.

We loaded the cart. A couple of plastic bins didn’t fit, so we perched one on top, which I held steady as I pushed the cart, and she carried the other. By the time we reached Carothers, after twenty minutes in the baking heat, we were both soaked with sweat.

Back in the cool lobby, eyes tracked us – well, tracked the wobbling cart – but I wasn’t focusing on the waiting hordes anymore. We took the elevator up one level to Amelie’s floor.

She hesitated with the keys to her dorm room. It was the first moment of indecision I’d seen. But she unlocked the door and we entered. Same layout as mine. Her roommate wasn’t arriving for days, she told me.

“Nice view,” I said, taking in the scene from the window, which looked west over Whitis and the Mooov-In chaos on the street.

“Uh huh,” she said, but she wasn’t looking out the window. She was looking at me and biting back a smile.

I felt that look all through my body.

“You want to check out Kinsolving for dinner later?” I asked, trying to play it cool. It occurred to me that I’d just invited a girl on a sort-of date without obsessing over it – a giant first.

Amelie checked the time. “It’s still early, but I’m starving now.”

We left the cart at the front desk – earning hero‑level gratitude from the next group of desperate cart worshippers – and I stepped back into the heat. With Amelie.

Chapter 02

Walking north on Whitis past insane traffic congestion to the Kins dining hall, I resumed our rapid-fire get-to-know-you exchange.

“Only child,” I said.

“One sister, rising high school senior.”

“Basketball was my main sport in high school.”

“Tennis,” she said.

“Thought about college basketball but want to focus on career prep.”

“Never once considered college tennis.”

“Wanna be an architect.”

“Wanna work in nonprofits.”

“Raised in a very religious family but might have changed a bit on that front.”

“Nonreligious family; never been in a church or synagogue or temple or whatever.”

“The ’rents would be seriously worried to hear that I’m not religious in the way they assume.”

“You’re kind!” she said, abruptly breaking the pattern. She stopped walking and her hand flew to her mouth, belatedly attempting to hold in what she’d just let out. She’d said it as if finding a kind person was a “eureka!” moment. “Sorry,” she said, quietly. “That was…” but her voice trailed off.

“You’re… surprising,” I said, an honest statement of how I was feeling in the moment.

“You’ve no idea, John,” she said. I expected a smug or seductive smirk, which would have matched the words, but Amelie actually sounded kind of tired, as though being full of surprises was a burden she was doomed to carry. What a fascinating person!

“I love my parents and they love me,” I said, resuming our walk and feeling the urge to let Amelie see a little more of me, especially after she’d taken a risk and tossed aside the usual getting-to-know-you protocol. “So the religion thing has become a bit tricky. I’m trying to balance transparency and kindness, both of which they deserve, but on this topic I find it difficult to do both well.”

Amelie stopped again, this time in the Kins lobby, surrounded by the enticing smell of food wafting out of the dining hall. She just stared at me, her head slightly tilted, her long hair falling away from one side of her head, revealing a diamond stud in her ear and a little scar right below, which sparked my curiosity. Once again she looked as though she was assessing me. But it didn’t feel cocky or arrogant. To me it felt tender, maybe a bit self-protective, and her beautiful face was serious.

“Come,” she said, suddenly grabbing my hand and leading me to the table area. She was holding my hand! The place was bright and noisy, but she found a relatively quiet corner and sat me down. Literally, she kind of pushed the hand she was holding so I sat down. It was the non-verbal equivalent of “sit!” I guess. Then she sat opposite me.

I was so stunned I forgot to ask Amelie why she’d suddenly lost interest in food. Why was this so urgent for her?!

“You’re different,” she said. I frowned. “Than other guys. Or ones I’ve met, anyway.”

“I’m just a guy,” I said, baffled.

“You’ve got strong values,” said Amelie, her brow furrowed as she searched for words, her face fully engaged with mine. “You honor your parents and misleading them causes you pain. You like to help people. You prefer to be transparent. You’re loyal, I think – and kind; we already covered that. The religion thing… it’s like you got the good stuff from it without buying the whole story. And… you care about being a good person.”

She watched me intensely, seemingly demanding a response.

“Well…” I said. “But…”

“Different. Than other guys. That I’ve known. Like I said.”

“Amelie, you need to get out more. I’m not unique,” I said, trying to lighten the moment. But she wasn’t having any of it.

“John, you have to get out more. You’re rarer than you realize.”

We stared at each other for a long moment. She was very confident in her judgment. About me. Probably about everyone. And everything. I felt a little out of my depth, like I might not be able to keep up with this girl’s perceptiveness. But I was hooked, regardless.

“Weirdest dinner conversation ever,” I said. I tried to keep a straight face, but I could feel a smile creeping into the side of my mouth.

“And tall, dark, and handsome,” she muttered in a frustrated tone of voice – as if to herself, but it was obvious that I could hear, and she immediately looked embarrassed. “Did I just say that out loud?” She smiled sheepishly, which I found adorable. She tried to explain. “I had this plan, you know? I was going to explore, hunt for what I want in a guy. But how am I supposed to shop around when I meet someone like you as soon as I arrive?”

“I hadn’t thought much about exploring,” I said. “On the other hand, you are definitely the most interesting woman I’ve ever met. And drop-dead gorgeous, to boot.”

Once again, we stared at each other for a long moment.

“John, are we really going to do this?” she asked. That took my breath away. She spoke to me as if we were on the same page already, as if we’d talked at length about dating, and we just needed to make a final decision. She wasn’t wrong about how she was reading me. But it was just so unusual.

“If you’re talking about dinner, then I hope so, because I could eat a horse,” I said. “And if you’re talking about dating, then yes, absolutely no question.”

“C’mon, big guy,” she said, standing and pretending to pull me up by tugging on the same hand that she used to sit me there in the first place. “Let’s figure out how this whole dinner thing works.”

She was still holding my hand as we walked back to the food area. It felt like she was settling into the geometry of it, adjusting her grip to make her normal sized hand fit comfortably in my gigantic paw, but doing it like she wasn’t aware, while focusing on navigating the dining-hall tables.

Her touch… it was innocent enough, but it set my head spinning. Well, spinning faster, really, because this had been the most extraordinary conversation of my entire life. Amelie was a lot. And everything was moving quicker than I’d ever thought possible – for any two people, let alone for me, the planner. But despite my cautious nature, I was doing this.

Chapter 03

I woke early the next morning. James Carson, my roommate, was sleeping in the other bed. His quietly humming mini-fridge was beside his study desk, and I plucked out one of the water bottles he’d invited me to stash inside. It was pre-dawn light outside, about half an hour before sunrise at 7am – perfect for a run. Five minutes later I took the stairs down to the first floor, waved to the woman on the front desk, tossed the empty water bottle in recycling, and stepped outside into the relative cool of what was going to be another scorcher. The street was deserted, making a sharp contrast with the zoo of the previous day, which would be the norm all through Mooov-In week.

I needed to get to know the area. Since I was no longer training with the team or playing competitive basketball, I had to establish new fitness routines. I needed to get over this feeling I should be running with Viking. And I needed to think about what had happened the previous day with Amelie.

I crossed Whitis and had barely begun running when I remembered that I was supposed to stretch first. I had a vague routine for stretching from running with the guys, but I needed to sharpen it up – I’d like to know why I was stretching which muscles.

“John?” The voice was quiet and I looked for its source but saw nothing. “Up here.” It was Amelie, leaning out of her second-story window.

“Morning,” I said, shocked to see her. I crossed back over the street and walked closer to her window.

“You run?” she said.

“Trying to get into a pattern,” I said.

“See what I mean?”

“No…”

“Which college student comes to school for the first time and is thinking about laying down healthy life patterns?”

“I don’t know, like, half of us?”

“You’re delusional, big guy. And different. In a good way. Give me five and I’ll join you, okay?”

“Okay,” I said, and resumed my haphazard stretching. The disorganization of the stretching bothered me. It occurred to me how unattractive my need for order and reason might be, especially to a free spirit. I wondered if Amelie was a free spirit, or whether she might prefer me this way. I guess we’d be finding out.

I wasn’t going to have time to take stock of what had happened yesterday. Amelie and I had parted after dinner. Dinner itself had been amazing. I’d felt incredibly frustrated about our parting, though I tried to stay cool and not show it. After everything had moved so quickly, we were suddenly putting the brakes on. And not even talking about it. I’d wanted to go for a moonlight walk later that evening, but I’d said nothing.

That kind of passiveness might be unattractive to some girls, too. Was Amelie one of them? Slowing down was wise, I was sure, but that didn’t help me calm down at the time. Thankfully, James’s arrival distracted me until I hit the sack.

Amelie appeared, dressed for a run. Her hair was in a high ponytail revealing gold stud earrings, her fit body decked out in high-end running shoes, shorts, and tank top. No makeup yet she looked perfect. I knew it was expensive gear but, as with the car, I said nothing. By contrast, I was in ratty shorts, tank, and shoes that looked like they’d been Viking’s playthings. Which they had.

She walked right up to me and placed her hands on my chest. The touch and an unfamiliar scent – soap maybe? – nearly knocked me out.

“Good morning, John,” she said. “May I give you a quick hug before we start?”

“Hugging before running,” I said, clasping her close to me, which was intoxicating. Somehow I kept my wits about me. “I’d heard Austin was different.”

She laughed freely. Amelie was of average height – about five-four, I reckon – but being six-six made average feel tiny. I loved the feel of her against me, her head tucked under my chin, her chest against my abs, her arms wrapped part-way around my lower ribs.

“Tell me you’re still growing,” she said, breaking apart, a twinkle in her eye.

“I’m still growing,” I said. “Dad’s my height and Mom’s tall, so they reckon I’ll sprout another inch or two in the next year.”

“Good,” she said. “You’re a little too short for me right now, but you’ll grow into the perfect size.”

I laughed. “Are you still growing?”

“We girls stop growing much earlier,” she said. “I’ve been five-four for two years already. Should we stretch before we run?”

“I’m thinking I should, but I don’t really know what I’m doing,” I said.

“Me neither,” she said. “We can look into it. Let’s just run for now.”

We set out, running north along Whitis Avenue toward Kinsolving. I tried to find a pace that suited her, but that turned out to be difficult because I thought she was doing the same. It was like a conversation in which two polite people were both deferring – needlessly confusing.

“Run at your normal pace for a bit so I can get a sense for how fast you like to go,” I said. After a bit, I added, “Yeah, that’ll work.” It turns out that we were comfortably matched for pace, so long as we weren’t messing everything up by trying to accommodate each other. Life lesson there, somewhere.

“What’s the deal with you staring out the window before sunrise?” I asked.

“I was thinking,” she said. “About you. Us. Yesterday. Was it too weird, John?”

“It was unusual, I guess,” I said, “but I’m glad you helped us bust through the normal awkwardness of getting to know one another.”

“I feel like I should apologize,” she said, as we turned right on Dean Keeton to work our way around the block housing the Honors Quad. “I was a bit caught off guard and saw something special and just kind of went for it. It might have been a bit unfair.”

“I’m good,” I said. “I’m usually cautious, but I liked it.”

“That’s a relief,” she said, but she didn’t sound relieved.

Remembering how passive I’d been after dinner, I took a risk.

“I missed you last night and wanted to go for a walk in the evening but in the end I didn’t text.”

“I had the same thought,” she said, as we turned right on University Avenue. “I guess I was kind of self-conscious about… well, about coming on so strong, and I didn’t reach out to you, either.”

“Hey, I got this started with the cart thing. It wasn’t all you. And the space probably did us some good,” I said, looking over at her with a smile, which she returned – gratefully, I thought. But a more honest comment would have been to say I regretted being so hesitant after dinner.

We ran in silence for a bit, then turned right onto a path that cut back to Whitis, completing the block.

“Again?” I asked, and she nodded.

Amelie was taking three or four steps for each two strides I took, and the chaotic rhythm of the footfalls on the pavement caught my attention. I almost shortened my stride to make it exactly four-to-two, then caught myself and decided the messy rhythm was actually kind of interesting. Another life lesson, I guess. We made a second loop in silence, running a little faster. It felt good.

Chapter 04

When we got back to Carothers, Amelie led me into the quad, and we lay down on the grass under a tree to catch our breath. The grass was thick and comfortable, and still had traces of that fresh-mown aroma. After a minute, with sunrise approaching, and colors in the quad slowly emerging from shades of gray, she rolled over to face me.

“John, tell me how you’re feeling about yesterday. No editing, okay?”

I rolled toward her and took in her concerned face. A few strands of blond hair had escaped her ponytail drifted over her high cheek bones and her mouth. She puffed some air out the side of her mouth to push them away. I felt myself frowning, mirroring her. Normally I’d smooth it over – say something to make it seem less of a big deal, just like Mom. But Amelie was asking for more than that. I think she could tell I was likely to dodge. I needed to be honest.

“Straight up, I’ve never experienced anything like that,” I said. “I was struggling at the time, and I still am, I guess. Overall, I liked your directness, even though it shocked me a little. But Amelie, I want this. I want to get to know you, be close to you. I want you to know me.”

She looked at me, her features easier to see as the sky lightened. I got the sense that she wanted more. Should I say more?

“You make me feel…” I fell into silence and watched her watch me. “You’re so smart, Amelie, and so perceptive. You read me perfectly yesterday. I felt… I feel a bit intimidated, right alongside my fascination and attraction, like I might not be able to keep up with you, like I might not be able to… oh God, sorry… meet your expectations.”

She reached out a hand and caressed my cheek, nodding slowly, her eyes glistening. Were they tears? I felt like I’d said too much, so I yielded to the temptation to walk it back.

“But I really don’t know you well enough to be sure about any of that,” I said. “I just feel insecure sometimes. And, again, I want this, no matter where it leads.”

She nodded and pulled her hand back. “Thank you, John. I felt drawn to you yesterday, so strongly, so quickly – that was new for me, too. At the time, the more you let me see you, the stronger I felt the attraction. I guess I kind of lost control a bit and said and did things that were out of character for me. Like, way out of character. Not just the speed of it. But that says a lot. Like, maybe I believe I’m finding…” Her voice trailed off.

We fell silent and stared. It was intense.

“I’m sure there was a more graceful way to get here, and I’m sorry I didn’t find it,” she said, the charming sheepish smile back. “It’s all just so unexpected. But here is where I want to be.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said, urgently feeling the need to reassure the beautiful young woman before me, so graciously showing me her uncertainty and regret. “Let’s just go on from here, okay?”

“Okay,” she said, shuffling closer. “Is this alright?” she asked. I nodded, and she shuffled still closer until she was in my big arms, cuddling close, my nose filled with that scented soap smell. I heard her sigh and felt content and happy – happy to be with her, happy that she wanted to be with me, happy that she could sigh in my arms, happy to imagine what might come next.

What came next for me was not wanting to move. Like ever. But Amelie pushed me gently on my high shoulder and I rolled onto my back. Then she cuddled into my side, her head on my shoulder and her arm over my chest. I leaned down and kissed her hair – our first kiss – and listened to her sigh again.

I was hit with this almost absurd vision – Amelie and me, old, sitting together somewhere, completely at peace. Just being near each other and that being enough. John, I told myself, you are not an old man, and I chuckled a little.

“What’s funny?” she murmured.

“Too embarrassing to say,” I said, chuckling again.

“After everything embarrassing I did yesterday, it’s your turn to embarrass yourself,” she said.

“But your stuff was cute and intense; my stuff really is embarrassing.”

“I don’t mind,” she said, and angled her head up toward mine, sliding up my body closer and closer until we were kissing. Kiss number two. And this one got my heart pounding. It was soft and slow, almost no movement, barely touching, yet almost did me in.

“I was picturing us as an old couple cuddling after a picnic, quietly enjoying each other’s company,” I said.

She lifted herself on one elbow to see me properly.

“See. What. I. Mean?” she said, very deliberately, punctuating her words with gentle finger-pokes on my chest. “Different. Which college freshman is filled with such a beautiful vision of contentment when cuddling with his girlfriend for the first time?”

“To be fair to myself,” I said, chuckling self-consciously, “that’s not all that was happening to me. But I did have this overwhelming feeling of contentment. I think your sighs might have caused it.”

She leaned down toward me, ever so slowly, almost but not quite brushing her lips on mine, her sweet breath bathing my face. It was incredibly tempting, and I tried not to give in – why, I couldn’t have said – but my will power failed me after a few seconds. Teenage John leapt into kiss number three, holding her head near mine and consuming her.

After a few seconds, I pulled back. She cuddled back into my side again and sighed. This time I sighed, too. Easy, John, I told myself. Nice and slow.

Chapter 05

My stomach growled and Amelie giggled. “You sound as hungry as I feel. Wanna eat?”

The honest answer was that I wanted to lie there with her all day. I was going to just go along with her suggestion, as usual for me – again, just like Mom – when it struck me that college presented new opportunities, so maybe I should try something new.

“So it’s like this,” I said, my hand caressing her back. “I’m hungry, as you can plainly hear, and would be glad to eat breakfast with you. But I’ve never felt this happy and content with a girl, even ones I’ve dated a while, and I’m reluctant to mess with the moment.”

“You’re sweet, John,” she said. “Thank you for telling me that. Let’s stay here and cuddle for a few more minutes. You can tell me about your Mom and Dad. I’ll tell you about my parents after tomorrow’s pre-sunrise run.”

“This is the new routine, then?”

“If you’re okay with it,” she said, hugging me tight and resettling against the side of my chest.

“That’d be amazing,” I said.

“First,” she said, “do you think your parents would like me?”

“Damn, girl,” I said, shocked by her question, which made her giggle again, though with a touch of nervousness, as though she really wasn’t sure about the answer. I loved seeing her nervousness; she seemed so confident most of the time.

“Okay, I’ll try to answer that,” I said. “At one level, you’re irresistible, so yeah, they’d like you. Anyone would.” Amelie leaned up and pecked me on the cheek before settling back down again. “At another level, you’re definitely outside their comfort zone, given that you’re nonreligious and they’re conservative evangelical Christians with a complementarian view of marriage.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s when men and women have defined roles in a marriage. They’re loving and close, and strong as a couple, but Dad’s a K-9 specialist in the San Antonio Police and Mom’s a homemaker and church volunteer. She was a teacher before I arrived but after that she stayed home. Dad’s supposed to set the moral tone and Mom’s supposed to give it loving expression in the home.”

“She’s okay with that?” asked Amelie.

“More than okay,” I said. “She’ll worry when she learns that I don’t agree with it, and I absolutely must tell them at some point. I disagree with it, but I have huge respect for them and what they’ve created together as a couple. Their marriage is amazing, honestly. I’d love to have something that strong, just built differently.”

We were quiet for a minute. Did I actually just talk about marriage to a girl I’ve known for less than one day? What was wrong with me?!

“Will you take me to church?” she asked.

Amelie had stunned me, yet again. Was I that easy to shock?!

“Amelie, do you think it would be possible for us to get through five minutes of conversation without you blowing my socks off?”

I leaned down and kissed her head to show that I was trying to be witty, not mean.

She giggled and patted my chest, letting me know I needn’t have worried.

“I’ve been thinking of visiting the Methodist church very close by,” I said. “There’s this thing called ‘church shopping’… would you like to try it?”

“Yes please!” she said. “You’ll have to teach me stuff. I don’t want to do something embarrassing. So that’d be Sunday, right?”

“Right,” I said. “Will your parents be okay with you attending church?”

“They’ll be confused at first, I guess,” said Amelie, her fingers picking at something on my tank top. “And Katelyn – that’s my sister – will tease me; I’m reluctant to give her any ammunition, but she’s not mean so I’ll put up with it. They’ll come around when they fall in love with you and realize that…” She stopped mid-stream. Then she leaned up and looked at me, her eyes scrunched tightly closed. She opened them to see me frowning in confusion. “Sorry, John. I’m doing that way-too-intense thing again. What I mean is that they’ll appreciate that I’m trying to get to know you and your world.”

I could see that Amelie was kicking herself mentally for what she saw as a slip, which made me think she was trying hard to stick to some rules she’d devised for herself. My heart went out to her. She was just as unsure as me. Just as attracted. Just as confused by how fast this was going. I wanted to make her feel better, to comfort her. But I didn’t know how, so I stayed silent.

Silent like my Dad when he was uncertain. Silent like my Mom when there was conflict. And now I was kicking myself, just as much as Amelie was. Say something John!

“Amelie…” I blurted out, and immediately lost track of what I wanted to say.

She moved closer and bent down to kiss me ever so softly.

“Say it,” she whispered. Something about that kiss unlocked my words.

“You don’t have to try so hard to edit yourself. You’re safe with me. And I guess if I’m saying this, then I feel safe with you.”

“Really?” she said, her eyes gleaming.

“Really,” I said. “I don’t… I mean, I want you to relax with me. Intensity is okay. Better than both of us trying too hard to say the right thing. To hell with the rules, Amelie. Let’s just be us.”

“To hell with the rules?” she said, with a hint of incredulity.

“To hell with the rules,” I said quietly. “Please, just be yourself. I’ll try to do the same.”

Then she really was crying. It wasn’t noisy. But I could see the tears rolling down her face and felt them landing on the bare part of my chest the tank top didn’t cover.

I must have frowned because she said, “I’m okay, John, please don’t worry. I’ve just never been treated so kindly by a man, except for my Dad. I’m kind of spiraling, like, out of control, probably with shockingly bad judgment, so I don’t know if I can trust what I’m feeling. But I do feel at home with you. I’ll try to relax and just be myself, and I’m glad you’ll do the same.”

She lay her head down on my shoulder again, but this time higher up, where she kissed my cheek and held on tight.

Chapter 06

We were quiet for a while until my tummy grumbled loudly again.

“Alright, big guy,” she said, springing to her feet and holding out her hand. “Breakfast time.”

“The idea of a tiny thing like you helping me up is hilarious,” I said, pushing myself to my feet.

“Hey! I’m not little,” she said, “and certainly not a tiny thing. I’m the only normally sized person around here.”

“True,” I said, draping my arm over her shoulder, which she held with one of hers. “I would like to formally apologize for any inconveniences that my size may cause you.”

“So one and done, is that it?” she teased. “I was hoping to hold your inconvenient size over you for years.”

Her free hand flew to her mouth.

“I did it again,” she groaned. “I gave myself strict instructions not to be so damn intense, but I keep forgetting.”

“And now it’s okay because we agreed that we’d just be ourselves,” I said. “To hell with the stupid relationship rules.”

“We did agree, didn’t we?” she said, laughing happily. “That’ll make things much easier for me because I seem to be way off kilter. And that’s all your fault, you giant meanie, confusing young women with your charm and kindness and shocking proportions.”

“I’m trying to be smaller but it’s not working,” I said.

Kins dining for breakfast was overwhelming. I felt assaulted by the aromas. I stood there looking at the options, confused about what to eat. She walked back to me, tray in hand.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Basketball was a lot of training, with year-round working out – lifting, flexibility, aerobics. I’m not playing or training hard anymore. My habits around eating are geared to a different level of output. I don’t want to become the fat-slob three-hundred-and-fifty pound architecture student a year from now.”

“We’ve been dating for, like, less than a day, and you’re already telling me about your body issues?”

I looked blankly at her.

“Oh, God, John, I’m sorry, that was supposed to be funny. What I really mean is thank you for sharing something so tender and worrying. Why don’t we grab a small breakfast and talk about how to eat healthy?”

“Okay,” I said, trying to smile. Why was I suddenly so sensitive? I was way out of whack, just like Amelie, our normal behavior turned erratic by strong emotions. Just settle down, John, dammit. I did not like being so out of control.

I enjoy breakfast food, but I kept my servings small and we sat at the same table where we’d eaten dinner the previous afternoon.

“Do you think we might explore the campus together today?” she said. “I’d like to see the architecture school and understand how the honors program fits with it. It’s like a double major and takes five years, right?”

“Sort of,” I said, digging into some scrambled eggs. “It’s actually a dual degree, so I wind up with a BA and a BArch. I like the idea of exploring campus. I’d like to see your business school, too,” I added.

“So maybe we can spend the whole day together and get done everything we need to get done. You know, stay close.” She said it hesitantly, hopefully.

“Sounds nice,” I said. “But we also need to have some fun. Something a bit less intense. I’m not used to being so off my game, you know?”

“I hear that,” she said. “This is unprecedented for me. I’m normally very… um… self-possessed, I guess. But around you I feel like a little girl who can’t think straight.”

The sheepish smile was back again, light dimples making it cute. Amelie was an unbelievably charming person. I couldn’t imagine anyone not feeling friendly toward her, unless it was someone jealous of her intelligence and beauty, both of which were very obvious – the latter just by seeing her, and the former as soon as she opened her mouth to say anything.

Or maybe unless they were very conservative religious people who were trying to protect their son from being paired up with someone with incompatible religious beliefs.

I just hated to think of my Mom feeling as though she needed to warn me off this amazing young woman.

“Hey, John, where’d you go?”

I would normally evade such a question, but with Amelie I felt drawn toward explaining my inner world. This desire to communicate felt new and strange, and that was part of the reason I was so messed up around her. But I’d promised to try to be myself.

“I was thinking how likable and charming you are,” I said. She smiled. “Cute, too, especially when you smile. Then I got to thinking who wouldn’t like you, and I could only think of two kinds of people.”

“Do tell,” she said, laughing.

“One kind is people jealous of how beautiful and intelligent you are. It’s, like, seriously unfair. The other is people who’d worry that you aren’t the right kind of religious person. You know, for me, or for whomever.”

“Like your Mom and Dad,” she said.

“Yeah,” I said. “They’d love you in one way, like I said, but… Do you know what a yoke is?”

“You mean inside an egg?” An eyebrow arched.

“No, one of those wooden things you put around the necks of oxen to help them work as a team.”

“Oh, yeah,” she said.

“In my parent’s religion,” I said, “they warn young people about being unequally yoked, meaning don’t team up with people with different religious beliefs. That’s what they’d worry about in your case, no matter how much they like you. But they don’t know how much I’ve changed, so there wouldn’t be as much of a mismatch on the religious side of things as they assume. The true mismatch is now between them and me.”

“What will the Methodist church we’re going to on Sunday be like? Would they think we’re unequally yoked? You know, if they knew us both well.”

“Probably not,” I said. “From what I’ve heard, most Methodists are more middle-of-the-road, and not as extreme in their beliefs as my parents’ Southern Baptist church.”

“What would your parents say about your breakfast?” She said it in a light and happy way that made me want to kiss her. Well, why not? She was my girlfriend after all, as weird as that sounded.

I leaned forward. She did too. I kissed her lightly and tenderly before breaking away. “My Mom would say ‘you’re a big boy and you need a hearty breakfast.’ My dad would say – I lowered my voice to a growl – ‘show some self-control, son.’”

