The Brennan living room looked ready for a better evening than the one it was about to get.
Hardwood floors took the last of the daylight and turned it gold. A large cream sectional faced a stone fireplace that had not been lit. Tall windows held the early evening like a polite guest who had arrived on time. Family photographs stood on the mantel in their usual order: Sarah at eight with a missing tooth, Sarah at fourteen after a soccer game, Richard and Claire on a pier, the three of them smiling at a graduation that was not yet the one that would matter. A polished wooden coffee table sat between the sofa and the hearth with a shallow bowl on it and nothing out of place. The house was upper-middle-class in the old suburban sense. Not famous. Not struggling. Tasteful contemporary décor, clean indoor light, the smell of a pot roast still mostly in the kitchen.
Claire had decided they would start in the living room. Let the boy come in. Let Richard see a person before he saw a theory. Let Sarah have five minutes without a fork in her hand.
Richard was already standing. He would have said he was only waiting. He was fifty, a white American man with fair, lightly tanned skin and a broad solid build. Short salt-and-pepper hair combed neatly to the side. Blue eyes. A square face. Trimmed beard stubble. He wore a navy quarter-zip sweater over a light collared shirt, khaki trousers, and brown leather loafers. He had the face of a man prepared to be pleasant. The smile was available. It had not yet been asked to survive a full look.
Claire stood near him, not quite beside him. She was forty-seven, fair-skinned, slim, elegant. Shoulder-length honey-blonde hair in a polished blowout. Blue eyes. Natural soft-glam makeup. Small pearl earrings. A burgundy knit top, tailored black pants, low heels. She had dressed because Sarah had asked them, without quite asking, to look like the parents in the version of the evening Sarah had been carrying around all week.
“Don’t hover in the doorway,” Claire said.
“I’m not hovering.”
“You’re standing where the lamp makes you look like a detective.”
Richard almost smiled for real. “I want to meet him. That’s all this is.”
Claire looked toward the front of the house. “Then meet him. The whole of him. Not the first three seconds.”