Page 159 of Offside

The sound of the television being muted. My father appeared in the doorway. My father, retired firefighter, a man built like a defensive wall, with a quietness to him that surprised people until it didn’t. He took in me at the table, Linda at the counter, and the weight of the room.

“What happened,” he said.

“Nothing happened,” Mom said. She was smiling now. The smile she used when she was trying not to be too pleased about something. “Maren and Ryan are together.”

My father turned to me. “Since when?”

“It started in October,” I said.

My father looked at my mother with the compressed, full-sentence look of thirty-five years of marriage.

“You owe me fifty dollars,” Mom said.

My father made a sound that was not quite a word.

“I told you September,” Mom said.

Dad said, “I didn’t think they’d admit it til after playoffs. But you did say September.”

“Mom,” I said.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart, but your father and I have been watching this develop since the first family dinner and I’ve been very patient about not saying anything⁠—”

“You had a bet,” I said.

“A small one.”

“A fifty dollar bet on my love life⁠—”

“Your father thought it would take longer,” my mother said serenely. “I had more faith in you.”

My father pulled out a chair and sat down across from me, and his expression had gone warm and dry. On my father, that was as close to delighted as it got. “He’s a good man,” he said. “We like him.”

“I know you like him,” I said. “You’ve been treating him like a second son since you met him a million years ago.”

“Well.” My father spread his hands. “Turns out we were right.”

I put my face in my hands.

I heard my mother cross the kitchen and felt her hand on my shoulder, warm and steady. “We’re happy for you,” Mom said. “Both of us. That’s all.”

I looked up. My mother’s face was open and certain and entirely without complication. My father was nodding.

“Okay,” I said.

“Okay,” Mom agreed. “Now help me with these potatoes.”

Griffin arrived forty minutes later with a six-pack of beer and the slightly guarded expression he’d been wearing around Ryan and me since the apartment. He came through the back door, dropped the beer in the fridge, kissed our mother’s cheek, clapped our father on the shoulder, and turned to find me watching him from the kitchen table.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey.” I paused. “Mom and Dad know.”

He went still. “Know what.”

“About Ryan and me.”

Griffin turned to our parents. Our mother was arranging things on the counter with studied concentration. Our father was examining his beer with great interest.