“I love them already!” she said, sounding delighted. “I’m thinking they’ll be happy I’m going to church with you. Honestly, though, the main reason I want to go with you is because I’m fascinated with it. Religion, I mean. I might take some classes in it. It seems so strange, like an alien way of life, but it produces wonderful marriages like your parents’ and impressive young people like you, so it’s something I should know about.”

“I’m glad you’re interested,” I said. “It’ll be nice to have someone I can talk to about it. I’m feeling pretty confused about all things religion.”

“Let’s go get ready for our day,” she said happily, standing and carrying our empty plates.

Chapter 07

Back in Carothers, she led me to her dorm room on two.

“Can you wait here while I shower?”

“Sure,” I said, “but I thought we were going to spend the whole day together.” It was a stupid joke – my own clumsy way of flirting, I guess.

“Separate bathrooms for men and women, silly.” I’ll be back shortly. You’re not dripping with sweat anymore, so you can lie down on the spare bed while you wait.” Then she was gone.

My mind drifted. Our one-day anniversary was still hours away. This was absurdly fast. We needed to go on a proper date. I started making a mental list of all the date ideas I could think of.

I was still adding items when the door opened and Amelie walked in, her hair wet, her face scrubbed, her torso wrapped in a towel, and her feet in rubber flip flops.

“Welcome back,” I said, smiling and trying to play it cool when a stunning girl wrapped in a bath towel was standing a few feet away from me.

“I need to get dressed; would you mind looking away until I say it’s okay?”

“Sure,” I said, and rolled toward the wall. This was a whole other kind of intense. I heard the towel hit the floor and then clothes were moving.

“I’m good,” she said eventually, and I turned back to see her drying her hair with the towel. “Thank you for being a gentleman.”

“You’re welcome,” I said, “and since we’re trying to be honest with each other, I hope you don’t mind me saying that I found that very difficult to do.”

“Best of all worlds,” she said, laughing.

“What?”

“You wanted to look – I could tell – and you didn’t. That’s perfect. If I sit on the bed, would you brush out my hair?”

“Sure,” I said. I sat up on the bed and she handed me her brush before sitting cross-legged in front of me.

“I haven’t done this before,” I said, as I started to move the brush. “Any special instructions?”

“Just what you’d think,” she said. “It’s long and gets tangled, so get the knots out.”

There were a bunch of knots. I mumbled a few apologies as I figured out how to get through them with the brush.

“You’re good at that,” she said. “I like the way you hold the hair with your hand so it doesn’t tug on my scalp.”

“Beginner’s luck,” I said.

After a few minutes, I told her she was all brushed out.

“Your turn,” she said. “Your roommate being around means you should get your gear and come back here. You can shower on this level. Then we can head out.”

“I can just shower and change upstairs,” I said.

“That’s not the plan,” she said. “Remember, together the whole day? Quick!”

A few minutes later I returned to Amelie’s room with a change of clothes and my shower gear. She was sitting at her desk working on her makeup.

“Back in a few minutes,” I said, and she smiled warmly.

After a quick shower, I realized I could have changed in the men’s bathroom. Too late now. I came back with a towel wrapped around my body, just as she had. I hadn’t even thought about it.

“Change behind me,” she said, which I proceeded to do while she continued her makeup routine. Once clothed I got my hair as dry as I could and mumbled something about forgetting my brush.

“Ooo, may I?” she asked.

“Sure,” I said, as she approached me with her brush.

“Sit,” she said, pointing to the bed. She stood in front of me and started brushing, tingles pouring down my spine. “I used to do my Dad’s hair when I was little. Mom’s and Katelyn’s too, of course, but I liked doing Dad’s hair. No tangles. And he’d let me do it however I wanted.”

“Go ahead,” I said, hearing the hinted request. I felt her doing something… parting it differently, I think.

“Have a look,” she said, grabbing her mirror from the desk and holding it in front.

“Center part,” I said. “I can live with it for a day.”

Then it occurred to me that I was looking at myself in a mirror. That had just been on her desk. While I was changing behind her.

“Amelie! Seriously?!”

“A girl’s gotta know what she’s in for,” she said, smiling sweetly.

“Damn, girl. Okay, what’s the verdict?”

“I’m a little intimidated,” she said softly, biting her bottom lip. I had no idea how to respond to that.

“You owe me a kiss for peeking,” I said, eventually.

“If you had a mirror, would you have peeked?”

“Good question,” I grumbled, without answering. “I hope not.”

“You’re not certain, so we probably owe each other a kiss,” she said, suddenly standing between my legs a mere inch away. She leaned down ever so slowly as I tilted my head back to meet her. That kiss started sweet and rapidly accelerated into brand new territory.

“Amelie,” I moaned. “Not… safe…”

“Why?” she mumbled around the fiery kiss.

“Just… too much… way… too… much…”

“Okay,” she said, lifting her head away but cradling my head against her chest, my cheek pressing into the pendant hanging around her neck.

“Or that!” I said in alarm.

She released my head and stepped away, sitting on the bed opposite me.

“We need to talk about sex,” she said. “Not now, not yet. But I’m feeling… Oh God.” She dropped her head and breathed deeply to steady herself. “John, we just need to talk about it, okay?”

“Okay,” I said. I’d never actually talked with a girl about sex before. I had no idea what to expect. But I was sure that a conversation about sex with Amelie would not be standard fare, whatever that was.

“In the meantime, I’m gonna make a call,” she said.

Chapter 08

She moved to grab her phone then sat on the bed beside me. A couple of seconds later, she appeared on the screen. Or someone who looked almost identical to her.

“Hey sis!” said Amelie. “John, this is Katelyn. We talk every day, sometimes more than once. Katelyn, John.”

“Hi Katelyn,” I said. “I thought Amelie was showing me a photo of herself for a second until you started moving.”

“Well, we do have the same birthday, so we are practically twins,” said Katelyn. “Nice to meet you John. Amelie told me about you last night.”

“Same birthday?”

“We were meant to be twins,” said Amelie, “but we missed by a year. Some kind of stork mixup, most likely.”

“But Mom and Dad raised us as twins anyway,” said Katelyn. “You’re becoming an architect?”

“I hope so,” I said. “I’m in a five-year dual degree and it’s supposed to be grueling, with more than half dropping out, so who knows? I might not make it.”

“As if,” said Katelyn. “If you were the kind of guy who would drop out, I wouldn’t be talking to you right now, and you wouldn’t have shared more than a brief conversation with my highly perceptive sister.”

“I see you’re both quite direct,” I said, laughing. “Must be a Miami thing.”

“We read minds, too,” said Katelyn, making Amelie giggle. “Like, I knew you were going to make that crack about Miami.”

“Impressive,” I said.

“Hey,” said Amelie, “I just wanted to check in briefly because we’ve got a day full of orientation stuff.”

“Together?” asked Katelyn.

“Together,” said Amelie, smiling at me sweetly.

“Good God, John!” cried Katelyn. “You’ve broken my sister!”

“I’m sure you’ll be able to put her back together, being a special twin and all,” I said.

“I don’t know. She seems pretty damn broken to me.”

“You’re broken?” I said to Amelie, smiling and frowning at the same time.

“I might be a little bit broken,” she said, in an absolutely intoxicating way. It was quiet, and she looked at me shyly, those dimples working overtime, one hand brushing hair away from her eyes.

“Well, I’m definitely busted to hell and back,” I said, as though we weren’t on a video call with someone else. This was all sooooo out of character for me.

“I’m no expert,” said Katelyn, “but you two need to slow down a bit.” She sounded worried and amused all at once.

“Not today,” said Amelie. “We have plans. We tried slowing down yesterday and it didn’t take. So we’re ditching the usual dating rules and doing whatever we want. We can slow down later.”

“Whatever, sis. Just don’t confuse the poor man or yourself any more than you have already. John, tell me, why five years?”

“The accredited architecture program is a professional degree requiring five years. The honors program is its own four-year academic degree – that’s how I get to live in the Honors Quad here. The university worked out a way to do both in five years, including summers.”

“That means you and I will graduate at the same time,” said Katelyn.

“Where are you planning to attend college?”

“Right there at UT Austin, if I can get in,” she said.

“What’s the thing with the Foster girls and UT Austin?”

“I don’t care much what I study but Mom and Dad said I need to get a four-year degree. Amelie and I talked about it, and she applied for schools where I could probably get in with my mediocre grades.” Amelie snorted but said nothing. “And Amelie turned down offers from more prestigious schools so we could live in the same town.”

I raised my eyebrows in surprise. “Where did you get offers?” I asked Amelie.

“Almost wherever she applied,” jumped in Katelyn. “Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and a dozen other lofty places.”

“Not true,” said Amelie.

“Weirdly, Columbia turned her down, but that was the only Ivy that did,” said Katelyn, ignoring Amelie’s protest. “The problem is that, unlike my brainy sister, who is obsessed with extracurricular activities, I got a B once in middle school and I prefer to stay at home, so I’m not Ivy material.”

I took in Amelie’s sisterly scowl at Katelyn’s self-deprecation and distracted her. “You’re full of surprises,” I said, looking at her in something approaching wonder.

“Like I told you,” she said.

“I reckon I’m lucky to have gotten in here,” I said. “The architecture program is super-competitive. It’s also daunting, with year-round work, super-heavy workloads, and that terrifying cull rate. There are over a hundred of us to start, and I’m sure we’ll all be looking around at each other, wondering who’s going to crack under the pressure.”

“We’re calculating that UT Austin is a good bet,” said Amelie. “McCombs is hard to get into, especially from out of state, and fits my needs perfectly. We’ve looked into it and Katelyn has a strong chance of getting in here, depending a bit on the major she applies for. She’s a brilliant writer and they care about that here.”

“If I don’t get in there I won’t know what to do,” said Katelyn. The conversation, which had been flowing comfortably, abruptly ground to a halt. After a beat, Amelie came to the rescue, sounding for the first time like the older sister.

“We’ll figure it out,” said Amelie, and she smiled tenderly. “Talk later?”

“Yep,” said Katelyn, smiling – bravely, I thought.

We ended the call and Amelie looked at me, waiting for something. I was about to say, “she’s nice” or some such polite but meaningless throwaway line when I remembered the new rules.

“Less than 24 hours together and you introduce me to your sister without any warning?”

“You did fine, John,” she said. “But Katelyn’s right, this is so unlike me.” She gave me this impossibly adorable wonky smile.

I felt the powerful urge to tell Amelie that I… Rules or no rules, there was no way I was saying that.

I suddenly felt unbearably antsy, and abruptly stood up. I desperately needed to break out of this spiraling confusion. From the tiny frown that creased her forehead, I could tell Amelie wanted to ask what was happening, but mercifully she let it go.

“Ready to hit the campus?” I asked, my head still spinning from what I’d almost said. “McCombs, the College of Liberal Arts, and the Architecture School are all close by.”

“Let’s go,” she said.

I was not built for this kind of hot-house emotional intensity and was enormously grateful just to be walking – anywhere, for any reason. And doing it with Amelie was perfect. I could tell she was watching me, wondering about the sudden shift in mood, trying to give me space.

Somehow she knew exactly what I needed. She just gave it to me, no fuss, no questions. It amazed me enough to pull me out of the awful restless feeling I’d been trapped in. And seeing her compassionate way of handling me made me so grateful. I could feel myself surrendering to her, giving myself over, and it scared me how permanent it felt. The feelings were just too strong, too much, too fast.

I told myself not to take it out on Amelie. Dad had figured out how to manage the unbelievable stress he faced every day at work without taking it out on Mom. All I had to do was manage some unfamiliar emotions. I could do that by moving.

What I really wanted to do was play basketball. Hard. Throw my weight around in the key, feel those other sweaty bodies resisting mine. Just thinking about doing that was helping as we walked toward Sutton, the home of my first-semester studio. We crossed West Dean Keeton St walking south on Whitis, dodging more students and their families navigating the Mooov-In process. This was good. Walking was helping.

Chapter 09

“How do you know where to go?” asked Amelie, as we headed south around the gentle curve of Whitis.

“Map,” I said.

“Where?” she asked. I patted the phone in my shorts. “And where’s the map now that your phone is in your pocket?”

“My head, I guess?” I said. I noticed the tone of my voice rising at the end, as though I was asking whether that was an acceptable answer. I couldn’t read her face. More confusion. More restless discomfort. Another tiny frown from her.

“Race you,” she said, and ran ahead. I started out after her. As with walking and jogging, so with sprinting: our speeds seemed to be about the same despite the stride lengths being different. She stayed ahead of me all the way past the campus computer store, when she suddenly diverted to her right, pulling up in front of the César Chávez statue.

It had only been a two-block sprint, but it had helped. Had she known I needed to move?

“This is the guy who organized farm workers, right?”

“Yep,” I said. “And the statue is here because of a student movement to rebalance representation in public art on campus. Same with the MLK and Barbara Jordan statues.”

“Figures you’d know about art in public places around here,” she said, leading me to a tree in the West Mall.

“Sit,” she said, and I leaned back on the tree, trying to remember how many times she’d told me to sit already. It didn’t feel bossy. More like efficient.

Amelie leaned back against me, both of us facing west, welcoming the shade afforded by the broad trunk and the leafy boughs above. It was only just nine in the morning, and it was already hot. I wrapped my arms around her waist, leaned back on the tree, closed my eyes, and drank in the moment.

The West Mall was noisy. I could hear the beeping of a reversing truck, student and family clusters chatting in a variety of languages as they drifted by, some kids yelling about a frisbee. I could feel the tree bark through my shirt, the grass I was sitting on, Amelie’s back on my chest. It was noisy here but I felt almost calm again, the terrifying feeling of falling pushed to the background.

I was half afraid Amelie was going to launch an interrogation into the awkward mood shift she seemed to notice from before. She didn’t. She just lay back against me, her hands resting on my hands clasped around her. The scent of her hair, the feel of her body, the interior quietness… this was nice.

I needed more of this. Simple presence. Emotional stability. Time. Calm. Quiet.

We must have stayed like that for ten minutes. Very still. Centering. Our own world, despite the bustling people and vehicles.

Amelie lifted one of my hands and kissed it.

“Too much intensity, right?” She was so gentle about it.

“Yes,” I said.

And that was it. No interrogation. She showed me she understood. I leaned forward and kissed the top of her head, wondering if she understood how grateful I felt.

Suddenly I was the one who needed to talk.

“Spin ’round,” I said, and she sat on my legs facing me.

I stared at her gorgeous face. She tried twice to brush back a strand of my floppy fringe.

“The last time my dad talked about his emotions in front of me was, like, never,” I began. She was attentive, hungry for my words. “He has plenty of emotions. And some of them come through his actions. But he’s, like, highly self-regulated. I mean, Amelie, he and Viking risk their lives every day on the bomb squad. Yet at home he’s totally calm. Not relaxed, exactly, but rigorously calm. He’s awesome. Like hero-amazing. To me.”

“Viking?”

“His dog. Probably my best friend for the last decade.”

She nodded. I didn’t know why, but I really wanted her to understand this.

“I don’t want to live like that. I want to loosen up. Make mistakes without beating myself up. Be surprised sometimes. Feel less locked down. But I’m built like him. I feel things deep like he does. I need stability. Quietness.”

She nodded again.

“Talking to you like this feels perfect in one way,” I said. “I feel this overwhelming urge to let you see me. But doing it inside 24 hours of knowing you feels alarmingly fast. Scary and unsettling.”

Another nod.

“Amelie, picture me like a gigantic loyalty machine. I’m gonna lock on to someone and stay locked my whole life. I can feel it. I could feel it with my past girlfriends, though the locking on part never happened. That person will have my whole heart and only they can break it. Feeling that locking-on starting to happen with you feels very, very wrong. Like a serious mistake. For me, I mean. Knowing the way I am. It’s not that I need to guard my heart, exactly. It’s that I need to know the person I give my heart to – and I need to know them very well. That takes time. Much more time than we’ve had.”

She nodded a fourth time.

“I’ve never felt like this before so I’m seriously disoriented. But I’m not talking about distance or separation or even slowing down. I’m going to be insanely busy soon, and we’ll have lots of time apart. I think what I need is steadiness. Just being together without all the noise. Like a mountain lake – still and deep.”

She nodded a fifth time, this one particularly deliberate.

“And that is officially the longest I have talked about anything, ever, to anyone.”

Amelie shuffled closer on my thighs. Then closer. Then her hands were on my cheeks. The whole time she was staring at me, her eyes locked on mine.

“I think I just fell in love with your Dad,” she said.

It totally cracked me up. We were both laughing so hard she had to lean her head on my shoulder. Eventually we calmed down and she resumed staring at me.

“Close your eyes,” she said quietly. I did, focusing on the weight of her body on my legs, the scent of her hair, the feel of her waist beneath my hands.

“I’ll be your mountain lake,” she said. “I can feel it. I’m made for this. Even though I’m off my game, the normal me longs for that consistency, giving and receiving. I’ve got it in me to lock on, too. Differently than you but just as strong, I reckon. I’ve never been with someone who made me feel the possibility of actually locking on until now. So I need to know who I’m dealing with, just as much as you do. We just got caught by the surprise of it, both of us. But there’s still a real thing here to explore. It’s not wrong because it’s intense, John. We just need to find a good way to handle it.”

I slowly opened my eyes. “If you’d told me this could happen to me one day ago, I would have laughed in your face. Politely, of course.”

She smiled, then. She was more than happy; this was joy, and it spilled all over me. I was beaming, I think, but the feeling was unfamiliar so I wasn’t sure how I looked. Probably goofy.

Chapter 10

“I want to know Viking,” said Amelie.

“You can come visit him in San Antonio,” I said. Then I thought about what that must have sounded like and rolled my eyes in frustration. “I think I just invited you to meet my parents, but I wasn’t thinking about that, honest. Just Viking. And, unlike Viking, meeting my parents would take quite a bit of preparation, on both sides.”

“Well, I’m up for that, too. But what’s Viking like?”

I closed my eyes and listened to the cicadas droning in the branches overhead. I felt Amelie’s balance shift and her hands loosely drape around my neck, as she leaned closer, the heat of her forehead giving away its presence, an inch from mine, nearly touching. I opened my eyes to see her out-of-focus face studying mine with a half‑smile.

“Tell me,” she said.

I opened my mouth, closed it, and tilted my head back. “Talking about him makes me miss him. And you sitting there, leaning forward, your pendant dangling… it’s… distracting.”

Amelie giggled and rearranged herself sideways in my lap, her head tucked into my shoulder, one hand on my chest, the other wrapped partway around my waist. “Better?” she asked.

“Better,” I said, though having an intriguing and beautiful girl on my lap was still pretty distracting. “Viking’s… well, imagine the world’s most disciplined soldier trapped inside the world’s biggest cuddle addict.”

“Perfect,” she said, giggling.

“He’s a Belgian Malinois, but not the scary kind you see in police videos. He’s friendly. He’s got this built‑in radar for human feelings. Especially mine. If I’m wound too tight, he’ll come put his head on my leg and just… stay. Make everything slower. Better.”

“So the bomb-squad dog is your emotional-support animal?”

“Yep. Dad would say Viking could sense my mood before I could. Viking would sleep near me whenever Dad would let him, follow me around. He’d tuck himself into my legs when I’d sit down to do homework. He loved wrestling with me when he was younger. Even now at eleven he loves running with me, so long as I don’t push him too hard.”

“Was I your Viking replacement this morning?”

“I hadn’t thought about that but maybe,” I said. “You look better in running gear, though.”

She laughed and patted my chest.

“I bet he’s protective too, right?”

“He’s basically a four‑legged guardian angel with fur instead of wings,” I said. “There was this one time – I was nine so he was, like, two, and must have been with us for just a year – some guy wandered into our backyard. Viking just stepped in front of me. Didn’t bark, didn’t freak out. Just this low, quiet growl that said, Nope. Not today. The dude left in five seconds flat. Dad caught the guy out front. Apparently he said he was looking for work, but who knows? I never found out what happened to him and Dad wouldn’t have told me if I’d asked, but I was fine.”

“Viking: 1. Stranger danger: 0.”

“Pretty much. Then when I was fifteen, some dude came charging at me and Mom in a supermarket parking lot. Viking was waiting with Dad at the car and broke heel – huge no‑no – but he got between me and this crazed guy and barked once. One bark. The guy skidded to a halt like in a cartoon, and reconsidered whatever deranged plan he had.”

“Note to self: Never approach the Anderson family at high speed,” said Amelie.

I laughed. “When Dad tells that story, he says that single bark was like controlled lightning. But Viking’s the gentlest creature I’ve ever known… until someone threatens a member of the Anderson clan. Then he’s a whole different animal.”

Amelie leaned closer and kissed me on the cheek. “I love him already,” she said, and homesickness flooded me for the first time since Mom and Dad left me in the garage.

“He just retired,” I said. “He flunked his last fitness test, but he’s been working for more than a year longer than average. He had a good run.”

“What’s he doing now?”

“Mostly sleeping, I reckon, but his retirement was the same time as I left so I’m not sure. Dad’s moving into training, so no more field calls, but Viking’s still with him most of every day. They leave the house early and come home early so Viking gets these long, slow afternoons. Dad loves him something fierce. He could have gotten a new animal to keep up the work, but he wants Viking to enjoy the rest he’s earned after a decade of courageous and flawless service. So he’s shifting his career for the dog.”

We sat there cuddling quietly.

“Oh, get this,” I said, suddenly energized. Viking recognizes me on video, which dogs can’t usually do. Last night I called home and Viking started whining because he could hear my voice. So Dad cast the call onto the TV to make me life‑sized. Viking walked right up and nose‑booped the screen. I didn’t see it, but Dad and Mom were laughing about it. He sat down in front of the TV and just stared, apparently. Probably confused by the lack of scent.”

“He misses you,” said Amelie.

“Yeah. I miss him too. Each day’s gonna feel a bit off for a while, I guess. Mom and I talked about it on the drive up here – how I might feel, how Viking might react to my sudden absence. Apparently he’s sleeping beside my bed or outside my bedroom door if it’s closed, staying close to my scent. The scent will fade eventually, but Dad says the imprinting will last for life.”

“What was he like when he was young, like when he first arrived?”

“Playful,” I said, laughing as my mind was flooded with memories. “He’d steal Dad’s and my socks. Repeatedly. And when Dad ordered him to bring them back, he’d only return mine.”

Amelie laughed brightly.

“Back then, Viking hated thunderstorms and fireworks, but only for the first five minutes. After that he’d fall asleep like nothing was going on. And he’d be so goofy if he was home when I got back from school, dancing around me and wanting to play or wrestle or run or whatever.”

“I think I just learned as much about you and your family as Viking,” she said. “You haven’t said much about your mother yet, but I’m drawn to your Dad and Viking, and really want to meet them. And I really want them to like me so I can get close to them.”

I chuckled. “This ‘ditch convention and say what you’re thinking’ method of getting to know each other is really something.”

She tucked herself into me more tightly.

Chapter 11

Fifteen minutes later we were on the fifth floor of Sutton, looking through the glazing of room 100, the studio where I’d be working huge hours in less than a week. We saw drafting tables in formation, rolled tracing paper on each one. There was a faint smell of sawdust and glue even in the corridor.

A wiry, balding, black man in his late forties passed and said, “You two new? You can peek inside if you want – I’ll open it for a sec.”

“Thanks,” I said. “John Anderson, new BArch student. This is my girlfriend, Amelie Foster, a first year in McCombs.”

“Professor Roscoe Phillips,” he said. “I’ll be running first semester studio, so we’ll get to know one another. Go, poke around. I need to check on a few things.” While I moved through the space, taking it all in, I listened to Amelie engaging Professor Phillips as he did his prep work.

“John says the dropout rate is over fifty percent. Why is that? I mean, why do students go to all the trouble of competing to get in and then give up?”

“Some of them misjudge the workload,” said the professor. “But most of those who move on realize that they lack the talent. It takes deep giftedness to be a good architect. But we still graduate about fifty people a year, and we have one of the best placement records in the country, so we think we’re doing okay.”

“John’s doing the dual degree with Plan 2 Honors in CLA. I figure I won’t be seeing a lot of him for the next five years.”

“That’s a big load, sure,” said Professor Phillips, “but you’ll be furiously busy in McCombs. My bet is that you’ll spend a lot of time studying together.” He called out to John. “Any questions back there?”

“No,” I said, as I walked back to join them.

“How’s it feel?” asked Professor Phillips, looking earnestly at me. I got the sense that he really wanted to know.

“Honestly?” I asked.

“Life’s too short for anything else,” he said, smiling warmly.

“I feel like this might change everything about me,” I said.

“Good answer,” he said, and led us out of the studio. “I’ll see you next week, John. Nice to meet you, Amelie.”

We walked through Goldsmith but it was hard to figure out what anything in the main architecture building really meant when it was so quiet. We dropped into the architecture library in Battle Hall briefly.

“Imagine knowing what’s in these shelves,” I said, the sense of wonder drawing me in. I thought the hundred-fifty or so architecture books I’d consumed was a lot, but it was nothing against this trove of wisdom and beauty. I reined in the impulse to explore, and we went next door to the CLA quad instead. We walked through the ground floor of the CLA buildings. As with Goldsmith, it was difficult to grasp. I guessed it would become clear with time.

The next stop was the undergraduate part of McCombs School of Business, a bizarre combination of buildings next door to CLA. Once again, we felt a bit lost.

“Do you know where any of your classes are?” I asked Amelie.

“No idea,” she said. “This tour has been a total flop, apart from the studio visit.”

“Let’s go see the graduate business building,” I said. “We can walk by the new undergrad tower, which should go live while you’re still here.”

“You know where those buildings are, too?”

“I do,” I said, and got us moving in the right direction.

We couldn’t see much of the new tower on Whitis between 20^th and 21^st but it had a huge footprint and was going to be seventeen stories, so it was a gigantic deal for business undergrads. I was glad Amelie was going to get a chance to experience it before she graduated.

The Graduate School of Business was housed in Rowling Hall, one of the buildings I’d studied before coming here. It was a stunning structure, and the east-facing atrium was all space and light and dancing structure.

After walking through it, Amelie sat with me at one of the shaded tables in the external courtyard.

“I guess I won’t be here much, being mainly for MBAs, but the architecture takes my breath away,” she said. I nodded and stared back at the façade, the atrium visible from outside. All the indoor-outdoor spaces on each level brought the light and space inside the building. It was majestic design.

But I had to keep my eye on the time. Amelie saw me looking at my phone.

“You on a schedule?”

“Yes. It’s getting toward 11:30am. We have an appointment.”

“John Anderson, what have you got planned?”

“A tour,” I said, as we walked quickly north toward the UT Tower. “Dad planned it for me. And the problem is that if you come with me, dad’s gonna hear that I was with a girl. That’ll lead to questions. So you need to decide: come with me, or wait for quarter of an hour and rejoin me afterwards. Sorry about the lack of warning.”

“Come with,” she said. “But maybe no PDA and just be new friends.”

“Perfect,” I said.

A couple of minutes later, we were waiting at the spot dad had texted me, with Amelie still having no idea what was about to happen.

“John Anderson?” called a man from behind me.

“Yes sir,” I said, shaking his hand warmly. “This is Amelie Foster; we met yesterday and have been trying to wrap our minds around the places we need to go next week.”

“Lieutenant Jack Barnes,” he said, shaking Amelie’s hand. “I’ve known your dad for a long time, John. He’s kind of a hero around here. Twice he and his dog came up to handle bomb threats, both the real deal. He’s been up a bunch of other times to train us with the Austin PD. When he reached out, I was glad to help. Come on inside.”

We followed Lieutenant Barnes, Amelie with a giant question mark scrawled on her face. I laughed quietly as he walked us to the elevators and we ascended. We chatted about his work and our degree programs until we reached the observation deck level. He unlocked the access door with his ID and then we were out in the open.

Amelie gasped when she realized where we were. It was hot and breezy, and the clock face was huge from there. The protective fencing cast a delicate grid of shadows across parts of the deck. The usual campus noise had dissipated to almost nothing. It was peaceful, awe-inspiring, and surreal to be looking down at the campus, which seemed so tiny from way up high.

“Lieutenant Barnes,” said Amelie, with that thoroughly charming manner she had, “we’re still getting to know Austin. Could you tell us what we’re seeing?”

“Sure,” he said. “This is the southern view, and you can see the Austin skyline, including the Texas State Capitol dome. That’s Lady Bird Lake glinting in the distance.”

After a minute, we walked clockwise to take in the westerly view. “That’s Hill Country,” he said. I instantly fell in love with the texture and the light of the rolling green ridges and faint blue silhouettes stretching for miles after the flat land gave way steep hills and a completely different kind of landscape.

“It must be amazing up here at sunset,” said Amelie.

“Yes,” said the Lieutenant, walking us slowly around to the north. “Visitors rave about it. To the north, you can see the engineering and natural sciences quad areas, the north campus neighborhoods, and the Austin suburbs.”

He kept slowly walking until we took in the easterly view. “And this way you can see the athletic complexes, the medical district, more Austin neighborhoods, and the low-lying Texas plain that runs all the way to the Gulf.”

“I can get the feel for the original forty-acre layout from up here,” I said.

“Yes, the original square is easy to pick out from this height,” said the Lieutenant. “Of course, the campus is more than ten times larger now. Take a couple more minutes to look around and meet me at the elevator. Sorry to rush you but this is definitely an exception, if you know what I mean.”

Amelie and I slowly paced the deck. Alone now, her hand found mine. I explained the history of the original forty-acre plot of land that the state set aside for the university, before UT Austin was founded in 1883. She was quiet and listened to me describe a little of the history of an impressive state institution.

As we rode the elevator down with Lieutenant Barnes, I thanked him warmly for the tour.

“It was a total surprise for me,” said Amelie. “I should make a point of hanging out with John in the future!”

The Lieutenant chuckled and walked us out of the building. We thanked him again and set out for lunch at Kins.

“That was quite the romantic interlude, John,” said Amelie, her hand snaking around my waist as she grabbed my arm and draped it around her shoulders.

“Dad would be surprised to hear it described that way. But I’m glad you liked it. It’s not easy getting up on a public tour, and private tours like that one are impossible. Of course, later today I’ll get an intrigued call from mom, right after dad hears that I wasn’t alone.”

“What if we call him over lunch? You know, like new friends, and me grateful for such an unplanned treat.”

“Really?”

“Sure,” she said. “No boyfriend, girlfriend stuff, but I really ought to thank him. And I’ll find a way to tell him that you’re coming with me to the Methodist church on Sunday to check it out.”

“Okay, sure,” I said. “You’re amazing,” I said, kind of blurting it out.

“Why, thank you, kind sir,” she said, mirth dancing in her eyes. “So are you, John. And your dad and Viking. And I’m pretty sure your mom must be, too.”

Chapter 12

“Our” table was free again, so we ate lunch there – sandwich for me, salad for Amelie. When we were nearly done, Amelie said, “How about that call?”

“Come around here,” I said.

“Start the call first, then invite me around,” she said.

“Smart,” I acknowledged, starting the video call. “I don’t know his new schedule. If he’s busy, I can leave him a message.”

“John!” said dad, appearing on the screen. “I’m at home. Give me a sec to get you on the screen for Viking.” I heard him call out for mom, who came running.

“Watch this,” he said, turning the camera on Viking. “Say something.”

“Hey Viking, boy,” I said. “I’m missing you like crazy.” Sure enough, the big dog came up and booped the screen then lay down in front to watch me. “Wow,” I said, as dad turned the camera to face him, now with mom right behind him, wiping her hands on a dish towel. “Hi Mom,” I called and stupidly waved.

“Hi sweetie,” she said. “You doing okay? Viking’s not his usual self with you gone.”

“I miss him almost as much as I miss you guys,” I said. “I met Lieutenant Barnes for the tour of the UT Tower. Amazing, Dad! Thank you so much for arranging it.”

“I heard you had a friend with you,” he said.

“A friend?” echoed mom.

“Amelie, come over here,” I said, and she pulled up a chair next to mine.

“Hi Mr. and Mrs. Anderson,” she said, with her beautiful smile. “John pushed my Mooov-In cart yesterday – other people just walked by when I was struggling but he stopped to help. Today we toured the buildings we need to navigate next week. And he agreed to come with me to the Methodist church right near the residence hall. Mr. Anderson, I wanted to thank you for the tour. I was lucky that Lieutenant Barnes let me up with John. The campus and the whole city are amazing from up there.”

“You’re welcome,” he said. “Amelie, is it?”

“Yes, sir,” she said. “Amelie Foster. Business honors. Before I go and let you guys talk, would you mind showing me Viking? John told me about him, and he sounds like a very special companion.”

“Sure,” said dad, and turned the phone around, to show the big dog lying there, ears perked up waiting for any sound from me.

“Beautiful dog!” she said, as dad’s phone turned around again. “Well, nice to meet you both. I’ll leave you to it.” She picked up the plates and walked away, but soon was back at the table, sitting right in front of me, making faces in wordless commentary on what she could hear of the video call.

“Made a friend already?” said mom. Amelie nodded slowly, grinning mischievously.

“Maybe,” I said. Amelie rolled her eyes. “My roommate James arrived last evening. He seems nice enough. I met Professor Phillips, the instructor for first-semester studio. That’s the first of the gigantic design sequence at the core of the architecture degree. He’s going to be very important for me, one way or another.” Amelie stared at me seriously when I said that, like she was as invested in my success as I was.

“Dad, how’s the new routine?” I watched as mom’s hand touched his shoulder tenderly. I just loved the way my parents were there for each other at big moments.

“Getting there,” he said, which is about as much as I could expect. “Your mom’s working on recertification and updating her training.” Classic deflection, and I smiled fondly at them. “With the teacher shortage, she’ll probably land a job while she does all of that.”

“Early elementary teaching has changed a lot,” she said, which made Amelie’s eyebrows raise. I couldn’t tell why; maybe she was genuinely surprised. “New methods for teaching reading, new technology, and what not, so I’ve got a lot to learn.”

“All four of us are in big transitions, then,” I said. Amelie smiled so warmly then. I stretched my hand out of mom and dad’s view, and she leaned forward and grasped it.

“In my case, I’m expecting gigantic work weeks starting in a few days. I’m feeling a bit intimidated, but also excited, like, deeply excited about learning. I really appreciate the opportunity. Thank you both.” I was shocked to see Amelie’s eyes get misty.

“Call and tell us about the Methodist church on Sunday,” said mom.

“Will do. Love you both,” I said.

“We love you, too, John,” said mom, speaking for dad, as usual when it came to stuff like that.

“Bye Viking,” I said and ended the call.

My focus was immediately on Amelie, who seemed upset.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, squeezing her hand to offer comfort.

“You thanked them for giving you the opportunity to learn,” she said. “Who does that?”

“Like, fifty percent of us?” What caught Amelie was constantly surprising me.

She just shook her head, a tear running down her cheek. I leaned forward and gently wiped the tear away.

“I suppose you think I need to get out more,” I said.

She nodded, her eyes glowing. “You’re so lovely,” I whispered. “And you see things so differently.”

“You see things differently, too, John. I want to learn to see that way too, so I can be in it with you.”

“You handled mom and dad beautifully,” I said.

“It’s my thing,” she said. “I could feel their bond,” she added, kind of blurting it out. “I love how close they are.”

“But you kind of misstated how we met as well as the church thing,” I added frowning lightly.

“Was that okay?” she said warily. “I didn’t want to get into unnecessary details.”

“It’s fine,” I said. I didn’t want to fight about it, but I thought she’d been doing more than just leaving out details; she was making the story fit the audience – and she wasn’t wrong about the audience. “I love how you see people, like, effortlessly and fast.”

“Katelyn sees more than me, sometimes,” she said. “Well, differently than me, anyway. I’m the one who reads feelings. She’s the one who reads the room – like, who has power, who’s pretending, who’s full of it. Between us, we catch pretty much everything. We keep each other honest, too.”

It occurred to me that Amelie must be missing her sister every bit as much as I was missing Viking. I stopped myself from saying that out loud; I don’t know why.

Chapter 13

Back in Amelie’s room after lunch, she sat at her desk piecing her schedule together while I sat at the other desk and wrote out the list of no-cost dates I’d dreamed up earlier in the day while she’d been showering.

“I should have written out my schedule before today’s building tour,” she said.

“You’ll figure it out. And we can do the tour again tomorrow, if you want, with actual room targets. Look at this,” I said, handing her my top ten date ideas.

She stood and walked me to her bed where we lay down, her shoulder in the crook of my arm as she read through the list.

IDEAS FOR DATES WITH AMELIE

1. Sunset with a view of the UT Tower.

2. Walk the Speedway pedestrian mall at twilight.

3. Explore the Blanton Museum of Art.

4. Visit the Harry Ransom Center, see the Gutenberg Bible.

5. Sketch and read together at the Turtle Pond.

6. Architecture mini-tour: Hidden courtyards, weird stairwells, acoustics under archways, figure out our ten best benches on campus.

7. Wander the Drag and people‑watch.

8. Catch a free Butler School of Music recital.

9. Lie on the South Mall lawn and watch the stars come out.

10. Explore the Kinsolving Garden and eventually every tucked‑away campus green space, figure out our favorite trees for lying against.

“This is so romantic,” she said, leaning over and kissing my cheek. “Can we do the tower sunset thing tonight?”

“Absolutely,” I said.

“All of them sound wonderful,” she said. “Do you really know all of the hidden nooks and crannies around here?”

“I’ve spent a long time studying the campus,” I said. “Not sure how much of it will be interesting to you, though.”

“If you’re fascinated by it then I’m going to be interested,” she said.

After a beat, my usual self-editing failed me once again because I blurted out what I was feeling. “I wish I could….” My words dwindled to nothing as I realized I didn’t know how to reveal my financial situation. Damn, John, don’t start if you can’t finish. What’s wrong with you, boy?!

She rolled onto her side and faced me, a tiny frown on her face, and I could sense her mind working again. She said nothing and stared for long enough that the silence became awkward, and I felt like I needed to fill it.

“I want to take you places. Nice places. And I can’t.”

“John,” she said.

“I know, I know – it’s dumb to worry about stuff like that.”

She sat up, one foot tucked under her, the other stretched over my waist. “I don’t need you to buy me anything.”

“I know, but I… with you, I don’t want to feel like I’m… limited.”

“You are limited,” she said, reaching for my hand.

I blinked in surprise.

“Today we had an architecture visit to the MBA building where you got so animated your hands looked like they were conducting a symphony. Tonight it’ll be a sunset. You’ve already got me almost snorting with laughter in public. If you’re limited, it’s limited to being the person I actually want to spend time with.”

I looked down, grateful but embarrassed. “It’s just hard to say out loud, you know? Money’s tight. Mom and dad are doing everything they can, but even in-state tuition is a hardship for them. Especially for five years. And there’s no way I’m going to have time to work an outside job in this degree program, like I did in high school, at least not in the first year. So it’s going to be a very simple lifestyle for me. And for anyone with the misfortune of hanging out with me.”

“What job did you have in high school?” she asked.

“Hardware store. All four years, almost full-time in the summers. But most of that money was spent on just living. Clothes, friends, dates. I didn’t have a car, fortunately, because that would have been a money sink.”

“I’ve never had to think about money,” she said. “I’ve never worked but I’ve volunteered ever since seventh grade. I’m probably a bit stupid about real-world financial pressures.”

“You haven’t said or done anything stupid,” I said, frowning.

“I might, though. Like, make some dumb assumption. If or when that happens, it’ll just be because of my limited experience, I promise. And I’m sorry in advance. I’m limited, too.”

I watched her closely. She was being absolutely sincere. But it didn’t sound like she felt guilty about her family’s financial resources that allowed them to pay out-of-state tuition and buy her a fancy car and top-of-the-line clothes. She was just worried about saying something off-key.

“Can I say one more thing?” she asked.

I nodded.

“Your parents saving everything they have to send you here might be the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

“That’s how I feel about it, too,” I said.

Chapter 14

She smoothly rolled on top of me and hugged me tight. Then she perched herself on my hips and said, “Can we circle back to the sex conversation?”

“You want to have the sex talk now?” I asked, chuckling. “We’ve only been dating twenty-one hours.”

“Do the math, big guy,” she said. “We were together, like, six hours yesterday and more than six hours today. At three hours per date, that’s four dates already. Five dates if you count how much time we spent daydreaming last evening when both of us were too shy to initiate.”

I reminded myself: New rules, John. New rules. Just do it. “Okay,” I said, “but I’m not… very experienced.”

“What?” she said in surprise. “You must have been big man on campus with the basketball hero thing, and you look super hot. You’re so smart the geeky girls like me would have been pining after you, and the popular girls would have been hunting you. And you mentioned girlfriends, plural.”

“It’s a Southern Baptist church thing, Amelie. And a family thing. And at the time it was a John thing, too. No sex before marriage.”

“Oh, I see,” she said, genuinely surprised. “That’s very different than the culture of my Miami high school, but I get it.”

“You sort of implied you dated some,” I said.

“For three and a half years, since I turned fifteen, I’ve been dating boys, but casually and often in groups. Nothing intense like us. I’ve been looking for a particular kind of person and just never saw it, so I never got serious enough to get my heart broken.”

“How many boys, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“A lot. Like, more than two dozen. I’m almost certainly less experienced than you on the intimacy front, though.”

“I don’t understand, Amelie. You are so smart and so beautiful.”

“You’re talking about being attractive,” she said. “I’m talking about trusting the guy. Like, seeing something close to what I’m longing for, enough to explore it seriously. It started to happen a couple of times, but then the guys did something stupid and I saw their true character, enough to know I didn’t want to take it any further.”

“Young boys are stupid,” I said. “All of us. Some of us grow out of it, thank God.”

“Are you saying when you were sixteen you would have boasted to your buddies that you had sex with me, when you hadn’t even kissed me? Or when you were seventeen you would have trapped me in your car and tried to…”

Her eyes were instantly full of tears, overflowing. Damn, those were painful memories.

“Absolutely not,” I said, in a low growl, which made me sound like Viking. “And if I’d known anyone who’d treated you like that, I would’ve had a quiet word with them.”

She nodded, not trying to stop the tears, her fragile smile on trembling lips conveying her gratitude.

“So…” she said, resting her hands on my big chest and trying to steady her breathing, “neither one of us knows much about what we’re doing. Agreed?”

“Agreed,” I said softly, wiping her tears and smiling as lovingly and protectively as I felt.

“Okay,” she said, calming herself. “So what are the rules?”

“I guess I assumed we’d make up the rules as we go along.”

“Won’t work,” she said. “For me, anyway. Feeling like I do toward you, I need some kind of boundaries, so I’ve got something to help me self-regulate. I care less about the specifics and more about having some kind of framework we can stick to – something both of us want.”

“Makes sense,” I said. “I feel the same toward you, and it’d be good if it’s not up to one person to slow things down.”

“Are you still in the no sex before marriage camp?” she asked.

“Honestly, I don’t know,” I said. “My parents would expect that of me, one hundred percent. But I saw stuff… like, girls getting pregnant because they were not prepared, including one of my friends. And so much guilt from natural human feelings. I stuck to the rules, but the whole thing left me confused. Even angry sometimes.”

“I’ve seen stuff, too,” said Amelie, “like people pressured to have sex when they weren’t ready, with a lot of messy and confusing feelings afterwards – including a bunch of my friends. I guess I might have had sex if I’d found the right guy, but that never happened.”

“We need time to settle,” I said.

“But the way we both feel…” she said.

We were quiet for a bit, staring at each other.

“Okay,” she ventured, “how about we do nothing more than we’ve done already. Then we reevaluate on a date we agree on.”

“Like six weeks?” I said. “Reevaluate on October first?”

“Six weeks! That’s gonna be…” she said.

“I know,” I said.

We were quiet again, counting the cost, I think.

“Shake on it?” she said.

We shook hands.

Amelie leaned down and kissed me tenderly. “I never had a conversation like that before,” she said.

“New for me, too,” I said around the kiss. “I’m really sorry about those two guys, Amelie.”

“They don’t matter anymore,” she said, just before her kiss became aggressive.

“Framework!” I pleaded through the kiss.

She relented and lay down on top of me, sighing as she nestled her head into my neck.

“See? The framework thing’s already working,” she said. We both chuckled quietly.

I started to feel sleepy and let myself drift. We’d named a boundary and shook on it. I felt the weight of the beautiful girl laying on me, quietly breathing. Waiting wasn’t pulling away. It was heading somewhere. It meant something.

Chapter 15

I woke mid-afternoon with Amelie wrapped around me, sound asleep. I couldn’t see her face easily, but I could feel her body pressed close to mine, and smell her hair. I already felt like her home, and she was starting to feel like mine. Cuddling in stillness like this helped.

The voices of my basketball teammates were distant echoes but I could hear them making fun of me. I choked back a laugh.

Amelie stirred and sleepily said, “John?” I caressed her back. “Were you laughing?”

“Sorry I woke you,” I said.

“Time?”

“Two-thirty. Wanna redo McCombs and find your classrooms now that you’ve worked out your schedule?”

“No,” she said, sitting up, her back toward me. “We’ll sit on one of your favorite benches, and you can tell me about your mom.”

“Sounds like a plan,” I said. “And your family’s tomorrow, right?”

“Right,” she said, standing and stretching like a slinky feline creature. “I need to change, turn away for a sec.”

“Nope,” I said. “I’m not breaking the rules, not even for you.”

“What do you mean?” she asked, facing me with a frown.

“We agreed nothing new until October first,” I said. “You watched me changing so that’s the norm.”

“I didn’t realize the mirror thing was going to come back to bite me,” she said. I reminded myself that she’d probably rarely done anything this physically intimate with her many past male companions and momentarily felt bad about pressuring her.

She took a deep breath, seeming to gather her courage, and quickly slipped off her shorts and swept her tank top off. Oh my giddy aunt, as my grandmother might have said. I watched physical perfection poke around her closet and fish out a summer dress, mostly light blue, with shimmering darker blue details. She slipped it on, and it gathered around her bust and flowed around her from there like a satin waterfall, down to mid-thigh. She leaned on me as she slipped on low-heeled sandals that looked brand new and matched the dress perfectly.

She looked like a million dollars, even though she’d just woken up. I looked like I was wearing hand-me-downs from my Dad. Which I was.

Then she faced me, looking incredibly shy, her head tilted down so she looked at me through her long lashes, her lips pressed together. She didn’t speak but she was frowning ever so slightly, plainly aware that she’d just allowed herself to be viewed and, inevitably, assessed.

I held out my arms to her and she walked straight into them, like they were a refuge from exposure. “That was brave. And you are magnificent.”

“I kind of had to do that, after what I did this morning, which was much worse. I’m sorry about that, John. I feel like I violated your trust – and after you were so honorable with me.”

“We’ll be ready to laugh about it soon enough,” I said, wondering why Amelie seemed so upset about it. “And I was flattered. Hey, tell me about this amazing dress. I’ve never seen anything like it.” I held her at arm’s length to take it in from up close.

“I don’t think I’ve mentioned that I’m really into fashion. I always wanted to be a fashion designer until the nonprofit bug bit me. Katelyn says business school is the wrong move for me because of that. Anyway, this one’s gorgeous, isn’t it? I fell in love with it at first sight.”

“Mesmerizing. How does the light interact with the fabric? And how does it drape so perfectly?”

“A girl like me loves to be asked questions like that, John,” she said as she brushed her long golden hair. “I’ll tell you about it while we walk. And you can tell me what you were laughing about when I woke up.”

Amelie allowed me to guide her out of Carothers, past even larger numbers of people navigating Mooov-In challenges on an even more fiercely hot day. Amelie didn’t seem to notice but everyone – I mean every single person, regardless of gender or age – watched her move through the lobby and out to the street. I’d never seen anything like it outside movies.

The staring kept happening the whole time we were walking – a combination of the dress and the girl – the open face, the freely flowing hair. It’s a wonder she wasn’t surrounded by accidents. But she didn’t react. Maybe she was used to it and didn’t notice. Maybe she avoided thinking about it.

“It’s silk charmeuse, which is one of the most light‑responsive fabrics there is,” she said, as if the public display I’d witnessed her causing hadn’t happened. “It has a satin weave, but it’s not just glossy; it has a directional sheen that interacts with the angle of the sun, which is why it’s so good for outdoors.”

“When you move, the fabric seems to pour from one shade of blue into another, as though light were sliding down the material,” I said, wishing I could do that with a building.

“The charmeuse is like that. But this one has these deep ultramarine details woven into the satin, and they shimmer, catching the sun so they flare momentarily as I move.

“The contrast between the sky‑blue ground and those darker blue accents makes the whole dress behave like a water surface under angled light,” I said. “It’s the way I think of reflective pools in a gentle breeze under glass-fronted buildings.”

“I get the connection,” she said. “The draping works because of the micro-pleats in the bodice. From that gathered point, the dress flares and cascades downward – fluidly, the way silk charmeuse does. And the length is perfect – short enough for the fabric’s movement to be noticeable with every step, long enough to be modest, so I can move unselfconsciously.”

“It’s like a moving study in how light reflects off surfaces,” I said, thinking of the countless architecture books I’d read. “The dark woven bits are channels for the light, and the skirt acts like planes rotating in space. The whole thing is basically architecture you can wear.”

Amelie pulled me to a stop. “John, you’re not being fair.”

“What do you mean?” I said frowning.

“We just agreed to limit things. Then you talk to me about one of my great loves in a way that is incredibly hot. Nobody else has ever been able to get beyond ‘that looks nice, Amelie’ and here you are getting me excited about light dynamics and optical architecture. How am I supposed to control myself if you do things like that?”

She was trying to hide it, but I caught the trace of a teasing smirk in her beautiful face, as she pretended to complain.

“Tell me about the sandals,” I said dryly, smirking right back at her.

“Damn, perfect response,” she said, and we resumed walking. “They’re dyed Nappa leather with a pearl finish. See how the subtle shimmer mirrors the dress? They match the base color almost exactly – sky‑blue with a faint cool tinge. They’re super comfortable because of the suede lining, and I love the geometry of the straps.”

“What’s Nappa leather?” I asked.

“Oh John, let me tell you about Nappa leather,” she said, smiling excitedly and grabbing my arm tightly as we walked. “It’s made from the top layer of the hide, so it retains natural strength and fine grain. And it’s chrome-tanned to maximize flexibility and strength; it won’t crack and it takes most dyes well – including the pearl finish that these have.”

“Chrome tanned?” I asked.

“Not chrome like on a car,” she said. “Chromium salts – instead of the plant-based tannins that have been used in tanning leather for thousands of years.”

“I could listen to you talk about clothes and light and drape and textiles and shoes all day,” I said. “To me, all of this connects to architecture – the way light and geometry interact. It’s beautiful and it makes you feel something. That’s how I want to design: gradients, reflections, moving color. Making light do something poetic.”

“Damn! Where has this John been? I’m already head over heels. Give a girl a break.”

I chuckled. “This is architecture John. And I had no idea that you were as obsessed with light and design as I am. That’s common ground, big time.”

“I worked textile and design courses into my schedule this morning, taking up the elective slots after the Management major and the Religious Studies minor. I’m going to learn CAD drawing, just like you.”

“Are you doing a Religious Studies minor because of me? My background?”

“Partly, I guess,” she said. “But I also need to understand cultures and worldviews to do my nonprofit thing.”

“What if you dump me like the last two dozen guys?” I was teasing but it felt awkward. I would never normally say something so stupid!

“Well, I’ll just change minors,” she said gracefully, easing us past the awkwardness. She just saved you, John, you gigantic idiot.

“Will you study the chemistry of fabrics, so you can explain to me how your dress does that with the light?” Much better, I told myself.

“Probably,” she said, as we arrived at my planned destination. “Oh, I came here when I visited with mom and dad.”

Chapter 16

“The turtle pond has these Adirondack chairs, which will do for benches,” I said. “From here you can see the north face and some of the west face of the tower, as well as the famous red-eared slider turtles.”

I moved a couple of unoccupied chairs into the shade of a live oak, and we sat down next to one another. The pond had that warm green smell of sun-cooked water and algae, with something sharper underneath – the turtles themselves, probably. After a few moments of absorbing the scenery, Amelie asked me about the suppressed laughter that had awoken her.

“I don’t know what high-school tennis was like, but high-school basketball has a lot of locker room teasing and joking around. I woke up with you cuddling beside me, both of us respectably covered, and I could almost hear one of my buddies saying, ‘Johnny boy, the most beautiful girl any of us has ever seen is wrapped around you in bed, and you just agreed to six weeks of nothing but fully clothed kissing. Are you insane?!’ Just thinking of it made me laugh.”

“I guess it might be a bit crazy,” said Amelie, smiling cutely.

“It’s right for us,” I said. “The guys didn’t understand me then, and they wouldn’t understand me now. I loved them. And they get beauty and attraction, of course. But they didn’t get reverence. Well, Mickey did – Michael Michado. He’s at SMU now, a budding engineer with the soul of a poet. He was point guard to my center, my best human friend, and I miss him. He’d definitely tease me about our agreement if he knew, but I think he’d understand, too.”

“Your mom,” she said, changing directions abruptly. “In our post-lunch call, she seemed to do most of the talking.”

“You couldn’t see, but she did the touching, too. When I asked dad about adapting to training other K-9 officers instead of being in the field, he said, like, two words, which was two words more than usual for him. But mom’s hand instantly went to his shoulder, offering comfort, and she smoothly switched topics. Their attunement is beautiful.”

“The complementarian thing…” she said, searching in vain for her actual question.

“Amelie, it’s not abusive or even oppressive, at least when it’s done properly, lovingly. It can be beautiful. I disagree with it, but I respect it, especially the way mom and dad do it. But I’m out of the house and she’s going back to teaching Kindergarten, with dad’s full support, which will help a lot with money. So, they flex around their core priorities.”

“But you needed more money all those years when she was raising you.”

“They made choices about what was most important to them. They still found a way to save enough to get me through four years of college.”

“Not five?” she asked.

“My love of architecture has been clear for a long time, but they didn’t realize it was a five-year program until recently. Neither did I. We didn’t know about the summers until recently, either. Mom’ll be helping them save to put me through the final year, and stop the second mortgage from getting too large.”

“What would they have done with a second or third child?”

“College isn’t for everyone,” I said.

“Wow. They’d stick to their principles even though it would prevent them from doing something they want for their own kids?”

“Yep,” I said. “But that’s them, not me. I want something as strong as that but built differently. I want my partner to be free to go after whatever she wants, and I want her to want the same for me. That’s probably harder – more compromises, more tough conversations. But every marriage is hard in its own way.”

“Does she talk about her core commitments? About what she values the most?”

“Not really,” I said. “She’s more of a live-it-out kind of person, same as dad. But her faith, her marriage, and her family are her three pillars, I reckon. And she has real compassion for the kids she teaches in Sunday School and the struggling mothers she helps in her volunteer work, so maybe that’s a fourth pillar.”

“Is she passive or compliant?”

“Depends,” I said, trying to think over everything I’d seen my primary care giver do over the years. “She’s assertive at home, which is her domain. But even there she believes she flourishes by nurturing dad and me, and by holding together the emotional fabric of our tiny universe. She defers to dad on some things, and she usually avoids conflict. She defends me from his occasional rigidity, though usually only when she thinks I can’t hear.”

“Good to know,” said Amelie, who seemed to be making some kind of calculation I didn’t grasp.

“She’s idealistic. Definitely loving and loyal, and she’s confident when she’s doing home stuff. She can get anxious if conflict is brewing, and she’ll sometimes stop watching the news for a few weeks if there’s too much social chaos. She’s hyper-conscious about how dad and the people at church see her. And she prefers to smooth things over rather than confront difficulties directly. She can be a bit judgy, I guess.”

I saw Amelie’s eyes widen for a moment.

“Sometimes I think she feels like her contribution is not fully appreciated. She shouldn’t feel unseen, but she does. Once I saw that – I was maybe thirteen – I started acting differently. I stopped complaining about my chores, I was more affectionate, and I tried to encourage her. Dad’s not harsh, but I think she sometimes feels invisible, and honestly, I get why. Dad keeps so much inside that there’s not a lot of ways for her to feel noticed.”

“You were a good son,” she said, watching me carefully.

“Tried to be,” I said. “I was a bit withdrawn until my teenage years, and then I settled down a bit, became more social, despite being self-conscious about my size. Mom had a big role in drawing me out. And dad’s parents. Grandpa taught me to fish, and we spent a lot of time together until he died recently. Grandma probably did as much as anyone to help me learn to read, way back when. I spent a lot of time with her, and mom used the freedom to volunteer in the church. She and mom were my biggest encouragers when I started to draw, and later when I started to design buildings.”

She was still watching me, looking radiant and attentive.

“I got lucky, Amelie. Like, seriously blessed. I have two wonderful parents, and a lot of people in this world don’t.”

She nodded and smiled softly at me. I slid down so I could lay my head against the back of the chair, then turned toward her. We stared at each other for a long minute.

We’d just crested the 24-hour mark of our relationship, and I knew with more confidence than I’d ever known anything. I was in love with Amelie Foster.

Chapter 17

“Amelie?”

“Hi Katelyn. You weren’t asleep, were you?”

“No. I’ve been waiting for you to call. Like, a long time.”

“Sorry,” said Amelie. “John just dropped me back at my room.”

“Is he still there?”

“No; he went to his own room. We went for a walk tonight, after dinner. He timed it so we could watch the colors of the sunset light up the limestone of the UT Tower. It was so beautiful. I’ll show you when you come out here.”

“Sounds romantic. Are you just having fun or…”

“Katelyn,” said Amelie, moving closer to her phone, “I think he’s the one we’ve been talking about. I’m totally infatuated right now so there’s a chance my judgment is out of whack, but he seems to have all the traits we’ve been looking for.”

“Wow,” said Katelyn. “And you just, like, stumbled across him?”

“Yeah,” said Amelie. “He helped me move my stuff, like I told you yesterday.”

“Did he see you first, or you him?”

“I think we saw each other at first,” said Amelie, “when he came through with his loaded cart. Then he came back with an empty cart but, instead of turning it in to the front desk, he walked straight up to me and asked me if I wanted help. I was the only one without a family, so at the time I thought he probably just felt sorry for me and was trying to make himself useful. Even so, I guess that means he initiated. But I looked at him a good while when he came through the lobby all sweaty and muscular.”

“How big is he? I couldn’t see on the video call yesterday.”

“Six-six right now, and he’s still growing, apparently. But he’s not just tall. I can’t get my arms around him, and his biceps are so large I can’t stretch two hands around them.”

“Sounds like you’ve gotten all touchy-feely, then.”

“Not really. We talked about it. We both have about the same amount of experience – not much – so we agreed to take it slow on the touching side of things. He’s a good kisser and a great hugger, though.” There was a pause. “But the thing that gets me…”

“Hey, Amelie, are you crying?!”

“No,” she said. “Maybe. The thing that gets me is that he’s so kind. He’s loyal and loving and thoughtful and selfless and brilliant and artistic. He’s perceptive. He reads me beautifully. He’s more than we’ve dreamed, Katelyn. More than I thought possible.”

“Have you thought about how to tell him?”

“I’m not telling him about us, yet,” said Amelie. “But tomorrow’s my turn to talk about family. I need to know if you’re okay with me telling him about your accident.”

“You think he’s the real deal?”

“I can’t imagine anything closer,” said Amelie. “Based on what I know right now. And he’s had plenty of chances to be a jerk, but he hasn’t gone there.”

“Then tell him,” said Katelyn. “But I agree on staying quiet about our situation – for now, anyway. He needs to know you and trust you much more before you go there. Like, not until next year at least.”

“That’s going to make me feel like I’m lying, long before next year,” said Amelie. “I mean, it’s a big part of my life, and I’ll be hiding it.”

“We’ve talked this through countless times, sis,” said Katelyn. “Better to wait too long and hurt him a little than to dump it all on him too early and lose him completely.”

“I know. That was fine in the abstract. Now it feels like I’m luring John into a trap, and it’s making me sick.”

“It’s not a trap, Amelie! Don’t say that! It’s a tender secret and he needs to prove he’s worthy of learning about it. He certainly can’t do that in twenty-four hours.”

“I know. Thanks for the reminder. I’m going to need more reminders, I expect. I’ll let you know how tomorrow goes when I get a free minute.”

“Love you, Amelie.”

“Love you, Katelyn.”

Chapter 18

I woke up to find James asleep, like the previous day. I’d not seen him awake since the evening he arrived. He’d still been asleep when I snuck in for my shower gear, and he’d been out when I got back last night. I felt a flash of guilt, as usual for me. Then I reminded myself that we had an entire year together.

Amelie and I hadn’t discussed when to meet up for a run. I texted her as I got dressed. I received a reply almost immediately.

“My room. Bring your gear for showering after.”

Five minutes later, teeth cleaned, face washed, and hair brushed, I arrived at Amelie’s chocked-open door.

She smiled at me and approached. “Now that I know I’m not going to scare you off by talking about clothes, I’m going to tell you all about my gear. First, though…” She crept ever so slowly into my arms for a morning hug. It was just Iike the previous day, except that I felt we’d traveled a million miles since then.

A few minutes later, we were south of the Honors Quad and crossing 24th. “This is the north side of the original forty acres we saw from the tower,” I explained. “It’s exactly one mile around. Sound good?”

“Let’s go easy,” she said. “I’ve got some textile miracles to explain, after you start noticing things.”

“I like a challenge!” I said.

The Forty Acres felt half‑asleep when we started. The Tower looked heavy and grumpy, like it needed morning coffee, whereas the previous evening it’d seemed as light as the air surrounding it. The air was cool enough that I could pretend it wasn’t Austin in August, and the pre-dawn was a soft blue that reminded me of Amelie’s amazing dress from the previous day.

We jogged clockwise around the perimeter of the forty acres, settling into a rhythm. I was thinking about how nice it was to run with her as the campus wakes to a new day, when something caught my eye. Her shirt was… flickering?! It wasn’t shimmer; more like little pulses of brightness running across the fabric.

“Your top is doing something weird,” I said. “Like it’s evaporating light.”

She grinned, which told me she’d been waiting for me to ask. “Directional wicking,” she said, like that’s a totally normal phrase. “The yarns have micro‑channels that pull moisture from the inside to the outside. You’re seeing the drying pattern.”

I blinked at her. “Your shirt has plumbing.”

“Capillary action,” she corrected, seeming delighted. “Like plant stems.”

After that, I couldn’t help seeing the technical cleverness. The knit density changed between panels, opening at her upper back. As she got ahead of me slightly, a streetlight caught the mesh, creating tiny constellations of light.

“It breathes differently depending on the zone,” she said. “Tighter up front, open on the back. It’s mapped to heat patterns.”

“That’s a ventilated façade system,” I said before I could stop myself.

She laughed. “Exactly! Clothes are tiny buildings, John. Only bendier.”

We rounded the northeast corner and headed south along Speedway. Her shorts fluttered instead of clinging, and I asked about it.

“Micro‑ripstop weave. Super thin but stable. And they stretch because the yarns are crimped, not because they’re full of elastane.”

“So… pre‑tensioned fibers?”

“You make it sound way cooler,” she said, bumping my arm with hers.

A few steps later, I noticed something else. “The seams look… too clean.”

“Oh!” Her face lit up as if I’d complimented her personally and not her apparel. “They’re bonded. No stitches. Heat‑sealed. Less bulk, no friction.”

“That’s how some curtain walls are assembled,” I said, making her laugh.

We jogged on, and the sun finally made an appearance between two buildings. Her shirt and shorts caught the light at once – microdots flashing like tiny mirrors. She glowed for a moment.

“Okay,” I said. “Your shoes. Explain the springiness. You’re rolling forward like someone installed a hinge in your foot.”

“Carbon-fiber plate,” she said. “The plate bends, stores energy, then releases it. And PEBA foam for lightness.”

I snorted. “So your outfit has a ventilation system, a tension grid, adhesive‑bonded seams, and a built‑in springboard.”

“Meanwhile,” she said between breaths, “you’re running in a T‑shirt that looks like it has seen better days.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. “Harsh. But fair. It’s a hand-me-down, like most of my clothes.”

We turned right on 21st and ran quietly until we reached Littlefield Fountain. We stopped there to look up the rise along the south mall. The Tower gleamed in the new day’s sun. Just as I thought to reach for her, I felt her cuddle into my side.

“Textiles… they’re architecture that moves,” I said.

“And buildings,” she said, “are clothes big enough to walk inside.”

We resumed running, this time in silence, west to Guadalupe and then north to the corner of 24th where we started. We paused for early morning traffic and I chuckled at what had just happened.

“What’s funny?” she said, smiling happily.

“We’re two design nerds who somehow speak the same language,” I said. “It’s… kind-of perfect.”

Chapter 19

Amelie reached for my hand and we crossed the road. Three minutes later, we were in the Honors Quad, me leaning on our favorite tree, she leaning back on me.

I closed my eyes and drank in the atmosphere. I felt Amelie’s hands resting on mine, which were clasped around her waist. I felt her back pressing against my chest, her outer thighs running along the inside of mine, the scent of her hair making my head spin. I leaned forward to kiss her head and she took it as a signal.

“Two events define my family,” she said. “One was when Katelyn arrived. She was the first twin to be born, and everything looked fine. But when she came out, the cords shifted – hers and Kinsey’s. They think Kinsey’s cord got compressed in the process. Maybe it wrapped, maybe it pinched against the wall… nobody knows for sure. With twins, especially identical twins sharing a single amniotic sac, things can change in seconds. By the time they realized Kinsey’s heart rate had crashed, it was already too late. My parents never blamed anyone. It was just one of those awful, impossible birth‑room chain reactions.”

“That’s horrible,” I said, my voice cracking as I was suddenly overwhelmed by the thought of joyful expectancy crumpling into shocked grief in a few horrific seconds.

Amelie leaned up and twisted around to see my face. “Tears?” she said.

“No,” I replied, wiping my face. “Thinking about what that must have been like for your Mom and Dad…”

“Feels like I’ve been thinking about that moment ever since I was old enough to understand it,” she said, settling back down again. “Katelyn was inconsolable, apparently. She can’t have understood what had happened, of course, but it’s a thing – a surviving twin being deeply disoriented by not having the other twin right there. Somehow our parents got the idea of putting one-year-old me in the crib with new-born Katelyn and she settled immediately. They tell me I took to Katelyn instantly, wanting to be in physical contact, sometimes crying when we were separated, same as the baby.”

“So you were raised as twins, like Katelyn told me,” I said. “I thought she was joking.”

“No joke,” said Amelie. “It started out as a necessity and turned into something very important for all of us. Especially Mom and Dad at the start. Like, just coping with what had happened. And then for Katelyn and me, because we’re as close as close can be.”

“Is it as beautiful as it sounds?” I asked.

“It’s beautiful. And complicated. And the single most important relationship of my life. The transition years were difficult – starting school, moving between schools, coming here – with me always a year ahead. But they’re healthy challenges, for both of us.”

“I sometimes dreamed of having a sibling,” I said. “I guess most siblings aren’t as close as you two, but I longed for it when I was younger.”

“You would have been an awesome big brother,” she said. “Kind. Protective. Fun.”

“What’s the second family-defining experience?”

“I was the nerdy sister, Katelyn the athletic one. At thirteen she was on the cheerleading squad in middle school. She was performing at a football game when she fell from the top of a pyramid. She landed on her back and damaged her spinal cord.”

Amelie stopped talking for a moment, then moved to sit sideways in my lap and cuddle into my chest.

“I wasn’t there to see it happen, and neither were Mom and Dad,” she said. “We normally would have been, but something came up. The coach told Mom and Dad that Katelyn had been calling for me, over and over.”

She broke down and sobbed into my shoulder, clinging to me tightly. I was picturing the agony of the family hearing panicked calls to meet at the hospital as I felt Amelie shuddering in my arms. I caressed her back until she calmed down.

“After the recovery period, where there’s always some uncertainty, it turned out to be a complete break at T8. You can look it up later so I’m not going to explain what it means in detail for her, for us. But she’s in a wheelchair and these days she’s fairly independent.”

“I didn’t see a wheelchair when we talked,” I said.

“She was being polite, holding the phone close to her face,” said Amelie. “She’s a long way from ashamed of being a paraplegic, believe me, but she wouldn’t have wanted that fact about her to dominate the call.”

“That must have been a life-defining moment for everyone,” I said. I was trying to imagine how my parents would have coped if something like that had happened to me. It was impossible to picture it. My empathy muscles would need a lot more stretching before I could truly wrap my mind around what this must have meant for the Fosters.

“Mom changed the most,” said Amelie. “I mean, she lost a baby, had to deal with her own grief while figuring out how to care for the bereft survivor, and then had to handle the surviving twin breaking her back and being confined to a wheelchair for life. Sometimes I think she believes Katelyn is unfairly cursed. Mom’s playfulness when we were little is a strong memory for me, but it dried up after the accident, squeezed out by years of intensive caretaking. I missed it as a teenager, but what else could she do?”

I continued caressing Amelie’s back as she felt those old feelings anew.

“The whole experience made her extremely vigilant and protective. Like, a complete change in personality. Even when that gets annoying for Katelyn and me, I can’t bring myself to blame Mom. But Katelyn is much blunter and more aggressive than me, and she pushes back hard. I can see that it hurts Mom, but Katelyn’s right to do it, even if she doesn’t need to be quite so harsh at times.”

I felt Amelie’s hand drift up from my chest to caress my cheek, and then slide back down again.

“Now I see flickers of play coming back in Mom, four years later. She’s recovering from the shocking trauma at her own pace, and in the big scheme of things, it’s pretty fast.”

“There are worse things in the world than a mom who got too protective after something terrible happened to her kids,” I said. “I’m happy for her that’s she’s finding her way back to some light moments.”

“Dad helps a lot. He spent the most time with Katelyn in rehab. Like, all day, every day, for months. The weird thing is that he was affected just as much as Mom, but he didn’t really change. She went from the fun parent to the overprotective parent, while he stayed grounded and goofy all the way through. I guess we all cope however we can.”

“What do they do?”

“Mom was an acquisitions editor for a children’s book publisher until the accident, and she hasn’t worked outside the home since. With Katelyn heading to college, she’s slowly restarting that work, which she loves. Dad runs a nonprofit. I want to follow in his footsteps, which is why I chose my major.”

Chapter 20

“So you chose a major because of your Dad, a minor because of me, and a school because of Katelyn.”

“Damn, John, you sound just like him,” she said, picking at my tee shirt. “He never pushes, never sets up unreasonable expectations, and always gently asks me to consider what I most want to do and be. Katelyn yells at me for choosing business school instead of fashion design. Mom worries about every little choice, no matter what I decide. Dad sits me down and makes space for me to talk through all the options. So he became the safe parent for me. I love my Mom, totally, but I’ve needed Dad’s calmness. I still need it.”

She looked up at me. “You remind me of him in that way.” Then she strained up to kiss me, her hands moving to my shoulders, then my neck, then my cheeks, as the kiss deepened. We broke apart and she sighed.

“That’s a lot of drama for a little family,” I said.

“The drama started years before I arrived,” she said. “Mom and Dad were high-school sweethearts and had to elope to get married at eighteen over his parents’ disapproval. They went through college together and I arrived as they finished those four years, when they were twenty-two. Then Kinsey and Katelyn at twenty-three. And now they’re forty, in great shape, and their babies are moving on with their lives.”

“Do you have a relationship with your grandparents?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she said. “Dad’s parents relented when I arrived, so Mom and Dad reconciled with them. They’re supportive but reserved, nothing like your Dad’s parents’ warmth. Mom’s parents live in California now and we don’t see them much.

Amelie spun around and sat on my lap, facing me.

“You’ll love Mom and Dad, John, and they’ll love you. Mom will worry, of course, like always, but I think you and Dad could become best buds. Katelyn already loves you from what I’ve told her.”

I must have looked shocked because she laughed and rested her index finger on my forehead. “New rules, remember? No stupid dating protocol nonsense. We handle the speed problem in other ways, like yesterday’s agreement.”

I looked at her earnestly for a moment, feeling on the edge of something big. New rules or old, though, I wasn’t going to say that. I felt my way to a compromise.

“I adore you, Amelie Foster. Your mind, your heart, how beautiful you are… I feel so lucky to have met you.”

I saw the tears rush to her eyes, but she wasn’t upset or agitated. Her tears seemed like a release of tension, a settling into long-awaited comfort.

“I feel the same, John Anderson.”

Part 2: Lake House

Chapter 21

“Hi Mom, Dad!” exclaimed Amelie, sitting on my lap at the turtle pond. It occurred to me how nice it was to have permission to be affectionate in front of her family. She certainly wouldn’t be sitting on my lap if we were calling my parents.

“Hi sweetie, hi John!” said Pam, which is what I was supposed to call Amelie’s mother.

“Hi Pam,” I said. “Is that half of Pete I see?”

“Here’s the rest of him,” said Pam laughing, moving the camera to show her waving husband. “And here comes Katelyn.” She pivoted the camera to Katelyn wheeling toward her parents, her hair dripping from the pool – her absolute favorite place because of the freedom of movement she experienced in the water.

“Hi you two,” said Katelyn from her wheelchair. They were out on the back patio of their magnificent Miami waterfront home, and I could see the pool behind them in the giant screened-in area that encompassed their outdoor living area, with grass, ocean, and the barrier island beyond. After seven months, I’d still never made it back to the main house.

The happy greetings yielded to swapping news. Amelie and I spoke with her parents once a week, and of course Amelie and Katelyn spoke every day without fail, sometimes with me.

Amelie and I talked to my parents weekly but not for long; they weren’t temperamentally suited to video calls, though Amelie’s charm helped to lengthen the calls a little. But Amelie and I had visited them half a dozen times – always day trips, because overnight stays would have provoked confusion and potentially conflict.

The most recent visit had been the previous Saturday, a week in advance of spring break. That’s when I explained to Mom and Dad that I was heading to Florida to meet Amelie’s family over the break. They weren’t happy, but they made an effort to understand. I promised to visit again a week after spring break. Compensation.

It had never occurred to me that my family was difficult. But the Fosters were so accepting and easygoing that the contrast was painfully obvious. Amelie had to keep reminding me where my parents were coming from, because I was starting to resent how reserved they were with her. The fact that we’d been attending the Methodist church right near our dorm had done little to mollify them. They weren’t rude. They weren’t even unwelcoming, in one sense. But they weren’t warm, either, and they were a long way from easygoing. I felt protective of Amelie and angry that they wouldn’t embrace her with enthusiasm matching mine.

“Big news,” said Katelyn, dragging me out of my funk about my family. “Mom and Dad are letting me drive by myself to the Lake House.” Pam didn’t look excited over the prospect of worrying about her daughter for the two hours it would take to get from Miami to their place on the east shore of Lake Okeechobee. But Katelyn was independent and could handle her adapted car just fine. Plus she was eighteen now, and less inclined than ever to defer to her overprotective mother.

“We’re leaving Austin first thing Friday on a direct flight to Miami,” said Amelie. “We’ll rent a car and should reach the Lake House before noon.”

Katelyn turned to her parents, full of hope. “Can I leave Friday instead of Saturday?”

“Friday’s a school day, and Amelie and John need some time alone,” said Pam.

Katelyn turned to the screen and silently pleaded with Amelie. I squeezed Amelie’s hand to let her know I was okay with it.

“It’s fine with us,” said Amelie to her parents, “so it’s really about school and that’s for you guys to decide. For what it’s worth, John and I will have all week there and you three are only coming up for the two weekends either side, so we’ll have tons of time.” I’d learned that was as confrontational as Amelie would ever get with her mother – always gracious, never avoidant.

“I’ll just drive up on Friday, anyway,” whined Katelyn. Her stubborn refusal to do what her parents said, especially when Pam and Pete had good reasons, repeatedly took my breath away. I’d never been that rebellious. But Amelie had helped me understand the dynamic between a fiercely independent daughter and an understandably protective mother.

“We’ll talk about it after this call,” said Pete – only after Pam gave him the look. By this time, I knew Pete well enough to know that he loved the idea of Katelyn leaving school early on Friday and driving a long way by herself for the first time. “We have to let the girls try,” was his mantra for soothing Pam’s anxious tendency to say no to anything new. To her credit, Pam usually came around. She wasn’t naturally anxious, after all. She was working through the aftermath of traumatic events that had upended their lives.

This spring-break kickoff weekend was a big deal for all of us. I’d be meeting Amelie’s family in person for the first time. I’d thought about taking some of the break over New Years to fly out to Miami but I didn’t have the budget for it. More importantly, my Mom stiffened at the idea when I floated it, and I knew what that meant: she and Dad had been counting on me being with them the whole time. That had been true for spring break, too, but this time I hadn’t given them the choice.

So Amelie and I went in different directions for the long holiday break, just as we had for Thanksgiving. She drove me down to San Antonio, stayed for part of the day, then drove east to Miami. And she came back the same way, spending part of the day with Mom and Dad before driving me back to Austin. She could have flown but she loved cross-country driving. Even if she didn’t, she’d still have wanted to drive me home instead of forcing me to catch a bus.

After we ended the call with Amelie’s family, I expressed once more my shock at the way Katelyn talked to her mother.

“She’s actually quite reasonable for a teenager under the circumstances,” said Amelie. “What you could learn from this” – she paused to kiss me gently, letting me know that she was about to gently challenge my assumptions – “is that you and I are unusually accommodating to our parents. She’s normal. We’re the weird ones.”

I thought back to the intense early days of our relationship, when we spent all day, every day together, until class schedules forced us apart. I’d held back from telling Amelie I loved her. But within a month, I was completely locked on, and whether I’d said the words or not didn’t seem to matter.

Just before she left me in San Antonio for the long drive home to Miami in the middle of December, I finally said it. We’d gone for a mid-afternoon walk and, before we were back in view of the house, I pulled her to a stop and enfolded her in my arms. I told Amelie I loved her, and she told me she loved me. It had only been four months, but I knew I’d found my future, and I was sure she knew she’d found hers.

I told her again, right there, in the Adirondack chair, watching the turtles sun themselves.

“I love you, Amelie,” I said.

“And I you, John,” she echoed.

Chapter 22

Getting to Austin’s airport at four in the morning was a stretch, even for early risers like Amelie and me. But we slept on the plane, and we were loading our gear into the high-end rental car in Miami by nine-thirty. She was still tired and asked me to drive.

“Sleep, Amelie,” I said, as I wove through traffic on the way out of the airport.

“We need to talk first,” she said, sounding as though sleep was more urgent.

“It can wait, whatever it is,” I said. “Sleep.”

“Okay,” she said, settling down in her seat. “But we have to talk about sex again. After Mom and Dad and Katelyn leave on Sunday afternoon, we’ll have five days straight, all alone. That’s a first for us as a couple. And Mom and Dad will expect us to share a bedroom, just as naturally as your parents will expect us not to. So we need to talk. You can think about it while I sleep.”

I did think about it. Our seven-month anniversary of dating would be when we were at the Lake House. We’d modified our rules around physical intimacy a couple of times – and we’d needed those agreements when things got intense – but we were still not having sex. And Amelie was right: this would be our first natural opportunity to cohabitate, if only for a few days, and her parents would expect us to be together, just as I was sure they mistakenly assumed we were having sex.

I was mostly past the Southern Baptist strictness, and the Methodist church that Amelie and I attended faithfully every Sunday felt different – more compassionate, more grounded in real life. But the thought of disappointing my parents still weighed heavily, even with the mild resentment I felt toward them for the less-than-enthusiastic way they were treating Amelie.

I knew Amelie would happily go either way with me on this. Amelie could be fierce about almost everything, but she was careful with my values around sex. So far, she’d never pushed, never made me feel stupid for holding on to convictions she didn’t share. I felt the weight of being the one slowing us down and often needed to remind myself that she wasn’t in any hurry. It wasn’t that she was indifferent, nor that she lacked passion; on the contrary, she was sometimes aggressive, often seductive, and endlessly affectionate. She could dress to kill when she wanted to drive me crazy, and she didn’t hesitate to tease me, pushing both of us right to the edge of whatever agreement we had in place at the time. All that had been obvious from day one and had never changed.

But she still wouldn’t override my feeling of obligation to my parents. She loved that about me, which helped me take it seriously. In fact, if I were to suggest that we should go all the way, no doubt she’d sit me down and invite me to talk through it, just like her Dad did with her when she was facing a big decision.

I could already sense the kind of mother she would become – a lot like Pete. That was something I dearly wanted to see.

My mind rolled in slow circles for the two hours it took to reach my target halfway up on the east side of the Big O, as the locals liked to refer to Lake Okeechobee. I pulled over and woke Amelie up.

“I slept all the way?” she asked, yawning and stretching in a way that made it difficult to control myself.

“The map says this is Port Mayaca, but I don’t see much besides the lock.”

“We’re a couple of miles up on the left,” she said. “We should go to the Lake House first, see what food is there, make a list, and go shopping for everyone. We can get to supermarkets east to Indian Town, South to Pahoke, or north to Okeechobee, but all those options involve a lot of driving, so we want to get it right the first time. And we need to be back in time for Katelyn’s arrival around three.”

I pulled back onto route 441, running north along the east side of the canal. A few minutes later, I followed Amelie’s directions into a tree-shrouded property in the finger of land between the highway and the canal. I hadn’t seen the Big O once due to the way the dike on the west side of the canal blocked the view. It was a magnificent feat of engineering, and I’d studied it carefully ever since I’d learned that the Fosters had a property up here.

I steered the car through the little forest of trees until the property came into view. The Lake House was huge. I could see the canal beyond, and the dike beyond that, but not the lake itself. Of course, the Lake House was elevated so the Big O would be visible from the upstairs living level, though not from the downstairs bedroom level.

There was a detached three-car garage with living or working space up above, but I followed Amelie’s directions to the garage under the house. As soon as I stepped out of the car, I felt the difference in the air from Austin and San Antonio. This air was heavy and humid, and carried a vegetation and warm-water smell. Even the trees felt heavier, somehow.

“I know you’ve studied this house, John,” she said, “but do me a favor and put this on. Trust me, okay?” She handed me the sleep mask she’d used in the car, and I put it on, holding on to her arm as she led me up a long ramp to an elevator. I knew she’d be taking me to the main living area, two levels up. She led me out of the elevator and westwards toward the lake. I could picture what I was about to see because I was mentally at home with every inch of this property – thanks to Pete sharing blueprints with me, without me even asking.

“Take off the mask,” she said. I handed it to her as I opened my eyes.

Even knowing what to expect did not dim the impact of the view spread out before me. I was in the living room facing a glass wall that connected to a huge, elevated patio and a large pool beyond that and to one side, raised up off the ground thanks to a nice piece of engineering that was not uncommon around there. The entire outdoor living space was enclosed in insect-proof screening so thin it was essentially invisible until the sun caught it on just the right angle. Beyond that, I could see the canal, the dike, and the vast expanse of Lake Okeechobee. The sunsets had to be amazing from up here.

I walked out onto the patio area and around the pool and took in the back yard, which was over three acres of grass on the five-acre property. There was a broad path leading to a boat house on the canal, which I knew contained a boat. The boathouse was large enough for more than one.

When Amelie and I reunited in San Antonio, right before the spring semester began, she spent the ninety-minute drive back to campus explaining to me about her family’s wealth. I’d seen their magnificent home on Indian Creek Island in North Miami because of our video calls, so I knew they were well off. But I hadn’t realized that Pete’s nonprofit work was quietly running a very influential, almost hidden family foundation managing billions of dollars invested there by his parents – multi-generational family money. And I hadn’t known that Amelie was in McCombs preparing to help her father run the family office and the foundation.

I found it difficult to take in that type of wealth, but I was certainly gratified that neither Amelie nor her family was the least bit entitled. On the contrary, they worked hard and kept their philanthropic influence and impact out of the public eye. But I learned that they lived well, too. All the hints were there – Amelie’s clothes and car, the Indian Creek estate, the Lake House. But none of that conveyed the magnitude of the wealth.

That January drive taught me something about Amelie. The money weighed on her, same as it weighed on Pete. She was going to help him carry it, even if that meant giving up fashion and textiles – the thing she loved most.

I learned something about Pam, too. She’d married into inconceivable wealth, joining Pete in stubbornly resisting his parents’ objections to their marriage, the two of them willing to give up everything for each other. I might end up doing what she’d done, if I married into the Foster family. Of course, Pam and Pete heartily supported Amelie’s relationship with me, so I wouldn’t need to deal with being cut off from her parents. My admiration for Pam took another leap upwards, and I realized I needed to talk with her about how to adapt.

That January conversation with Amelie was sobering, in some ways. For one, I was hurt that we were five months in before Amelie shared that little nugget. I kicked myself up and down as soon as I detected such a childish reaction. The next day I shamefully confessed it to Amelie. She lovingly listened to my moralistic self-reproach and encouraged me to recognize both that my feelings were reasonable, and that she was constrained by family protocol and needed permission to talk with me about it, which she’d obtained over the semester break.

It was classic Amelie. She’d accepted my moralism without mocking me about it, she reasonably supported the very feelings that shamed me, and she straightforwardly explained why she’d waited so long to mention it.

She’d also seemed preoccupied during that conversation, which I had difficulty interpreting. I asked her about it. She brushed it off and immediately brightened up.

That cascade of memories poured through me as I experienced first-hand the practical meaning of extreme wealth. The Lake House was magnificent architecture, perfectly tuned to its location and inhabitants.

I became aware of Amelie watching me, off to my right. I immediately felt protective of her. Telling me about her family back in January had been a tender moment, and she’d been quietly nervous for the whole drive back to Austin. Showing me this house now was a risk, too. Taking me to the Miami family compound at some time in the future would be an even bigger risk.

Amelie desperately needed to know whether this would change things between us – I could sense it – but she would never say that out loud. So she hovered anxiously, pretending this was about the view. In reality, it was about whether I could handle who she really was.

I had to get this right.

I held my arms open to her and she quickly skittered into them, as though she were waiting for permission to hug me. Wrapping her up and holding her close, I said, “I love you, Amelie. I’ll adapt to all this. But however that goes, you are my heart’s home, and I’m profoundly grateful to be in your life.”

“Thank you, John.” It was a simple, sincere reply. Amelie really was grateful, and it humbled me.

Chapter 23

Amelie walked me downstairs to the bedroom level. From the blueprints, I knew this level also contained machinery for the house, lifted above the water level in the unlikely event of flooding. There were master suites at either end, both of which had shaded dens perched under the second-level deck with views of the canal. There were also two pairs of bedrooms sharing bathrooms in between, six bedrooms in all.

I knew it had been built for both sets of grandparents to share time with Pete and Pam and their girls. The two west-facing bedrooms looked out under the deck and to the metal body of the pool, which was braced above the ground so its surface was level with the patio above. The other two bedrooms and the two suites looked out on the grass and trees surrounding the property to the north, east, and south.

“This south-facing suite is Mom and Dad’s,” she said. “They’ll expect you and me to stay in the north-facing suite, and Katelyn to take one of the other four bedrooms. So we need to talk about us. And intimacy. Again.” She smiled sweetly.

I looked at her, frowning in confusion and feeling conflicted. It made her frown right back at me.

“Wait,” she said. “Let me try. There’s nothing you’d like more than to spend ten days shacked up with me in a Lake House suite. But you don’t want to mislead your parents. And part of you still believes that sex should wait until marriage.”

I looked at her, feeling an odd mixture of regret and gratitude. I nodded and lowered my head.

“Then you take the north suite. Katelyn and I will share the east pair of bedrooms.” She smiled kindly. “This’ll be nice. Now let’s take stock of the kitchen and go shopping.”

I recognized that I had no right to expect the level of perceptiveness and acceptance that Amelie had just displayed, but she was built for giving it – and not just to me, to everyone close to her. She could bend too far for other people. It might have been her biggest flaw, and it reminded me of Mom. But it was genuine, no question. And she was actually good at saying what she wanted, even if she chose to do something different.

My moralism was my great weakness. I was hard on myself. Not on other people – I could let most things go unless someone hurt a person I cared about. But inside, I was constantly judging myself, beating myself up, setting impossible standards. It sometimes paid off in architecture, so it wasn’t all bad. But Amelie worried about me being too demanding of myself and gently helped me accept my imperfections. She wasn’t afraid of them or disgusted by them. Her attitude helped me forgive myself when I screwed up.

As I watched her take stock of the kitchen and work on a shopping list, I thought back to my first studio project, during the first three weeks of the Fall semester. It was called “Body, Movement, Light” and designed to be small, abstract, and sensory. In other words, it was supposed to mess with the heads of innocent first-year BArch students. The syllabus described it as “An introductory exploration of form, space, and movement through iterative modeling of a simple human movement – its rhythm, tension, compression, release, and temporary balance.” We were supposed to study a movement and translate it into a three-dimensional spatial composition using only planes. Not a building. Not a structure. A translation.

The bit about iterative modeling was no joke. I tried and failed, again and again and again. I selected a movement Amelie makes when we walk together: the subtle shift of her weight when she leans in to look at something beside me. I did gesture studies, motion arcs, force diagrams, spatial rhythm drawings, and I built a model out of chipboard. It would be more accurate to say I built that model eight times. Eight hellish times. My fury at myself was motivating, I suppose, but mostly it was counterproductive. I was so ashamed I hid my agony from Amelie, which made me feel sick.

Professor Phillips told me I was drawing movement beautifully, but my models were too literal, too vertical, too symmetrical, and – this comment stayed with me verbatim – “too much building, not enough gesture.” I knew what he meant. I could see it for myself, which is why I was so frustrated.

It was nine in the evening and there were about twenty of us in the studio, all stuck on the project. I grew so desperate that there came a moment when I hated my entire upbringing – the moralistic perfectionism, the relentless self-criticism, the fear of making mistakes, of straying outside the borders of expectation. That’s when I couldn’t take it anymore. I ran to the bathroom on fifth floor of Simmons and threw up.

Sitting on the bathroom floor, I called Amelie and told her everything. Everything. From my failure to my hatred of my upbringing. The only thing I didn’t say was that she was my inspiration for the movement I was trying to understand. “Is that why you haven’t been eating properly?” she’d asked. She was right, but I was so distracted I hadn’t even noticed. “Do you remember my blue dress, the one with flowing light? Remember how it drapes? How it dances? How it exudes joy?” I started crying then. Stress overload, I guess. It was humiliating crying on the phone with my girlfriend over a school assignment. All I could think about was what my Dad would think. But Viking would cuddle with me. I breathed deeply while Amelie stayed silent on the phone, present, not demanding. I pictured that incredible dress. I felt the joy radiating from it as the light danced on its surfaces. Just before I hung up, she said, “You don’t have to hate where you came from to outgrow it, John.”

Still faintly nauseous, I dragged myself off the floor and back into the studio. I stared at my model for a minute. Then I crushed it with my fist.

“Easy, John,” someone had mumbled.

Just after one in the morning, something happened. I tilted a plane just a few degrees. The whole composition suddenly leaned – not to depict Amelie, but to evoke her balance, her weight shift, her presence. Within ten minutes, I had one anchoring vertical plane, which felt like my own body as reference, and a diagonally leaning plane, which felt like Amelie’s lovely gesture. There was a small counter plane behind it, which was the recoil motion of her body, balancing forces. The open negative space carved between her plane and mine was the intimacy of shared attention.

“Sweet Jesus!” I said, a bit loudly. Most of the fifteen people still in the studio chuckled quietly. They understood breakthrough moments and were looking for their own.

A few days later, during the show-and-tell-and-criticize, my classmates were talking about tectonics and balance. The TA pointed out the airy tension between the leaning and anchoring planes. Someone said it felt like two forces in dialogue. Prof. Phillips said it was restrained but confident. I felt exposed – and embarrassed by how accurate the comments were. I left the crit shaking. Maybe it was a reaction to feeling reshaped from the inside by this God-awful, impossibly painful, yet utterly majestic process. But it felt like there was an enormity inside me that was rattling me to my bones and surging to get out.

After the late-afternoon crit, I went straight to Amelie’s room to find her. She left with me and we went downstairs to the Joynes Reading Room, where we were alone. I was still shaking and I tried to explain the thing in me desperate to get out. I told her I thought it was my new self trying to get out of the dark prison of my upbringing. She was quiet the whole time I was talking. Eventually I fell silent, still shaking. I’ll never forget her words, or how she delivered them. She knelt on the floor in front of me, making herself small as I sat in a lounge chair. There, she held her hands out and I placed mine in hers. I stared at her eyes, which were full of serenity.

“A small part of this is about your past – letting that go. But most of what you’re feeling right now? That’s you finding out who you are as a creator. That’s the part of you that wants to make beautiful things, and it’s not going to stop trying to get out.”

It cracked me open. I was crying, holding her hands, looking right at her. I’d never felt so close to another person in my life. The shaking stopped as I realized I was sensing my soul’s sincere desire starting to germinate.

That exchange was the most sacred moment of my life to that point. I knew I could never let Amelie go. And I knew she’d never let me go. And I was going to keep those three planes forever.

Chapter 24

The memories poured through me until Amelie was ready to go shopping.

A couple of hours later, we’d finished unloading the groceries and unpacking our gear. Knowing we had about an hour until Katelyn was due to arrive, I grabbed a couple of water bottles and led Amelie to a pair of deck chairs on the patio. Instead of sitting down on hers, Amelie curled up alongside me on mine.

It hit me anew right then: Amelie was constantly affectionate. She craved physical and emotional closeness. Maybe it was compensation for the frustration associated with deferring sex for so long. But I thought it was innate. Whatever the reason, I loved it.

That day she wanted to talk.

“What are you, now, six-seven?”

“Mmmhmm,” I said. “Maybe I’ve got another inch in me but I’m nineteen and few people keep growing after twenty.”

“Another inch would be nice,” she said. Amelie knew that I knew she couldn’t care less how tall I was. But she said it anyway, aiming to touch the tender part of me that was self-conscious about my size.

“Katelyn will be here, soon,” she said, her head on my shoulder and her hand playing over my chest. “It’s going to be an interesting afternoon, John. There’s lots for you to discover. It could be complicated at times. Or funny. Or tender. Or shocking. She’s not easy to predict. But one thing is certain: as you get to know Katelyn, you and I can go deeper, too, because she and I are so close.”

“Okay,” I said, not really understanding what Amelie meant. I’d spent a lot of time on video calls with her sister, so I wasn’t starting from scratch.

“I’ve coached you on this before,” she continued, “but just to reiterate: Don’t help unless she asks. She won’t hesitate to request help, so you don’t need to worry that she might be hiding some unspoken need. For example, she’ll want help carrying her luggage, and you can do that, but wait until she asks. She’ll want to handle moving from the car to the wheelchair and getting inside the house herself.”

“Got it,” I said. I’d been working on picturing Katelyn’s fiercely independent streak, with lots of coaching from Amelie, so I hoped I wouldn’t screw up too badly.

“You’ll adapt quickly,” she said. “You always do. And remember, she and Mom and Dad already love you, and love how I am with you and how you are with me, so there’s no need to prove yourself to anyone. You’re already part of the family. We just need to get you accustomed to what Katelyn is like in person. She’s a lot, John, but she’s a beautiful soul.”

“I understand,” I said. “Honestly, I don’t think you need to be this worried. I’ll make mistakes, and she probably will too, and we’ll figure it out.”

“We will,” said Amelie. “I hope.”

“Amelie, sit up,” I said, frowning. She sat on my hips, bracing herself with her hands on my chest.

“Why are you so edgy?” I asked.

“Am I edgy?” she replied. I just looked at her and watched the silly denial crumble. “You’re both very important to me,” she said eventually. “I want this to go well.”

That didn’t seem to explain her anxiety and my frown didn’t disappear.

“John, don’t push me on this, okay? Just let me be a bit anxious until the three of us find our level with each other.”

I was stunned. In itself, it wasn’t a shocking thing to say. But I’d never seen Amelie set boundaries to keep me at a distance. What was going on?

“Sorry,” I said. “No pushing, okay?”

“No pushing is good. Thank you.” But her jaw was set and her eyes were shining. I was even more confused.

I handed her one of the water bottles and opened one for myself. We watched one another as we drank. Cautiously. She took another swig, her face locked on mine. She wasn’t going to explain, and I wasn’t going to ask again.

“Hug?” I asked.

“Yes please,” she said, and slowly folded herself down on top of me. We stayed there many minutes until her phone dinged.

“She’s early,” said Amelie, springing up.

We arrived in the ground-level parking area to see Katelyn’s car door open wider than normal car doors can – one of several adaptations in this car, I assumed. I watched her lean over to pull her folded chair from the passenger seat, across her body, to the ground beside the car, where she unfolded it.

“John!” cried Katelyn. “Damn, you really are tall. Get my bags, will you?”

“On it,” I said, as I watched her lock the chair in place and lever herself into it. She had a powerful upper body.

“Push me,” she said to Amelie, and I suspected it wasn’t because Katelyn needed help or Amelie wanted something to do. I thought it was a kind of intimacy. I followed the girls up the ramp to the elevator. When we were inside, she said, “Give me a hug, you two.” It was a tangle of arms and heads, but we did it.

“Put her gear in one of the east bedrooms,” said Amelie, as they dropped me off on the first level. “Join us in the Belvedere on the third floor in sixty minutes.”

Okay, that was weird. Sixty minutes? I’d done my homework on T8 spinal cord injuries, and knew Katelyn might need some time to herself after a trip like that, but sixty minutes?

I dropped off Katelyn’s roller bag and duffel and momentarily wondered whether I should be doing the valet thing and unpacking. Wait until asked, I reminded myself. Also, I didn’t want trying to be helpful crossing over into creepy territory. I walked to the northerly suite where I’d be staying, to pass the time.

There was a spacious bedroom, a sitting area, two walk-in closets, a luxurious bathroom, and my favorite feature: the den hovering under the second-level patio. I sat in a recliner with a view through the steel structural supports, past the vast elevated steel-braced pool container to my left, and across the lawn to the boathouse and the canal. The towering dike beyond was the backdrop, but I could picture the vista of the Big O that it hid.

Picturing the lake in my mind’s eye helped me calm down. I was edgy because Amelie was, and I was glad to have a few minutes to recenter. I closed my eyes and breathed. Katelyn and me meeting in person is important to Amelie, I told myself. Let her go through this in her own way.

Just before the one-hour mark, I climbed the stairs to the second level. I grabbed an orange from the fruit basket Amelie and I had just replenished and stood over the sink peeling it, taking in the view and mindlessly trying to manage my weirdly strong feeling of anxiety.

My phone dinged.

Amelie: watcha doin

John: orange. want 1?

Amelie: 2 pls

John: k

I walked up the stairs with three paper towels and three peeled oranges in three bowls. I found the girls sitting close together, half facing the lake, Amelie in a recliner and Katelyn in her chair. I couldn’t help noticing that Amelie had been crying. She was freaking me out today.

“Thanks,” they said, seeming glad for something refreshing to eat. I sat down on another recliner, already turned to face them and the lake, and ate the orange while taking in the magnificent view.

The vibe was friendly but strange, and Amelie’s tear-stained face was unnerving me. I averted my eyes and focused on the lake, feeling watched.

Eating the orange segment by segment was helping but I was finished when they were only half-way done. Strategic mistake.

I wiped my hands as I walked to the Belvedere windows. I felt the afternoon sun on my face, appreciating the glazing technology that was filtering out the most damaging rays.

“Shade?” I asked the girls, as the line of sunshine had already reached halfway up Katelyn’s body and would soon be in her eyes.

“A bit more shade would be nice,” said Katelyn.

I used the controls to move the shades out. That would buy some time as the horizon rose to meet the sun, without interfering with our view of the lake.

When the girls finished their oranges, they wiped their hands and I took the three bowls back to the kitchen. There I slowly washed the bowls and tried to settle myself.

Eventually, I slowly took the stairs back up and sat down, smiling at the two sisters to cover my nerves.

Chapter 25

“I wanna play a game,” said Katelyn. I watched Amelie roll her eyes. “I was thinking Truth or Dare.”

“We’re too old for that,” said Amelie. “And you’d just use it to cause trouble with outrageous dares.”

“True,” said Katelyn, a mischievous gleam in her eyes. “So how about Truth Not Dare? We can discover each other’s secrets. We’re basically honest people, especially me.”

Amelie said, “Yeah, especially you.” I found Amelie’s sarcasm reassuring. Maybe I was reading too much into this.

“Fine,” I said. “I’m an open book. But sex is out of bounds.”

“Harsh limitation!” said Katelyn. “All the best secrets have to do with sex. But I can live with it. You go first, John. Ask anyone anything. We can refuse to answer but that’s legitimate grounds for teasing about being chickenshit for the entire weekend.”

“Okay,” I said, but I just knew my question was going to be evaluated. “Katelyn, why did you ask Amelie to push you earlier? You didn’t need the help.”

“Oooo, a relational question,” said Katelyn. No doubt about it: I was being evaluated. “You’re as observant as Amelie says. Why do you think I did that?” she asked.

“Is asking a question to answer a question allowed?” I said, my attempt at rule-mongering ruined by the goofy smile on my face.

“I’m curious,” she said, as if that answered anything. I decided to play along.

“I thought it might be a way for you to settle in with each other after not being together for a while.”

“Score one for the big guy,” said Katelyn. She looked over to Amelie with raised eyebrows.

“I told you already, a hundred times,” said Amelie, rolling her eyes. “Your turn, Katelyn.”

“Okay,” she said, her eyes drifting up to ten o’clock, as if she didn’t already know exactly what she was going to ask. “What did you two think when you first saw each other?”

“That’s two questions!” said Amelie.

“It would be if you weren’t a couple, but you’re a couple so it’s one,” said Katelyn. That made zero sense, but I liked her impishness. I was already starting to get a better feel for this girl than I’d built over many video calls.

I looked over at Amelie. She was smiling at me, but I thought I detected a trace of uncertainty in that smile. Little sis, who looked nearly identical, seemed genuinely curious.

“You two really do look like twins,” I mused.

“No avoiding the question by flattering me,” said Katelyn, making Amelie roll her eyes again.

“She was standing in the Carothers dorm lobby waiting for a cart,” I began. “She was the only one without a family to help. Most people were looking at my height or my cart. When Amelie looked at me, it was drawn out. Not landing and eyes flicking away, and not rudely staring, either. It was more like studying. I was instantly attracted to her. A few minutes later, I asked if she wanted help. It was an outrageously assertive move for me. Something about her drew it out of me.”

Amelie’s smile broadened as her eyes softened.

“Good answer,” said Katelyn. “Go, sis.”

“I was standing there minding my own business when a sweat-soaked giant entered the lobby,” said Amelie. “He was effortlessly pushing a loaded cart toward the elevator. His tank top was sticking to his chest and back, and even his hair was dripping. I was afraid he might shake his head like a wet dog and shower all of us with sweat.”

“I would never!” I exclaimed, in mock outrage.

“No interrupting in the middle of a story, John,” said Katelyn.

“Yes, Ma’am,” I said, chuckling.

“I felt this tingle all through my body,” said Amelie. “Instant attraction. Handsome, serious, strong, even cute on the right angle.” I laughed at that, and Amelie continued.

“I reminded myself how many boys I’d been attracted to, who’d turned out to be jerks with defective character, and eventually managed to tear my eyes away. A few minutes later John returned with an empty cart. I looked up because of a rattling wheel and watched him apologize to the waiting crowd because he had another load. Then he walked right up to me. I’ll never forget his first words. ‘You’re the only one here without a family. If you need help, walk with me.’ I was caught on the fact that he’d noticed that I was alone and had offered to help. I thought I’d go along with it and see if he really was helpful, or if he was just using my vulnerable situation as an excuse for a stylish come-on.”

Katelyn cocked her head as if to assess whether I was even capable of a stylish come-on, but I knew that was not in my repertoire.

“As we walked to my car, bantering, something amazing happened,” said Amelie. “John accidentally let me know that he loved his parents and didn’t want to hurt them or mislead them. I embarrassed myself by blurting something out about him being kind, and he was really gracious about it. Seeing my embarrassment, he shared more of himself to even things up between us. Do you remember?” she asked smiling at me.

“Of course,” I said.

“That was almost-impossible-to-fake goodness,” she continued, “and I knew I needed to know more about this man. After that, things moved so fast. Something about the new environment, maybe, but I was way off my game, and I could tell John was, too. And that became a kind of theme, I guess – we’d do and say whatever we wanted and to hell with the normal dating protocols. The way he flowed with that helped me relax. It wasn’t long until I realized I’d stumbled onto an amazing person.”

“Aw, nice story, sis,” said Katelyn. “Two good answers,” she added. “You two are just perfect for each other, both so serious and boring.”

“Thank you, Katelyn,” said Amelie sarcastically. The only time I saw her descend into sarcasm was on calls to Katelyn, and it was usually followed by fits of giggling. “We’re serious, sure, sometimes. But there’s nothing boring about love at first sight and breaking all the rules to explore a relationship.”

“Point taken,” said Katelyn, smiling wonkily. “I’ll amend that to serious and mostly boring. Now, it’s the mostly boring sister’s turn to ask a question.”

Amelie turned to Katelyn. “The trip up here was a first for you. Mom was out-of-her-skin worried. What was it like driving alone for two hours?” Amelie obviously really wanted to know, and I got the sense that Katelyn’s independence was as important to caring big sis as it was to stubborn little sis. This drive up had been a big deal for the entire Foster family.

“Dad called it my ‘coming‑of‑age’ road trip,” said Katelyn. “And yeah, Mom was unbearable about it. But apparently I’m stubborn, so I pretended I wasn’t scared. And if you say anything to Mom and Dad about me faking my confidence, I’ll murder you in your sleep.”

She actually seemed serious. “Easy girl,” said Amelie, smiling gently, with the trace of a frown.

“Sorry, that was a bit over the top,” said Katelyn. “I just mean that two hours alone in the driver’s seat was a leap, and I was nervous about it. I’d been working up to it but still. If Mom had known the details, there’s no way she’d have agreed.”

Katelyn tapped her sternum lightly and looked at me. “The thing nobody tells you about driving with a T8 injury is that driving isn’t the hard part. My arms are plenty strong enough to steer and brake all day long. But keeping myself balanced for that long?” She shook her head. “Every little curve or gust of wind on the car forced me to catch myself with my shoulders. The extra belts help but, after the first hour, it felt like I was holding up the entire car with my arms.”

Amelie winced in sympathy, and I did too.

“And then there’s the bladder timing. And don’t even think about rolling your eyes – you asked.”

“I wasn’t rolling my eyes!” complained Amelie.

“T8 means the signals are all scrambled,” continued Katelyn. “So I did what every smart para does: planned like a general. Bathroom before leaving. Nothing to drink for an hour. Knew exactly where the accessible stops were. But the whole time, in the back of my mind, I’m going, please body, cooperate just this once.”

Amelie and I laughed softly. I really appreciated how open Katelyn was about something so personal.

“I know you and Mom were terrified,” she continued. “Dad was, too, though he pretended to be Mr. Goofy Stoic like usual. ‘We have to let the girls try,’ right? That’s what he kept saying. Over and over. I think he was trying to convince himself.”

I smiled a little at that. I understood the kind of father who tries to hide how much he loves and worries.

“But here’s the best part,” said Katelyn, turning her chair to face Amelie full-on. “Once I actually got going, after Miami faded behind me and the roads opened up, something shifted. I wasn’t scared. I wasn’t thinking about pressure relief, or fatigue, or what could go wrong if I needed help and no one was there.”

I could almost taste it. That feeling of just going somewhere by yourself, whenever you want. I’d never even thought about it. For Katelyn, it was everything.

“It felt like freedom. Real freedom,” she said. “Just me, music turned up, sun slanting through my window, chair folded on the seat beside me. I knew exactly what I was capable of, and for two straight hours, nothing – not the injury, not fear, not an overprotective mother – could tell me otherwise.”

Amelie’s eyes were soft now.

“And yeah,” Katelyn added, “by the time I pulled up to the Lake House, my shoulders were toast. The transfer out of the car felt more like a controlled fall. But I did it. All by myself. That drive was a good reminder that my life wasn’t going to be smaller because of what happened. Just different. And still mine. I’d do it again tomorrow. Or in a few days, anyway.”

Amelie held out her fist and Katelyn bumped it with hers, their fingers exploding in a slow-motion celebration.

“So John,” said Katelyn, “a more complete answer to your question about why I asked Amelie to push me when I arrived is that my shoulders and arms were worn out. The reconnection thing was the biggest part, and I could have moved myself, but it was nice to get some help.”

“Back to you, John,” said Amelie.

I wasn’t prepared. And maybe that’s why I bumbled into tender territory.

“Katelyn, Amelie told me you think she’s making a mistake going to business school, and that she should be focusing on fashion design and textiles. To me, it looks like she’s choosing a school because of you, a degree because of her family, and a minor because of me. Do you think Amelie’s thoughtfulness and generosity to others is harmful to her?”

I scrupulously avoided Amelie’s glare as I ended the question.

“Hell, yes!” said Katelyn, full of energy. “She’s like this powerhouse world-changer, yet she’s all tangled up in taking care of everyone around her.” Katelyn’s voice softened as she turned from me to Amelie. “It’s her character, in one way, which makes it beautiful. And I couldn’t be more grateful. But I also feel like I need to kick her gorgeous ass to make sure she takes care of herself.” The energetic edge returned as Katelyn looked at me. “It’s like deep in her. She’s as stubborn about that as I am about my independence, so it’ll be tough to talk her out of anything involving supporting someone she loves.”

“How do you encourage her to take care of herself?” I was still avoiding Amelie’s gaze.

“Mainly shopping,” said Katelyn, laughing. “I’ve found all her best outfits.”

Amelie snorted at that. I loved watching the two of them together. They could flip from serious to sarcastic in a second, then back again, and somehow it all felt natural.

“Your turn, Katelyn,” I said.

Chapter 26

“Amelie,” said Katelyn, “summarize your medical status.”

That was an extremely weird question, and it reduced the Belvedere to tense silence for quite a while. I was sure the girls were communicating with their eyes, but I had no idea what was happening. After a minute, Katelyn nodded ever so slightly and Amelie turned toward me.

“The day Katelyn had her fall, the reason Mom and Dad and I weren’t there is that we were at the hospital.”

Amelie turned to Katelyn, and I caught another micro-nod from the younger sister.

“Though I was a year older and had been developing through puberty normally in most ways,” said Amelie, “my period hadn’t begun. I was fourteen, and some girls don’t start until even older, but Katelyn had started two years earlier when she was eleven, so she and Mom and me started to get worried.”

Amelie looked down at her hands before looking at me. “Right as Katelyn fell, we found out that I have a congenital condition called MRKH Type 1, which means…” Amelie began to tear up. “It means I can never get pregnant.”

I was moving to touch her until Katelyn held up her hand to stop me, and I sat back.

Amelie took a calming breath, glanced at Katelyn for courage, and looked back at me.

“Okay… so MRKH,” she began quietly. “It stands for Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser syndrome. I have Type 1, which is the milder form. I’ll try to explain it without making any of us uncomfortable.” She gave a small, shaky laugh, and wiped her tears.

“Basically, when I was developing before birth, everything built normally on the outside, and all my hormones work just like anyone else’s. I went through puberty on time, I have normal ovarian function, normal hormone cycles, everything you’d expect – except one thing.” She swallowed. “I was born without a uterus.”

I felt my face shift, in concern. I still wanted to comfort her but held back.

“That means I don’t get periods, and I can’t carry a pregnancy. But otherwise my body works completely normally. Nothing about daily life is affected. I’m healthy, I’m not in pain, nothing is wrong with me in the medical sense… just different.”

Her voice was wavering, but she kept going.

“It’s not something you can see from the outside. It’s not something anyone would ever guess. The anatomical parts that matter for intimacy develop almost typically in Type 1. I didn’t even know anything was unusual until I didn’t get a period.”

I watched her brush another tear away, vigorously, seeming frustrated at herself for crying.

“It sounds so clinical when I say it like that. But when you’re fourteen and a doctor sits you down and tells you you’ll never be pregnant… it feels like a door slams shut before you even knew it was there. I’d just been assuming I’d have children one day.”

I watched Katelyn reach over and squeeze Amelie’s hand.

“I don’t think about it every day anymore. Honestly, most of the time I forget about it. My life is full and normal and good. But Katelyn and I talked, and we knew that one day, when someone started to matter to me…” – she looked at me directly now, eyes wet but voice steady – “I’d need to say something before it became a bigger secret than it needed to be.”

Amelie smiled weakly at me.

“That’s it. That’s the whole story. I’m fine – really. It’s just… a tender spot. A place I’d never show someone unless they’ve earned it. And you’re the first person I’ve told.”

No wonder Amelie had been so edgy, I thought. She and Katelyn had known that today was the day to reveal this secret.

What to say? I related most to Pete in this story. I pictured him worried about one girl and getting news that the other had broken her back in a fall.

“That must have been one hell of a day for your parents,” I said, looking at both girls.

“It was a bad day, yeah,” said Katelyn. “And it turned Mom from fun-loving coolness into a raging lunatic helicopter parent.”

Amelie frowned in disapproval.

“Big sis is way too understanding about that particular issue, as usual. Mom would chain me up to keep me safe if Dad would let her.”

“She would not!” exclaimed Amelie, obviously shocked. Katelyn watched her sister quietly, and I saw Amelie figure out what was happening. “Damn, girl,” she said quietly.

“A little distraction never hurts,” said Katelyn, ever so gently. Amelie nodded.

These two girls were great with each other. I felt honored to watch them. And I never sensed more strongly my longing for a sibling.

“Okay, so that was a bad day for everyone,” said Katelyn breezily. “But this game is called Truth Not Dare for a reason, and Amelie just lied.”

“I did not lie!’ said Amelie, plainly shocked.

“You said, ‘That’s the whole story.’ And that’s a lie,” said Katelyn.

“Katelyn!” whispered Amelie urgently, glancing at me out of the corner of her eye as she leaned toward her sister. “What are you doing?!”

They must have known I could hear everything they were saying. But they kept on whispering.

“He’s the one,” whispered Katelyn. “It’s time.”

“You can’t…” whispered Amelie.

“It’s okay,” said Katelyn.

“Oh God,” said Amelie, sitting up straight and facing me, looking pale, still holding Katelyn’s hand.

“The Very Bad Day occurred when Katelyn was thirteen and I was fourteen,” Amelie said. “Kinsey was lost and we two pseudo-twins were changed in the blink of an eye. Mom felt like her family was cursed for a while. Dad held everything together like usual. Katelyn’s rehab was grueling – for her, obviously, but also for the rest of us, and especially for Dad, who was with her almost all the time for that part of the recovery. Once we knew the T8 injury was complete, there was a lot for us to absorb, and Katelyn needed to learn a lot about how to live independently.”

I watched the two girls look at each other, smiling in a loving and determined way. I was trying to estimate where Amelie was headed, but I had no idea.

“Katelyn and I were together whenever I wasn’t at school in those days. When we weren’t crying and making each other laugh, we were talking, trying to figure out what these twin problems might mean for our lives. Eventually we decided what mattered most to us.”

Amelie stopped talking then, and looked from me to Katelyn. Katelyn nodded to encourage Amelie to continue, but Amelie gave an almost imperceptible shake of her head. Katelyn sighed and looked at me.

“What my nervous sister is trying to say is that we made twin promises to each other,” explained Katelyn. “Amelie would take care of me forever, and I would find a way to help her have children that we could raise together.”

“Wow,” I said, struggling for words.

“Girls are stupidly intense at that age,” said Katelyn. “We probably would have forgotten we ever made those promises except that Amelie is bizarrely loyal and dedicated, and she routinely sacrifices herself for everyone she loves, including me. So the twin promises became a really big deal for us. Mom and Dad don’t know about this, and that’s the way we’d like to keep it.”

“We talked about the kind of man who could fit with our promises,” said Amelie, picking up the story. “He had to be willing to share his life with both of us, go through the whole IVF thing with my eggs and Katelyn’s surrogate womb, and truly love me, and I him. We thought such a man would be hard to find, and my experience to date confirms that intuition.”

Finally, finally, the penny dropped for me. Amelie had been hunting for a man to fulfill this role in her and Katelyn’s life. That’s why she’d dated so many guys. That’s why I felt she’d been observing me, evaluating me. That’s why she’d been so aggressive when she discovered hints of my character.

And in the future? Was I supposed to live with both sisters in some kind of trio?! Married to one and caring for the other?! Raising children with both?! My parents would kill me! Why had Amelie waited so long to tell me this all-important fact about her?!! The scale of it was too big – marriage-big, family-big, forever-big.

I couldn’t take it in. The two girls were looking anxiously in my direction, both still holding hands.

“John?” It was Katelyn but I barely registered her voice.

Questions kept coming at me, one after another, like opponents crashing into me under the basket. Had I gotten the whole thing wrong? Was I just part of a plan they’d made years before I showed up? Was any of it real, or was everything set up from the beginning? What did they expect me to do?! I could feel my world crumbling, all my assumptions turned inside out and discarded like old socks tossed into a corner. Despite the all-around view of the Belvedere, I started to feel closed in, the air unbreathable. An almost unstoppable urge to get outside started to rise within me, like I was about to throw up.

“You chose me because of the twin promises?” I said to Amelie, finding my voice and trying to keep my rising panic and overwhelm under control. She was starting to look frightened.

“Yes, and because I love you,” she said quietly, the hand not clasping Katelyn’s fiddling with the hair above her ear.

“But…” I said, before losing track of my words.

The air conditioning kicked on in the silent room and made me jump.

“You…” I tried again and tumbled over my own thoughts.

I could feel myself on the edge of drowning in confusion, very likely to say something devastatingly hurtful. I couldn’t stay. I needed to get away from there so I could breathe.

Before I fully understood what I was doing, my mind in a dark vortex of confusion, I lost it. I stood up and walked to the stairs.

“No,” I heard from behind me, as Amelie broke down. “Not like this…”

I walked down the stairs, moving faster as I went. I ran to my suite to shoulder my backpack. Boots on, I took the stairs to the ground level and started marching away from the house.

Chapter 27

Being outside helped me breathe, and even the unpleasantly hot and humid Florida air was better than being trapped inside. I couldn’t have said what my plan was; I just focused on my boots crunching the gravel beneath my feet. It centered me, and I kept marching.

I was walking up the driveway when Amelie called after me.

“John! Wait!”

I turned around to look at her, eyes red from crying, standing on the edge of the big concrete pad under the house in bare feet. I smiled weakly. Then I turned away and trudged along the driveway.

I heard her running, squealing as she hurt her feet on the gravel.

“John!”

I stopped with my back to her. I heard her stop running.

“Is that all I get?” she asked. “No response? Not even a goodbye?”

I turned to face her. As confused as I felt, I knew I was too muddled to have this conversation.

“I’ll see you back in Austin,” I said. “I need some space.”

I turned away again and took a few steps.

“Wait!” This time she screamed and broke down in tears. I turned around yet again and took in the pitiful sight before me. Her feet were probably cut on the gravel, her heart was torn apart, and she was crying her eyes out, begging me for something more. But what more was there? I just needed time.

“You need to explain,” she sobbed. “You can’t just hear all of that – everything about me, about us, about Katelyn – and walk out without saying anything.”

“I’m not breaking up with you, Amelie,” I said. “We can talk in Austin. After I get my head clear.”

“But I was going to… we were finally going to… this week was a really big deal for me.”

What could I say to that? I just nodded, trying to convey that I understood.

“Are your feet okay?” I asked.

“I think I might have cut them,” said Amelie, between jagged breaths.

I walked back to her. “Come on,” I said as I picked her up and carried her over the fifty yards of gravel driveway to the house. She clung to me and nuzzled my neck as I held her.

“Katelyn will help with the cuts,” I said, as I set her down on the edge of the concrete pad under the house. Amelie was hobbled in pain until she sat down to take the weight off her ravaged feet.

“What will Katelyn do?” asked Katelyn, rolling down the ramp from the elevator lobby, sounding perfectly neutral.

“She ran on the gravel and cut her feet,” I said.

“I see you’re leaving,” she said, still sounding neutral. “Would you carry Amelie upstairs before you go?”

I stared at the two girls, one seeming calm, the other looking wretched.

I picked Amelie up and we walked into the elevator.

“Kitchen,” said Katelyn, and I hit the button for the second level.

We rode the slow elevator in silence. I felt Amelie clinging tightly to my neck and trying to calm her ragged breathing.

“Please John,” she said, as the elevator doors eased open on the living level. “I know it’s a lot. I know you must be angry and confused. But don’t leave. This is a big house. You need space. So we’ll give you space. As much as you want. We can talk again when you’re ready.”

I set her down gently on the kitchen counter and she bent her legs to look at the damage.

“Let me see your feet,” I said. It was as stupid as it was instinctive.

“I’ve got her,” said Katelyn. “Take some time, John. We’ll stay out of the Belvedere, your suite, and the grounds, and we’ll stay off the stairs. You’ll have all the space you need. You’re in shock and walking back to Austin with no money isn’t a rational response. When you’re ready, we’ll have a tribunal.”

“A tribunal?” said Amelie, looking down at her little sister’s face. My question exactly.

“Yeah,” said Katelyn. “Amelie goes on trial for deceiving her boyfriend and trapping him in an unfair situation, then dumping everything on him in an overwhelming way. We’ll decide on her punishment. And if you guys are going to break up over this, it’d be a healthy way to move past each other.”

“Would you stay, John? Long enough for a tribunal?” Amelie’s plea, made with a shuddering voice, moved me.

“There’s no point in a tribunal,” I said. “I already know the secret and I’m not going to condemn anyone, especially not two sisters who are being loyal and loving to each other. I’m going to my suite to calm down and figure out how to get home from here. Then you can take me to the nearest airport or whatever.”

“Okay,” said Amelie, accepting that even while in obvious despair.

“We’re good, John,” said Katelyn. “Go take a break and get your head clear. We’ll do a tribunal if you feel up to it. If you really want to leave, Amelie will take you wherever you want to go. And thanks for not leaving. Both of us would have been worried sick if you’d done that.”

I walked to the stairs and started down to the bedroom level.

“I’m sorry, John,” called Katelyn. I paused my descent but didn’t turn around. “Nothing about this is fair to you. We weren’t trying to hurt you, I promise, even though that’s how it turned out. We did the best we could.”

I nodded, my back to the girls, then walked down the stairs.

Chapter 28

In my suite, I violently threw my backpack on the bed and took refuge in the den, collapsing into a recliner, the sun hidden behind the giant patio above. I stared at the grounds, the boat house, the rest of the dock, the rim canal, the dike behind it, and the sliver of sky visible between the dike and the bottom of the patio deck.

I pictured the water behind the wall of dirt, probably six feet higher than the canal, an inland freshwater sea held back by careful engineering. I stared at that wall of dirt holding back all that water, and it felt like looking in a mirror. Everything dammed up inside me, held in place by years of training – feel but don’t spill.

And what was I thinking, just leaving like that?! Planner John, reduced to idiotic impulse by finding out something important about someone I loved.

I punched the arm of the recliner, hard, and leaned back, hard, the footrest rising. I lay there, closed my eyes, and tried to calm myself.

I needed Viking. If he’d been here, he’d have sensed my extreme agitation and laid his head on my leg to comfort me.

Without thinking about it, I called Dad.

“Hi son,” he said. “Did you make it to Florida okay?”

“Yes, sir,” I said. “I’m sitting here staring at an amazing feat of engineering and thinking about you and Mom and Viking. Is he there?”

“Of course,” said Dad. “I’ll get you up on the big screen and put you on speaker.”

A few seconds later, I watched through Dad’s phone camera as Viking nose-booped the television then lay down, staring at my image.

“Hey, boy,” I said. “Miss you.”

Dad turned the camera around to show me his face. “Viking will be glad to see you in a couple of weeks when you visit.” I knew what Dad meant: he and Mom were counting on me coming down to San Antonio two weekends from now. “Is Amelie coming?”

“I haven’t raised it with her yet,” I said. “But I’ll be there for sure.”

“It’ll be nice to see you either way,” he said.

“Dad, I heard something recently that… I guess it overwhelmed me. I didn’t act out or anything, don’t worry. But internally, I’m still roiled up about it. I’ve watched you manage stress on the job for years, and kind of copied you, I guess. When the stress is internal and emotional, though, how do you handle it?”

“I pray, son,” he said, looking at me sincerely. “That helps me remember what’s important, and I rededicate myself to it.”

I nodded, and we fell into silence, which was normal and comfortable for us, when Mom wasn’t around, anyway. And really, what was there to say? Dad was right. I needed to focus on what was most important.

“Thanks, Dad. I’ll see you in a couple of weeks. Bye boy,” I said, and ended the call.

I hadn’t prayed in a while. I guess I’d concluded that God wasn’t in the communication business. But I did care deeply about discerning God’s will – or what was good and true and beautiful, anyway, in case God wasn’t in the willing business, either.

So what was good and true and beautiful in this situation?

I loved Amelie with all my heart, no question. And at this point I knew part of me always would. I wasn’t the kind of guy who could stop loving someone, even if we weren’t together anymore.

I’d assumed Amelie loved me just as intensely, but I was a long way from being confident about that now. I was a mere fix, a solution to a problem that predated me, a problem that had driven her through almost thirty boys until she landed on me. And I’d suspected nothing, at least until her nervousness on this trip, which had been bothering me.

How was I supposed to love her if she didn’t love me for me?

At some level, though, I knew that Amelie was not a deceptive person. The first secret she’d hidden from me was about Katelyn’s injury, and she told me when she had permission, which was very early.

The second secret she withheld from me was her family’s wealth, but she told me when her parents were confident in her relationship with me, at the five-month mark, and gave their permission.

This third secret? Her parents didn’t even know about it. That was just for the two girls and me, apparently, and was supposed to remain that way, for now at least. The girls must have been calculating when to tell me. Amelie must have been stressed about hiding it from me, but she needed to wait until it was the right time in their sisters-come-first dynamic.

Seven months in, they felt ready to tell me. Because they believed they could trust me with their most tender truth. Because Amelie had become confident that I represented the solution they’d been searching for.

I was suddenly hit by an awful vision: Amelie catching my eye on campus as she was heading out on a date with another man. I knew what she most wanted: me. But I’d forced her to keep looking for the right man. I saw the grief and sadness in her eyes. Then she turned away.

That would be absolutely unbearable!!

But how could I be confident in her love? I’d be haunted by uncertainty forever if we stayed together. Just like I’d be haunted by her forever if I let her go.

“Breathe, John,” I said out loud. I looked down at my fingers, dug hard into the arm rest, knuckles white. I relaxed my hands and arms, my neck and shoulders, my twisted gut and abs, my tense legs. Even my toes were tight and I let them unclench. “Breathe,” I said, and closed my eyes.

“What’s most important, John?” I whispered.

But I didn’t know.

Mercifully, as I relaxed, sleep came, and offered respite from my emotional turmoil.

Chapter 29

It was still light when I woke from that nap. I felt more settled. Confused and uncertain, but calm, for the moment anyway.

I reached for my phone. Almost five-thirty. I’d been looking forward to watching the sunset colors in and above the lake, which was half the point of the architecture of this amazing building. Now I wasn’t sure I could enjoy it.

I had unread messages from Amelie and Katelyn. I felt my gut clench again. I really didn’t want to read them. But I checked Katelyn’s.

“Tribunal. 6pm.”

Without thinking too much about it, I moved to the bathroom and took a long shower to wash away the day’s sweat. But I couldn’t wash away my confusion.

Afterwards, I shaved and dressed in a pair of nice shorts with a belt and a button-down short-sleeved shirt. It was all hand-me-downs from Dad. I laughed when I looked at myself in the mirror and realized I’d been dressing on autopilot with no conscious plan. Maybe I was dressing for the tribunal.

In the bedroom I stared at my phone again. I couldn’t help myself. I opened Amelie’s messages. There were just two.

“I’m sorry.”

“I love you. I promise.”

I sighed. It was five to six. If we were going to do this tribunal thing, now was the time.

I dragged myself along the hallway then up the stairs to the living level, dreading what I’d find there. The sun almost blinded me, and my eyes took a few moments to adjust. I knew the filtering built into the glazing was doing its job, but that was still a lot of sun. I should have brought my shades.

The girls weren’t in the living area so I walked to the patio door. I saw them beside the pool. Amelie was in a chair in front of Katelyn, and the two of them were leaning forward, foreheads touching.

Their closeness – it was almost too much.

I took my eyes off the girls and focused on the lake, artificially raised by a giant dike-and-lock system, holding the water in place. Hold it back, John, I ordered myself.

I slid open the door and was hit hard by the heat and humidity and that water-earth-plant smell, like everything living was on the verge of disintegrating. I watched the girls separate as they turned to see me. I slowly walked across the patio deck, under the vast screen-supporting structure.

As I approached, I tried to imagine the dark day when Pete discovered that both his precious girls had far more challenging lives ahead of them than he’d assumed to that point. I tried to picture Pam’s transformation into an anxiously protective mother. I tried to grasp the way these two young women were irrevocably welded to one another, promising the nearly impossible and burdening one another with keeping those promises.

I’d been standing in the middle of an emotional minefield for seven months and never suspected a thing. Now I knew exactly where I was but couldn’t see a safe way to stay or leave. I was frozen in fear and resorting to what I knew: doing what was expected, like the good boy I was.

“Nice duds,” said Katelyn lightly. Extremely incongruous. “Pull up a chair.” I did as she asked and sat down. “Closer, silly,” she said. “This is a knees-touching tribunal.”

In my increasingly agitated state, I wondered how much of Katelyn’s seemingly innocent playing I could take before just exploding. I now knew full well that this girl’s moves were never innocent. She saw everything and was constantly calculating. She’d set this whole day up with Amelie, who was almost as calculating herself. And Katelyn had gotten me to stay by promising a ridiculous tribunal.

But I had to admit that she did everything not to hurt but to help, not mainly to amuse herself, but mainly to help her sister. She was even trying to help me. Her apology as I descended the stairs a couple of hours earlier floated back to me. I believed that she didn’t want to hurt me.

I got over my stupid resistance and gave her what she asked for: I pulled forward until my knees were touching the two girls, our thighs forming a star shape, my much longer legs distorting the star – an apt reminder that I’d never fit in.

I noticed Amelie’s feet covered in bulging socks, holding bandages in place. It was a blunt reminder that, whatever else was true about this situation, my girlfriend had been beyond upset when I’d started to leave and desperately wanted me to stay.

“It’s six,” said Katelyn. “Sunset is at seven thirty, and the light should start getting interesting shortly after seven because of the lake surface. So we’ve got one hour until seven for this tribunal. Regardless of how it goes, we all stay for the sunset and dinner. Then Amelie will take John wherever he wants to go and get him back to Austin on her dime. Or John can stay here if he wants. But nobody leaves here until eight this evening no matter what. Okay?”

“Okay,” said Amelie.

I was slow to answer and both girls looked at me.

“That’s a reasonable compromise, John,” said Katelyn. “You’ll actually get home safely this way. And surely you can bear our company for a couple of hours until you leave.”

“Fine.” As soon as I said it, I worried that I sounded like a moody teenager, annoyed at everything. Don’t you dare go that way, John, I ordered myself. “That’s a good arrangement,” I added, in a more constructive tone of voice.

Katelyn smiled at me then. It was a smile I hadn’t seen on her before. I thought it was grateful. And yes, a little fragile. I was suddenly hit by what this situation must mean from her point of view. Everything was on the line for her. She was framing this ridiculous tribunal as if Amelie were the one who had deliberately seduced and deceived me to solve their longstanding “twin-promises” problem. But Katelyn was hugely invested in the outcome.

How does an eighteen-year-old paraplegic picture meeting someone, falling in love, and raising children? However complicated that might be, the twin promises meant that she’d hitched the star of her hopes for a loving family to Amelie’s wagon.

Once again, I felt out of my depth with these two. I felt the restlessness that comes with worrying about being manipulated and controlled. I felt the urge to run again, afraid that if I didn’t it might be too late.

But I was out of time. Katelyn was ready to begin.

Chapter 30

“This knees-touching tribunal is hereby called to order,” said Katelyn.

Amelie and I both looked at her in mild disbelief.

“Hey, this is a miserable situation,” said Katelyn. “I’m just trying to have some fun with it. You two are so boring. Moving on… Amelie is charged with hiding something huge from a good man, dumping it all on him at once, and making him wonder whether she actually loves him. Katelyn is facing charges of plotting with Amelie to withhold the information, of helping Amelie decide when and how to reveal it, and of benefitting from the situation to such a degree that her renowned impartiality might be suspect. And John is charged with losing his mind and trying to walk from Florida to Texas with no money.”

We looked blankly at Katelyn.

“Oh come on, you two, that was funny. And being stupid was the worst thing I could think of for John.”

“I was confused and just needed to get some space,” I said, slightly huffy at being called stupid when I’d been under such stress.

“Don’t worry, John,” said Katelyn. “Like I said before, at eight this evening, if you still want to leave, Amelie will make sure you get home safely. So we can set your charges aside. We can set aside the charges against me, too, because I’m a survivor of a spinal cord injury and everyone has to feel sorry for me and let me get away with misbehaving. But Amelie is older and wiser, and her brain works fine even without a uterus, so she’s in deep shit.”

Amelie gasped in shock. “My brain works fine even without a uterus? Are you serious right now?!”

“Well, doesn’t it?” said Katelyn. “Stop being so ridiculous. You didn’t get all outraged when I made fun of the paralyzed girl and the stupid boy.”

“I just didn’t get around to it,” said Amelie dryly.

“Whatever. Stay focused, people,” said Katelyn. “When we’ve discussed this situation over the years…”

“You knew this would happen?!” I said.

“We knew this might happen,” said Katelyn. “If it did happen, we figured that the man in question would feel manipulated, and thus justifiably hurt and angry. More importantly, though, he wouldn’t know whether to trust that Amelie truly loved him, as against liked him well enough because he solved the twin-promises problem. All that’s made worse by Amelie’s deplorable tendency to sacrifice herself for the wellbeing of others, so she might be capable of convincing herself that she loves the guy even though she’s settling for second best for the sake of the promises. Do those worries sound familiar, John?”

“Yes,” I said, shocked to learn that the sisters had already analyzed this situation and had been thinking about it for years. No wonder Katelyn had stated my concerns so accurately.

“The solution to this problem is simple,” she announced. “Amelie just needs to answer one question convincingly. Amelie, do you love John for John, regardless of the twin promises?”

“Yes,” said Amelie, looking deeply into Katelyn’s eyes, as though I wasn’t even present. “I adore John for who he is. Seven months in, I’m certain that I can’t be who I’m meant to be, who I want to be, without him.”

I felt the mood change. Katelyn looked back at Amelie just as intensely. I’d quickly become irrelevant to this exchange, but I watched, fascinated, trying to understand what was being transacted between the two sisters.

“But you would sacrifice yourself for me, and John now knows that. So you might convince yourself that you love John with all your soul just for my sake. People who love as intensely as you do have done weirder things.”

“That’s not what it feels like in here,” said Amelie, patting her chest above her heart.

“But Amelie, we hid the truth from John for seven long months, which sends a very clear message about what’s most important to you, to us.” Katelyn was speaking quietly, but her words were unmasking every last possibility of self-deception in her sister and naming my doubts, point for point.

“It’s both,” said Amelie. “I love him. I love you. There is no competition, no conflict.”

“Then why did you wait so long to tell him about our twin promises?”

“You know very well why,” said Amelie. “Because it is too large a secret to absorb until we know one another well enough.”

“But this secret grew larger, outpacing the growth in the relationship, increasing the pain and harming trust all the more.”

“Then I’m trapped!” said Amelie. “If I say something too early, a beautiful, life-changing relationship ends. If I wait until the relationship is strong, revealing the secret is devastating to everyone. And then you’ll point out my apparently enormous capacity for self-deception and tell me I could be talking myself into being in love with John for your sake and for the sake of our promises.”

“Exactly,” said Katelyn.

Amelie roared in frustration and stormed away. As soon as she started moving, though, she was hobbled. She gingerly worked her way to the far corner of the deck and collapsed into a chair. I’d never seen her behave that way. I could certainly understand her frustration about feeling trapped in a no-win situation – it’s exactly how I felt about the leave or stay thing, doomed to doubt and misery either way.

“The tribunal will recess for a few minutes,” said Katelyn. “Please find a neutral corner.”

“This knees-touching tribunal is hereby called to order,” said Katelyn.

Amelie and I both looked at her in mild disbelief.

“Hey, this is a miserable situation,” said Katelyn. “I’m just trying to have some fun with it. You two are so boring. Moving on… Amelie is charged with hiding something huge from a good man, dumping it all on him at once, and making him wonder whether she actually loves him. Katelyn is facing charges of plotting with Amelie to withhold the information, of helping Amelie decide when and how to reveal it, and of benefitting from the situation to such a degree that her renowned impartiality might be suspect. And John is charged with losing his mind and trying to walk from Florida to Texas with no money.”

We looked blankly at Katelyn.

“Oh come on, you two, that was funny. And being stupid was the worst thing I could think of for John.”

“I was confused and just needed to get some space,” I said, slightly huffy at being called stupid when I’d been under such stress.

“Don’t worry, John,” said Katelyn. “Like I said before, at eight this evening, if you still want to leave, Amelie will make sure you get home safely. So we can set your charges aside. We can set aside the charges against me, too, because I’m a survivor of a spinal cord injury and everyone has to feel sorry for me and let me get away with misbehaving. But Amelie is older and wiser, and her brain works fine even without a uterus, so she’s in deep shit.”

Amelie gasped in shock. “My brain works fine even without a uterus? Are you serious right now?!”

“Well, doesn’t it?” said Katelyn. “Stop being so ridiculous. You didn’t get all outraged when I made fun of the paralyzed girl and the stupid boy.”

“I just didn’t get around to it,” said Amelie dryly.

“Whatever. Stay focused, people,” said Katelyn. “When we’ve discussed this situation over the years…”

“You knew this would happen?!” I said.

“We knew this might happen,” said Katelyn. “If it did happen, we figured that the man in question would feel manipulated, and thus justifiably hurt and angry. More importantly, though, he wouldn’t know whether to trust that Amelie truly loved him, as against liked him well enough because he solved the twin-promises problem. All that’s made worse by Amelie’s deplorable tendency to sacrifice herself for the wellbeing of others, so she might be capable of convincing herself that she loves the guy even though she’s settling for second best for the sake of the promises. Do those worries sound familiar, John?”

“Yes,” I said, shocked to learn that the sisters had already analyzed this situation and had been thinking about it for years. No wonder Katelyn had stated my concerns so accurately.

“The solution to this problem is simple,” she announced. “Amelie just needs to answer one question convincingly. Amelie, do you love John for John, regardless of the twin promises?”

“Yes,” said Amelie, looking deeply into Katelyn’s eyes, as though I wasn’t even present. “I adore John for who he is. Seven months in, I’m certain that I can’t be who I’m meant to be, who I want to be, without him.”

I felt the mood change. Katelyn looked back at Amelie just as intensely. I’d quickly become irrelevant to this exchange, but I watched, fascinated, trying to understand what was being transacted between the two sisters.

“But you would sacrifice yourself for me, and John now knows that. So you might convince yourself that you love John with all your soul just for my sake. People who love as intensely as you do have done weirder things.”

“That’s not what it feels like in here,” said Amelie, patting her chest above her heart.

“But Amelie, we hid the truth from John for seven long months, which sends a very clear message about what’s most important to you, to us.” Katelyn was speaking quietly, but her words were unmasking every last possibility of self-deception in her sister and naming my doubts, point for point.

“It’s both,” said Amelie. “I love him. I love you. There is no competition, no conflict.”

“Then why did you wait so long to tell him about our twin promises?”

“You know very well why,” said Amelie. “Because it is too large a secret to absorb until we know one another well enough.”

“But this secret grew larger, outpacing the growth in the relationship, increasing the pain and harming trust all the more.”

“Then I’m trapped!” said Amelie. “If I say something too early, a beautiful, life-changing relationship ends. If I wait until the relationship is strong, revealing the secret is devastating to everyone. And then you’ll point out my apparently enormous capacity for self-deception and tell me I could be talking myself into being in love with John for your sake and for the sake of our promises.”

“Exactly,” said Katelyn.

Amelie roared in frustration and stormed away. As soon as she started moving, though, she was hobbled. She gingerly worked her way to the far corner of the deck and collapsed into a chair. I’d never seen her behave that way. I could certainly understand her frustration about feeling trapped in a no-win situation – it’s exactly how I felt about the leave or stay thing, doomed to doubt and misery either way.

“The tribunal will recess for a few minutes,” said Katelyn. “Please find a neutral corner.”

It was still light when I woke from that nap. I felt more settled. Confused and uncertain, but calm, for the moment anyway.

I reached for my phone. Almost five-thirty. I’d been looking forward to watching the sunset colors in and above the lake, which was half the point of the architecture of this amazing building. Now I wasn’t sure I could enjoy it.

I had unread messages from Amelie and Katelyn. I felt my gut clench again. I really didn’t want to read them. But I checked Katelyn’s.

“Tribunal. 6pm.”

Without thinking too much about it, I moved to the bathroom and took a long shower to wash away the day’s sweat. But I couldn’t wash away my confusion.

Afterwards, I shaved and dressed in a pair of nice shorts with a belt and a button-down short-sleeved shirt. It was all hand-me-downs from Dad. I laughed when I looked at myself in the mirror and realized I’d been dressing on autopilot with no conscious plan. Maybe I was dressing for the tribunal.

In the bedroom I stared at my phone again. I couldn’t help myself. I opened Amelie’s messages. There were just two.

“I’m sorry.”

“I love you. I promise.”

I sighed. It was five to six. If we were going to do this tribunal thing, now was the time.

I dragged myself along the hallway then up the stairs to the living level, dreading what I’d find there. The sun almost blinded me, and my eyes took a few moments to adjust. I knew the filtering built into the glazing was doing its job, but that was still a lot of sun. I should have brought my shades.

The girls weren’t in the living area so I walked to the patio door. I saw them beside the pool. Amelie was in a chair in front of Katelyn, and the two of them were leaning forward, foreheads touching.

Their closeness – it was almost too much.

I took my eyes off the girls and focused on the lake, artificially raised by a giant dike-and-lock system, holding the water in place. Hold it back, John, I ordered myself.

I slid open the door and was hit hard by the heat and humidity and that water-earth-plant smell, like everything living was on the verge of disintegrating. I watched the girls separate as they turned to see me. I slowly walked across the patio deck, under the vast screen-supporting structure.

As I approached, I tried to imagine the dark day when Pete discovered that both his precious girls had far more challenging lives ahead of them than he’d assumed to that point. I tried to picture Pam’s transformation into an anxiously protective mother. I tried to grasp the way these two young women were irrevocably welded to one another, promising the nearly impossible and burdening one another with keeping those promises.

I’d been standing in the middle of an emotional minefield for seven months and never suspected a thing. Now I knew exactly where I was but couldn’t see a safe way to stay or leave. I was frozen in fear and resorting to what I knew: doing what was expected, like the good boy I was.

“Nice duds,” said Katelyn lightly. Extremely incongruous. “Pull up a chair.” I did as she asked and sat down. “Closer, silly,” she said. “This is a knees-touching tribunal.”

In my increasingly agitated state, I wondered how much of Katelyn’s seemingly innocent playing I could take before just exploding. I now knew full well that this girl’s moves were never innocent. She saw everything and was constantly calculating. She’d set this whole day up with Amelie, who was almost as calculating herself. And Katelyn had gotten me to stay by promising a ridiculous tribunal.

But I had to admit that she did everything not to hurt but to help, not mainly to amuse herself, but mainly to help her sister. She was even trying to help me. Her apology as I descended the stairs a couple of hours earlier floated back to me. I believed that she didn’t want to hurt me.

I got over my stupid resistance and gave her what she asked for: I pulled forward until my knees were touching the two girls, our thighs forming a star shape, my much longer legs distorting the star – an apt reminder that I’d never fit in.

I noticed Amelie’s feet covered in bulging socks, holding bandages in place. It was a blunt reminder that, whatever else was true about this situation, my girlfriend had been beyond upset when I’d started to leave and desperately wanted me to stay.

“It’s six,” said Katelyn. “Sunset is at seven thirty, and the light should start getting interesting shortly after seven because of the lake surface. So we’ve got one hour until seven for this tribunal. Regardless of how it goes, we all stay for the sunset and dinner. Then Amelie will take John wherever he wants to go and get him back to Austin on her dime. Or John can stay here if he wants. But nobody leaves here until eight this evening no matter what. Okay?”

“Okay,” said Amelie.

I was slow to answer and both girls looked at me.

“That’s a reasonable compromise, John,” said Katelyn. “You’ll actually get home safely this way. And surely you can bear our company for a couple of hours until you leave.”

“Fine.” As soon as I said it, I worried that I sounded like a moody teenager, annoyed at everything. Don’t you dare go that way, John, I ordered myself. “That’s a good arrangement,” I added, in a more constructive tone of voice.

Katelyn smiled at me then. It was a smile I hadn’t seen on her before. I thought it was grateful. And yes, a little fragile. I was suddenly hit by what this situation must mean from her point of view. Everything was on the line for her. She was framing this ridiculous tribunal as if Amelie were the one who had deliberately seduced and deceived me to solve their longstanding “twin-promises” problem. But Katelyn was hugely invested in the outcome.

How does an eighteen-year-old paraplegic picture meeting someone, falling in love, and raising children? However complicated that might be, the twin promises meant that she’d hitched the star of her hopes for a loving family to Amelie’s wagon.

Once again, I felt out of my depth with these two. I felt the restlessness that comes with worrying about being manipulated and controlled. I felt the urge to run again, afraid that if I didn’t it might be too late.

But I was out of time. Katelyn was ready to begin.

I pictured the water behind the wall of dirt, probably six feet higher than the canal, an inland freshwater sea held back by careful engineering. I stared at that wall of dirt holding back all that water, and it felt like looking in a mirror. Everything dammed up inside me, held in place by years of training – feel but don’t spill.

And what was I thinking, just leaving like that?! Planner John, reduced to idiotic impulse by finding out something important about someone I loved.

I punched the arm of the recliner, hard, and leaned back, hard, the footrest rising. I lay there, closed my eyes, and tried to calm myself.

I needed Viking. If he’d been here, he’d have sensed my extreme agitation and laid his head on my leg to comfort me.

Without thinking about it, I called Dad.

“Hi son,” he said. “Did you make it to Florida okay?”

“Yes, sir,” I said. “I’m sitting here staring at an amazing feat of engineering and thinking about you and Mom and Viking. Is he there?”

“Of course,” said Dad. “I’ll get you up on the big screen and put you on speaker.”

A few seconds later, I watched through Dad’s phone camera as Viking nose-booped the television then lay down, staring at my image.

“Hey, boy,” I said. “Miss you.”

Dad turned the camera around to show me his face. “Viking will be glad to see you in a couple of weeks when you visit.” I knew what Dad meant: he and Mom were counting on me coming down to San Antonio two weekends from now. “Is Amelie coming?”

“I haven’t raised it with her yet,” I said. “But I’ll be there for sure.”

“It’ll be nice to see you either way,” he said.

“Dad, I heard something recently that… I guess it overwhelmed me. I didn’t act out or anything, don’t worry. But internally, I’m still roiled up about it. I’ve watched you manage stress on the job for years, and kind of copied you, I guess. When the stress is internal and emotional, though, how do you handle it?”

“I pray, son,” he said, looking at me sincerely. “That helps me remember what’s important, and I rededicate myself to it.”

I nodded, and we fell into silence, which was normal and comfortable for us, when Mom wasn’t around, anyway. And really, what was there to say? Dad was right. I needed to focus on what was most important.

“Thanks, Dad. I’ll see you in a couple of weeks. Bye boy,” I said, and ended the call.

I hadn’t prayed in a while. I guess I’d concluded that God wasn’t in the communication business. But I did care deeply about discerning God’s will – or what was good and true and beautiful, anyway, in case God wasn’t in the willing business, either.

So what was good and true and beautiful in this situation?

I loved Amelie with all my heart, no question. And at this point I knew part of me always would. I wasn’t the kind of guy who could stop loving someone, even if we weren’t together anymore.

I’d assumed Amelie loved me just as intensely, but I was a long way from being confident about that now. I was a mere fix, a solution to a problem that predated me, a problem that had driven her through almost thirty boys until she landed on me. And I’d suspected nothing, at least until her nervousness on this trip, which had been bothering me.

How was I supposed to love her if she didn’t love me for me?

At some level, though, I knew that Amelie was not a deceptive person. The first secret she’d hidden from me was about Katelyn’s injury, and she told me when she had permission, which was very early.

The second secret she withheld from me was her family’s wealth, but she told me when her parents were confident in her relationship with me, at the five-month mark, and gave their permission.

This third secret? Her parents didn’t even know about it. That was just for the two girls and me, apparently, and was supposed to remain that way, for now at least. The girls must have been calculating when to tell me. Amelie must have been stressed about hiding it from me, but she needed to wait until it was the right time in their sisters-come-first dynamic.

Seven months in, they felt ready to tell me. Because they believed they could trust me with their most tender truth. Because Amelie had become confident that I represented the solution they’d been searching for.

I was suddenly hit by an awful vision: Amelie catching my eye on campus as she was heading out on a date with another man. I knew what she most wanted: me. But I’d forced her to keep looking for the right man. I saw the grief and sadness in her eyes. Then she turned away.

That would be absolutely unbearable!!

But how could I be confident in her love? I’d be haunted by uncertainty forever if we stayed together. Just like I’d be haunted by her forever if I let her go.

“Breathe, John,” I said out loud. I looked down at my fingers, dug hard into the arm rest, knuckles white. I relaxed my hands and arms, my neck and shoulders, my twisted gut and abs, my tense legs. Even my toes were tight and I let them unclench. “Breathe,” I said, and closed my eyes.

“What’s most important, John?” I whispered.

But I didn’t know.

Mercifully, as I relaxed, sleep came, and offered respite from my emotional turmoil.

I was walking up the driveway when Amelie called after me.

“John! Wait!”

I turned around to look at her, eyes red from crying, standing on the edge of the big concrete pad under the house in bare feet. I smiled weakly. Then I turned away and trudged along the driveway.

I heard her running, squealing as she hurt her feet on the gravel.

“John!”

I stopped with my back to her. I heard her stop running.

“Is that all I get?” she asked. “No response? Not even a goodbye?”

I turned to face her. As confused as I felt, I knew I was too muddled to have this conversation.

“I’ll see you back in Austin,” I said. “I need some space.”

I turned away again and took a few steps.

“Wait!” This time she screamed and broke down in tears. I turned around yet again and took in the pitiful sight before me. Her feet were probably cut on the gravel, her heart was torn apart, and she was crying her eyes out, begging me for something more. But what more was there? I just needed time.

“You need to explain,” she sobbed. “You can’t just hear all of that – everything about me, about us, about Katelyn – and walk out without saying anything.”

“I’m not breaking up with you, Amelie,” I said. “We can talk in Austin. After I get my head clear.”

“But I was going to… we were finally going to… this week was a really big deal for me.”

What could I say to that? I just nodded, trying to convey that I understood.

“Are your feet okay?” I asked.

“I think I might have cut them,” said Amelie, between jagged breaths.

I walked back to her. “Come on,” I said as I picked her up and carried her over the fifty yards of gravel driveway to the house. She clung to me and nuzzled my neck as I held her.

“Katelyn will help with the cuts,” I said, as I set her down on the edge of the concrete pad under the house. Amelie was hobbled in pain until she sat down to take the weight off her ravaged feet.

“What will Katelyn do?” asked Katelyn, rolling down the ramp from the elevator lobby, sounding perfectly neutral.

“She ran on the gravel and cut her feet,” I said.

“I see you’re leaving,” she said, still sounding neutral. “Would you carry Amelie upstairs before you go?”

I stared at the two girls, one seeming calm, the other looking wretched.

I picked Amelie up and we walked into the elevator.

“Kitchen,” said Katelyn, and I hit the button for the second level.

We rode the slow elevator in silence. I felt Amelie clinging tightly to my neck and trying to calm her ragged breathing.

“Please John,” she said, as the elevator doors eased open on the living level. “I know it’s a lot. I know you must be angry and confused. But don’t leave. This is a big house. You need space. So we’ll give you space. As much as you want. We can talk again when you’re ready.”

I set her down gently on the kitchen counter and she bent her legs to look at the damage.

“Let me see your feet,” I said. It was as stupid as it was instinctive.

“I’ve got her,” said Katelyn. “Take some time, John. We’ll stay out of the Belvedere, your suite, and the grounds, and we’ll stay off the stairs. You’ll have all the space you need. You’re in shock and walking back to Austin with no money isn’t a rational response. When you’re ready, we’ll have a tribunal.”

“A tribunal?” said Amelie, looking down at her little sister’s face. My question exactly.

“Yeah,” said Katelyn. “Amelie goes on trial for deceiving her boyfriend and trapping him in an unfair situation, then dumping everything on him in an overwhelming way. We’ll decide on her punishment. And if you guys are going to break up over this, it’d be a healthy way to move past each other.”

“Would you stay, John? Long enough for a tribunal?” Amelie’s plea, made with a shuddering voice, moved me.

“There’s no point in a tribunal,” I said. “I already know the secret and I’m not going to condemn anyone, especially not two sisters who are being loyal and loving to each other. I’m going to my suite to calm down and figure out how to get home from here. Then you can take me to the nearest airport or whatever.”

“Okay,” said Amelie, accepting that even while in obvious despair.

“We’re good, John,” said Katelyn. “Go take a break and get your head clear. We’ll do a tribunal if you feel up to it. If you really want to leave, Amelie will take you wherever you want to go. And thanks for not leaving. Both of us would have been worried sick if you’d done that.”

I walked to the stairs and started down to the bedroom level.

“I’m sorry, John,” called Katelyn. I paused my descent but didn’t turn around. “Nothing about this is fair to you. We weren’t trying to hurt you, I promise, even though that’s how it turned out. We did the best we could.”

I nodded, my back to the girls, then walked down the stairs.

That was an extremely weird question, and it reduced the Belvedere to tense silence for quite a while. I was sure the girls were communicating with their eyes, but I had no idea what was happening. After a minute, Katelyn nodded ever so slightly and Amelie turned toward me.

“The day Katelyn had her fall, the reason Mom and Dad and I weren’t there is that we were at the hospital.”

Amelie turned to Katelyn, and I caught another micro-nod from the younger sister.

“Though I was a year older and had been developing through puberty normally in most ways,” said Amelie, “my period hadn’t begun. I was fourteen, and some girls don’t start until even older, but Katelyn had started two years earlier when she was eleven, so she and Mom and me started to get worried.”

Amelie looked down at her hands before looking at me. “Right as Katelyn fell, we found out that I have a congenital condition called MRKH Type 1, which means…” Amelie began to tear up. “It means I can never get pregnant.”

I was moving to touch her until Katelyn held up her hand to stop me, and I sat back.

Amelie took a calming breath, glanced at Katelyn for courage, and looked back at me.

“Okay… so MRKH,” she began quietly. “It stands for Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser syndrome. I have Type 1, which is the milder form. I’ll try to explain it without making any of us uncomfortable.” She gave a small, shaky laugh, and wiped her tears.

“Basically, when I was developing before birth, everything built normally on the outside, and all my hormones work just like anyone else’s. I went through puberty on time, I have normal ovarian function, normal hormone cycles, everything you’d expect – except one thing.” She swallowed. “I was born without a uterus.”

I felt my face shift, in concern. I still wanted to comfort her but held back.

“That means I don’t get periods, and I can’t carry a pregnancy. But otherwise my body works completely normally. Nothing about daily life is affected. I’m healthy, I’m not in pain, nothing is wrong with me in the medical sense… just different.”

Her voice was wavering, but she kept going.

“It’s not something you can see from the outside. It’s not something anyone would ever guess. The anatomical parts that matter for intimacy develop almost typically in Type 1. I didn’t even know anything was unusual until I didn’t get a period.”

I watched her brush another tear away, vigorously, seeming frustrated at herself for crying.

“It sounds so clinical when I say it like that. But when you’re fourteen and a doctor sits you down and tells you you’ll never be pregnant… it feels like a door slams shut before you even knew it was there. I’d just been assuming I’d have children one day.”

I watched Katelyn reach over and squeeze Amelie’s hand.

“I don’t think about it every day anymore. Honestly, most of the time I forget about it. My life is full and normal and good. But Katelyn and I talked, and we knew that one day, when someone started to matter to me…” – she looked at me directly now, eyes wet but voice steady – “I’d need to say something before it became a bigger secret than it needed to be.”

Amelie smiled weakly at me.

“That’s it. That’s the whole story. I’m fine – really. It’s just… a tender spot. A place I’d never show someone unless they’ve earned it. And you’re the first person I’ve told.”

No wonder Amelie had been so edgy, I thought. She and Katelyn had known that today was the day to reveal this secret.

What to say? I related most to Pete in this story. I pictured him worried about one girl and getting news that the other had broken her back in a fall.

“That must have been one hell of a day for your parents,” I said, looking at both girls.

“It was a bad day, yeah,” said Katelyn. “And it turned Mom from fun-loving coolness into a raging lunatic helicopter parent.”

Amelie frowned in disapproval.

“Big sis is way too understanding about that particular issue, as usual. Mom would chain me up to keep me safe if Dad would let her.”

“She would not!” exclaimed Amelie, obviously shocked. Katelyn watched her sister quietly, and I saw Amelie figure out what was happening. “Damn, girl,” she said quietly.

“A little distraction never hurts,” said Katelyn, ever so gently. Amelie nodded.

These two girls were great with each other. I felt honored to watch it unfold. And I never sensed more strongly my longing for a sibling.

“Okay, so that was a bad day for everyone,” said Katelyn breezily. “But this game is called Truth Not Dare for a reason, and Amelie just lied.”

“I did not lie!’ said Amelie, plainly shocked.

“You said, ‘That’s the whole story.’ And that’s a lie,” said Katelyn.

“Katelyn!” whispered Amelie urgently, glancing at me out of the corner of her eye as she leaned toward her sister. “What are you doing?!”

They must have known I could hear everything they were saying. But they kept on whispering.

“He’s the one,” whispered Katelyn. “It’s time.”

“You can’t…” whispered Amelie.

“It’s okay,” said Katelyn.

“Oh God,” said Amelie, sitting up straight and facing me, looking pale, still holding Katelyn’s hand.

“The Very Bad Day occurred when Katelyn was thirteen and I was fourteen,” Amelie said. “Kinsey was lost and we two pseudo-twins were changed in the blink of an eye. Mom felt like her family was cursed for a while. Dad held everything together like usual. Katelyn’s rehab was grueling – for her, obviously, but also for the rest of us, and especially for Dad, who was with her almost all the time for that part of the recovery. Once we knew the T8 injury was complete, there was a lot for us to absorb, and Katelyn needed to learn a lot about how to live independently.”

I watched the two girls look at each other, smiling in a loving and determined way. I was trying to estimate where Amelie was headed, but I had no idea.

“Katelyn and I were together whenever I wasn’t at school in those days. When we weren’t crying and making each other laugh, we were talking, trying to figure out what these twin problems might mean for our lives. Eventually we decided what mattered most to us.”

Amelie stopped talking then, and looked from me to Katelyn. Katelyn nodded to encourage Amelie to continue, but Amelie gave an almost imperceptible shake of her head. Katelyn sighed and looked at me.

“What my nervous sister is trying to say is that we made twin promises to each other,” explained Katelyn. “Amelie would take care of me forever, and I would find a way to help her have children that we could raise together.”

“Wow,” I said, struggling for words.

“Girls are stupidly intense at that age,” said Katelyn. “We probably would have forgotten we ever made those promises except that Amelie is bizarrely loyal and dedicated, and she routinely sacrifices herself for everyone she loves, including me. So the twin promises became a really big deal for us. Mom and Dad don’t know about this, and that’s the way we’d like to keep it.”

“We talked about the kind of man who could fit with our promises,” said Amelie, picking up the story. “He had to be willing to share his life with both of us, go through the whole IVF thing with my eggs and Katelyn’s surrogate womb, and truly love me, and I him. We thought such a man would be hard to find, and my experience to date confirms that intuition.”

Finally, finally, the penny dropped for me. Amelie had been hunting for a man to fulfill this role in her and Katelyn’s life. That’s why she’d dated so many guys. That’s why I felt she’d been observing me, evaluating me. That’s why she’d been so aggressive when she discovered hints of my character.

And in the future? Was I supposed to live with both sisters in some kind of trio?! Married to one and caring for the other?! Raising children with both?! My parents would kill me! Why had Amelie waited so long to tell me this all-important fact about her?!! The scale of it was too big – marriage-big, family-big, forever-big.

I couldn’t take it in. The two girls were looking anxiously in my direction, both still holding hands.

“John?” It was Katelyn but I barely registered her voice.

Questions kept coming at me, one after another, like opponents crashing into me under the basket. Had I gotten the whole thing wrong? Was I just part of a plan they’d made years before I showed up? Was any of it real, or was everything set up from the beginning? What did they expect me to do?! I could feel my world crumbling, all my assumptions turned inside out and discarded like old socks tossed into a corner. Despite the all-around view of the Belvedere, I started to feel closed in, the air unbreathable. An almost unstoppable urge to get outside started to rise within me, like I was about to throw up.

“You chose me because of the twin promises?” I said to Amelie, finding my voice and trying to keep my rising panic and overwhelm under control. She was starting to look frightened.

“Yes, and because I love you,” she said quietly, the hand not clasping Katelyn’s fiddling with the hair above her ear.

“But…” I said, before losing track of my words.

The air conditioning kicked on in the silent room and made me jump.

“You…” I tried again and tumbled over my own thoughts.

I could feel myself on the edge of drowning in confusion, very likely to say something devastatingly hurtful. I couldn’t stay. I needed to get away from there so I could breathe.

Before I fully understood what I was doing, my mind in a dark vortex of confusion, I lost it. I stood up and walked to the stairs.

“No,” I heard from behind me, as Amelie broke down. “Not like this…”

I walked down the stairs, moving faster as I went. I ran to my suite to shoulder my backpack. Boots on, I took the stairs to the ground level and started marching away from the house.

“We’re too old for that,” said Amelie. “And you’d just use it to cause trouble with outrageous dares.”

“True,” said Katelyn, a mischievous gleam in her eyes. “So how about Truth Not Dare? We can discover each other’s secrets. We’re basically honest people, especially me.”

Amelie said, “Yeah, especially you.” I found Amelie’s sarcasm reassuring. Maybe I was reading too much into this.

“Fine,” I said. “I’m an open book. But sex is out of bounds.”

“Harsh limitation!” said Katelyn. “All the best secrets have to do with sex. But I can live with it. You go first, John. Ask anyone anything. We can refuse to answer but that’s legitimate grounds for teasing about being chickenshit for the entire weekend.”

“Okay,” I said, but I just knew my question was going to be evaluated. “Katelyn, why did you ask Amelie to push you earlier? You didn’t need the help.”

“Oooo, a relational question,” said Katelyn. No doubt about it: I was being evaluated. “You’re as observant as Amelie says. Why do you think I did that?” she asked.

“Is asking a question to answer a question allowed?” I said, my attempt at rule-mongering ruined by the goofy smile on my face.

“I’m curious,” she said, as if that answered anything. I decided to play along.

“I thought it might be a way for you to settle in with each other after not being together for a while.”

“Score one for the big guy,” said Katelyn. She looked over to Amelie with raised eyebrows.

“I told you already, a hundred times,” said Amelie, rolling her eyes. “Your turn, Katelyn.”

“Okay,” she said, her eyes drifting up to ten o’clock, as if she didn’t already know exactly what she was going to ask. “What did you two think when you first saw each other?”

“That’s two questions!” said Amelie.

“It would be if you weren’t a couple, but you’re a couple so it’s one,” said Katelyn. That made zero sense, but I liked her impishness. I was already starting to get a better feel for this girl than I’d built over many video calls.

I looked over at Amelie. She was smiling at me, but I thought I detected a trace of uncertainty in that smile. Little sis, who looked nearly identical, seemed genuinely curious.

“You two really do look like twins,” I mused.

“No avoiding the question by flattering me,” said Katelyn, making Amelie roll her eyes again.

“She was standing in the Carothers dorm lobby waiting for a cart,” I began. “She was the only one without a family to help. Most people were looking at my height or my cart. When Amelie looked at me, it was drawn out. Not landing and eyes flicking away, and not rudely staring, either. It was more like studying. I was instantly attracted to her. A few minutes later, I asked if she wanted help. It was an outrageously assertive move for me. Something about her drew it out of me.”

Amelie’s smile broadened as her eyes softened.

“Good answer,” said Katelyn. “Go, sis.”

“I was standing there minding my own business when a sweat-soaked giant entered the lobby,” said Amelie. “He was effortlessly pushing a loaded cart toward the elevator. His tank top was sticking to his chest and back, and even his hair was dripping. I was afraid he might shake his head like a wet dog and shower all of us with sweat.”

“I would never!” I exclaimed, in mock outrage.

“No interrupting in the middle of a story, John,” said Katelyn.

“Yes, Ma’am,” I said, chuckling.

“I felt this tingle all through my body,” said Amelie. “Instant attraction. Handsome, serious, strong, even cute on the right angle.” I laughed at that, and Amelie continued.

“I reminded myself how many boys I’d been attracted to, who’d turned out to be jerks with defective character, and eventually managed to tear my eyes away. A few minutes later John returned with an empty cart. I looked up because of a rattling wheel and watched him apologize to the waiting crowd because he had another load. Then he walked right up to me. I’ll never forget his first words. ‘You’re the only one here without a family. If you need help, walk with me.’ I was caught on the fact that he’d noticed that I was alone and had offered to help. I thought I’d go along with it and see if he really was helpful, or if he was just using my vulnerable situation as an excuse for a stylish come-on.”

Katelyn cocked her head as if to assess whether I was even capable of a stylish come-on, but I knew that was not in my repertoire.

“As we walked to my car, bantering, something amazing happened,” said Amelie. “John accidentally let me know that he loved his parents and didn’t want to hurt them or mislead them. I embarrassed myself by blurting something out about him being kind, and he was really gracious about it. Seeing my embarrassment, he shared more of himself to even things up between us. Do you remember?” she asked smiling at me.

“Of course,” I said.

“That was almost-impossible-to-fake goodness,” she continued, “and I knew I needed to know more about this man. After that, things moved so fast. Something about the new environment, maybe, but I was way off my game, and I could tell John was, too. And that became a kind of theme, I guess – we’d do and say whatever we wanted and to hell with the normal dating protocols. The way he flowed with that helped me relax. It wasn’t long until I realized I’d stumbled onto an amazing person.”

“Aw, nice story, sis,” said Katelyn. “Two good answers,” she added. “You two are just perfect for each other, both so serious and boring.”

“Thank you, Katelyn,” said Amelie sarcastically. The only time I saw her descend into sarcasm was on calls to Katelyn, and it was usually followed by fits of giggling. “We’re serious, sure, sometimes. But there’s nothing boring about love at first sight and breaking all the rules to explore a relationship.”

“Point taken,” said Katelyn, smiling wonkily. “I’ll amend that to serious and mostly boring. Now, it’s the mostly boring sister’s turn to ask a question.”

Amelie turned to Katelyn. “The trip up here was a first for you. Mom was out-of-her-skin worried. What was it like driving alone for two hours?” Amelie obviously really wanted to know, and I got the sense that Katelyn’s independence was as important to caring big sis as it was to stubborn little sis. This drive up had been a big deal for the entire Foster family.

“Dad called it my ‘coming‑of‑age’ road trip,” said Katelyn. “And yeah, Mom was unbearable about it. But apparently I’m stubborn, so I pretended I wasn’t scared. And if you say anything to Mom and Dad about me faking my confidence, I’ll murder you in your sleep.”

She actually seemed serious. “Easy girl,” said Amelie, smiling gently, with the trace of a frown.

“Sorry, that was a bit over the top,” said Katelyn. “I just mean that two hours alone in the driver’s seat was a leap, and I was nervous about it. I’d been working up to it but still. If Mom had known the details, there’s no way she’d have agreed.”

Katelyn tapped her sternum lightly and looked at me. “The thing nobody tells you about driving with a T8 injury is that driving isn’t the hard part. My arms are plenty strong enough to steer and brake all day long. But keeping myself balanced for that long?” She shook her head. “Every little curve or gust of wind on the car forced me to catch myself with my shoulders. The extra belts help but, after the first hour, it felt like I was holding up the entire car with my arms.”

Amelie winced in sympathy, and I did too.

“And then there’s the bladder timing. And don’t even think about rolling your eyes – you asked.”

“I wasn’t rolling my eyes!” complained Amelie.

“T8 means the signals are all scrambled,” continued Katelyn. “So I did what every smart para does: planned like a general. Bathroom before leaving. Nothing to drink for an hour. Knew exactly where the accessible stops were. But the whole time, in the back of my mind, I’m going, please body, cooperate just this once.”

Amelie and I laughed softly. I really appreciated how open Katelyn was about something so personal.

“I know you and Mom were terrified,” she continued. “Dad was, too, though he pretended to be Mr. Goofy Stoic like usual. ‘We have to let the girls try,’ right? That’s what he kept saying. Over and over. I think he was trying to convince himself.”

I smiled a little at that. I understood the kind of father who tries to hide how much he loves and worries.

“But here’s the best part,” said Katelyn, turning her chair to face Amelie full-on. “Once I actually got going, after Miami faded behind me and the roads opened up, something shifted. I wasn’t scared. I wasn’t thinking about pressure relief, or fatigue, or what could go wrong if I needed help and no one was there.”

I could almost taste it. That feeling of just going somewhere by yourself, whenever you want. I’d never even thought about it. For Katelyn, it was everything.

“It felt like freedom. Real freedom,” she said. “Just me, music turned up, sun slanting through my window, chair folded on the seat beside me. I knew exactly what I was capable of, and for two straight hours, nothing – not the injury, not fear, not an overprotective mother – could tell me otherwise.”

Amelie’s eyes were soft now.

“And yeah,” Katelyn added, “by the time I pulled up to the Lake House, my shoulders were toast. The transfer out of the car felt more like a controlled fall. But I did it. All by myself. That drive was a good reminder that my life wasn’t going to be smaller because of what happened. Just different. And still mine. I’d do it again tomorrow. Or in a few days, anyway.”

Amelie held out her fist and Katelyn bumped it with hers, their fingers exploding in a slow-motion celebration.

“So John,” said Katelyn, “a more complete answer to your question about why I asked Amelie to push me when I arrived is that my shoulders and arms were worn out. The reconnection thing was the biggest part, and I could have moved myself, but it was nice to get some help.”

“Back to you, John,” said Amelie.

I wasn’t prepared. And maybe that’s why I bumbled into tender territory.

“Katelyn, Amelie told me you think she’s making a mistake going to business school, and that she should be focusing on fashion design and textiles. To me, it looks like she’s choosing a school because of you, a degree because of her family, and a minor because of me. Do you think Amelie’s thoughtfulness and generosity to others is harmful to her?”

I scrupulously avoided Amelie’s glare as I ended the question.

“Hell, yes!” said Katelyn, full of energy. “She’s like this powerhouse world-changer, yet she’s all tangled up in taking care of everyone around her.” Katelyn’s voice softened as she turned from me to Amelie. “It’s her character, in one way, which makes it beautiful. And I couldn’t be more grateful. But I also feel like I need to kick her gorgeous ass to make sure she takes care of herself.” The energetic edge returned as Katelyn looked at me. “It’s like deep in her. She’s as stubborn about that as I am about my independence, so it’ll be tough to talk her out of anything involving supporting someone she loves.”

“How do you encourage her to take care of herself?” I was still avoiding Amelie’s gaze.

“Mainly shopping,” said Katelyn, laughing. “I’ve found all her best outfits.”

Amelie snorted at that. I loved watching the two of them together. They could flip from serious to sarcastic in a second, then back again, and somehow it all felt natural.

“Your turn, Katelyn,” I said.

A couple of hours later, we’d finished unloading the groceries and unpacking our gear. Knowing we had about an hour until Katelyn was due to arrive, I grabbed a couple of water bottles and led Amelie to a pair of deck chairs on the patio. Instead of sitting down on hers, Amelie curled up alongside me on mine.

It hit me anew right then: Amelie was constantly affectionate. She craved physical and emotional closeness. Maybe it was compensation for the frustration associated with deferring sex for so long. But I thought it was innate. Whatever the reason, I loved it.

That day she wanted to talk.

“What are you, now, six-seven?”

“Mmmhmm,” I said. “Maybe I’ve got another inch in me but I’m nineteen and few people keep growing after twenty.”

“Another inch would be nice,” she said. Amelie knew that I knew she couldn’t care less how tall I was. But she said it anyway, aiming to touch the tender part of me that was self-conscious about my size.

“Katelyn will be here, soon,” she said, her head on my shoulder and her hand playing over my chest. “It’s going to be an interesting afternoon, John. There’s lots for you to discover. It could be complicated at times. Or funny. Or tender. Or shocking. She’s not easy to predict. But one thing is certain: as you get to know Katelyn, you and I can go deeper, too, because she and I are so close.”

“Okay,” I said, not really understanding what Amelie meant. I’d spent a lot of time on video calls with her sister, so I wasn’t starting from scratch.

“I’ve coached you on this before,” she continued, “but just to reiterate: Don’t help unless she asks. She won’t hesitate to request help, so you don’t need to worry that she might be hiding some unspoken need. For example, she’ll want help carrying her luggage, and you can do that, but wait until she asks. She’ll want to handle moving from the car to the wheelchair and getting inside the house herself.”

“Got it,” I said. I’d been working on picturing Katelyn’s fiercely independent streak, with lots of coaching from Amelie, so I hoped I wouldn’t screw up too badly.

“You’ll adapt quickly,” she said. “You always do. And remember, she and Mom and Dad already love you, and love how I am with you and how you are with me, so there’s no need to prove yourself to anyone. You’re already part of the family. We just need to get you accustomed to what Katelyn is like in person. She’s a lot, John, but she’s a beautiful soul.”

“I understand,” I said. “Honestly, I don’t think you need to be this worried. I’ll make mistakes, and she probably will too, and we’ll figure it out.”

“We will,” said Amelie. “I hope.”

“Amelie, sit up,” I said, frowning. She sat on my hips, bracing herself with her hands on my chest.

“Why are you so edgy?” I asked.

“Am I edgy?” she replied. I just looked at her and watched the silly denial crumble. “You’re both very important to me,” she said eventually. “I want this to go well.”

That didn’t seem to explain her anxiety and my frown didn’t disappear.

“John, don’t push me on this, okay? Just let me be a bit anxious until the three of us find our level with each other.”

I was stunned. In itself, it wasn’t a shocking thing to say. But I’d never seen Amelie set boundaries to keep me at a distance. What was going on?

“Sorry,” I said. “No pushing, okay?”

“No pushing is good. Thank you.” But her jaw was set and her eyes were shining. I was even more confused.

I handed her one of the water bottles and opened one for myself. We watched one another as we drank. Cautiously. She took another swig, her face locked on mine. She wasn’t going to explain, and I wasn’t going to ask again.

“Hug?” I asked.

“Yes please,” she said, and slowly folded herself down on top of me. We stayed there many minutes until her phone dinged.

“She’s early,” said Amelie, springing up.

We arrived in the ground-level parking area to see Katelyn’s car door open wider than normal car doors can – one of several adaptations in this car, I assumed. I watched her lean over to pull her folded chair from the passenger seat, across her body, to the ground beside the car, where she unfolded it.

“John!” cried Katelyn. “Damn, you really are tall. Get my bags, will you?”

“On it,” I said, as I watched her lock the chair in place and lever herself into it. She had a powerful upper body.

“Push me,” she said to Amelie, and I suspected it wasn’t because Katelyn needed help or Amelie wanted something to do. I thought it was a kind of intimacy. I followed the girls up the ramp to the elevator. When we were inside, she said, “Give me a hug, you two.” It was a tangle of arms and heads, but we did it.

“Put her gear in one of the east bedrooms,” said Amelie, as they dropped me off on the first level. “Join us in the Belvedere on the third floor in sixty minutes.”

Okay, that was weird. Sixty minutes? I’d done my homework on T8 spinal cord injuries, and knew Katelyn might need some time to herself after a trip like that, but sixty minutes?

I dropped off Katelyn’s roller bag and duffel and momentarily wondered whether I should be doing the valet thing and unpacking. Wait until asked, I reminded myself. Also, I didn’t want trying to be helpful crossing over into creepy territory. I walked to the northerly suite where I’d be staying, to pass the time.

There was a spacious bedroom, a sitting area, two walk-in closets, a luxurious bathroom, and my favorite feature: the den hovering under the second-level patio. I sat in a recliner with a view through the steel structural supports, past the vast elevated steel-braced pool container to my left, and across the lawn to the boathouse and the canal. The towering dike beyond was the backdrop, but I could picture the vista of the Big O that it hid.

Picturing the lake in my mind’s eye helped me calm down. I was edgy because Amelie was, and I was glad to have a few minutes to recenter. I closed my eyes and breathed. Katelyn and me meeting in person is important to Amelie, I told myself. Let her go through this in her own way.

Just before the one-hour mark, I climbed the stairs to the second level. I grabbed an orange from the fruit basket Amelie and I had just replenished and stood over the sink peeling it, taking in the view and mindlessly trying to manage my weirdly strong feeling of anxiety.

My phone dinged.

Amelie: watcha doin

John: orange. want 1?

Amelie: 2 pls

John: k

I walked up the stairs with three paper towels and three peeled oranges in three bowls. I found the girls sitting close together, half facing the lake, Amelie in a recliner and Katelyn in her chair. I couldn’t help noticing that Amelie had been crying. She was freaking me out today.

“Thanks,” they said, seeming glad for something refreshing to eat. I sat down on another recliner, already turned to face them and the lake, and ate the orange while taking in the magnificent view.

The vibe was friendly but strange, and Amelie’s tear-stained face was unnerving me. I averted my eyes and focused on the lake, feeling watched.

Eating the orange segment by segment was helping but I was finished when they were only half-way done. Strategic mistake.

I wiped my hands as I walked to the Belvedere windows. I felt the afternoon sun on my face, appreciating the glazing technology that was filtering out the most damaging rays.

“Shade?” I asked the girls, as the line of sunshine had already reached halfway up Katelyn’s body and would soon be in her eyes.

“A bit more shade would be nice,” said Katelyn.

I used the controls to move the shades out. That would buy some time as the horizon rose to meet the sun, without interfering with our view of the lake.

When the girls finished their oranges, they wiped their hands and I took the three bowls back to the kitchen. There I slowly washed the bowls and tried to settle myself.

Eventually, I slowly took the stairs back up and sat down, smiling at the two sisters to cover my nerves.

I knew it had been built for both sets of grandparents to share time with Pete and Pam and their girls. The two west-facing bedrooms looked out under the deck and to the metal body of the pool, which was braced above the ground so its surface was level with the patio above. The other two bedrooms and the two suites looked out on the grass and trees surrounding the property to the north, east, and south.

“This south-facing suite is Mom and Dad’s,” she said. “They’ll expect you and me to stay in the north-facing suite, and Katelyn to take one of the other four bedrooms. So we need to talk about us. And intimacy. Again.” She smiled sweetly.

I looked at her, frowning in confusion and feeling conflicted. It made her frown right back at me.

“Wait,” she said. “Let me try. There’s nothing you’d like more than to spend ten days shacked up with me in a Lake House suite. But you don’t want to mislead your parents. And part of you still believes that sex should wait until marriage.”

I looked at her, feeling an odd mixture of regret and gratitude. I nodded and lowered my head.

“Then you take the north suite. Katelyn and I will share the east pair of bedrooms.” She smiled kindly. “This’ll be nice. Now let’s take stock of the kitchen and go shopping.”

I recognized that I had no right to expect the level of perceptiveness and acceptance that Amelie had just displayed, but she was built for giving it – and not just to me, to everyone close to her. She could bend too far for other people. It might have been her biggest flaw, and it reminded me of Mom. But it was genuine, no question. And she was actually good at saying what she wanted, even if she chose to do something different.

My moralism was my great weakness. I was hard on myself. Not on other people – I could let most things go unless someone hurt a person I cared about. But inside, I was constantly judging myself, beating myself up, setting impossible standards. It sometimes paid off in architecture, so it wasn’t all bad. But Amelie worried about me being too demanding of myself and gently helped me accept my imperfections. She wasn’t afraid of them or disgusted by them. Her attitude helped me forgive myself when I screwed up.

As I watched her take stock of the kitchen and work on a shopping list, I thought back to my first studio project, during the first three weeks of the Fall semester. It was called “Body, Movement, Light” and designed to be small, abstract, and sensory. In other words, it was supposed to mess with the heads of innocent first-year BArch students. The syllabus described it as “An introductory exploration of form, space, and movement through iterative modeling of a simple human movement – its rhythm, tension, compression, release, and temporary balance.” We were supposed to study a movement and translate it into a three-dimensional spatial composition using only planes. Not a building. Not a structure. A translation.

The bit about iterative modeling was no joke. I tried and failed, again and again and again. I selected a movement Amelie makes when we walk together: the subtle shift of her weight when she leans in to look at something beside me. I did gesture studies, motion arcs, force diagrams, spatial rhythm drawings, and I built a model out of chipboard. It would be more accurate to say I built that model eight times. Eight hellish times. My fury at myself was motivating, I suppose, but mostly it was counterproductive. I was so ashamed I hid my agony from Amelie, which made me feel sick.

Professor Phillips told me I was drawing movement beautifully, but my models were too literal, too vertical, too symmetrical, and – this comment stayed with me verbatim – “too much building, not enough gesture.” I knew what he meant. I could see it for myself, which is why I was so frustrated.

It was nine in the evening and there were about twenty of us in the studio, all stuck on the project. I grew so desperate that there came a moment when I hated my entire upbringing – the moralistic perfectionism, the relentless self-criticism, the fear of making mistakes, of straying outside the borders of expectation. That’s when I couldn’t take it anymore. I ran to the bathroom on fifth floor of Simmons and threw up.

Sitting on the bathroom floor, I called Amelie and told her everything. Everything. From my failure to my hatred of my upbringing. The only thing I didn’t say was that she was my inspiration for the movement I was trying to understand. “Is that why you haven’t been eating properly?” she’d asked. She was right, but I was so distracted I hadn’t even noticed. “Do you remember my blue dress, the one with flowing light? Remember how it drapes? How it dances? How it exudes joy?” I started crying then. Stress overload, I guess. It was humiliating crying on the phone with my girlfriend over a school assignment. All I could think about was what my Dad would think. But Viking would cuddle with me. I breathed deeply while Amelie stayed silent on the phone, present, not demanding. I pictured that incredible dress. I felt the joy radiating from it as the light danced on its surfaces. Just before I hung up, she said, “You don’t have to hate where you came from to outgrow it, John.”

Still faintly nauseous, I dragged myself off the floor and back into the studio. I stared at my model for a minute. Then I crushed it with my fist.

“Easy, John,” someone had mumbled.

Just after one in the morning, something happened. I tilted a plane just a few degrees. The whole composition suddenly leaned – not to depict Amelie, but to evoke her balance, her weight shift, her presence. Within ten minutes, I had one anchoring vertical plane, which felt like my own body as reference, and a diagonally leaning plane, which felt like Amelie’s lovely gesture. There was a small counter plane behind it, which was the recoil motion of her body, balancing forces. The open negative space carved between her plane and mine was the intimacy of shared attention.

“Sweet Jesus!” I said, a bit loudly. Most of the fifteen people still in the studio chuckled quietly. They understood breakthrough moments and were looking for their own.

A few days later, during the show-and-tell-and-criticize, my classmates were talking about tectonics and balance. The TA pointed out the airy tension between the leaning and anchoring planes. Someone said it felt like two forces in dialogue. Prof. Phillips said it was restrained but confident. I felt exposed – and embarrassed by how accurate the comments were. I left the crit shaking. Maybe it was a reaction to feeling reshaped from the inside by this God-awful, impossibly painful, yet utterly majestic process. But it felt like there was an enormity inside me that was rattling me to my bones and surging to get out.

After the late-afternoon crit, I went straight to Amelie’s room to find her. She left with me and we went downstairs to the Joynes Reading Room, where we were alone. I was still shaking and I tried to explain the thing in me desperate to get out. I told her I thought it was my new self trying to get out of the dark prison of my upbringing. She was quiet the whole time I was talking. Eventually I fell silent, still shaking. I’ll never forget her words, or how she delivered them. She knelt on the floor in front of me, making herself small as I sat in a lounge chair. There, she held her hands out and I placed mine in hers. I stared at her eyes, which were full of serenity.

“A small part of this is about your past – letting that go. But most of what you’re feeling right now? That’s you finding out who you are as an architect. That’s the part of you that wants to make beautiful things, and it’s not going to stop trying to get out.”

It cracked me open. I was crying, holding her hands, looking right at her. I’d never felt so close to another person in my life. The shaking stopped as I realized it was my soul’s sincere desire starting to germinate.

That exchange was the most sacred moment of my life to that point. I knew I could never let Amelie go. And I knew she’d never let me go. And I was going to keep those three planes forever.