"So how did you two meet?" she said.
Wes opened his mouth. Delia opened hers.
Wes said, "Laundromat."
Delia said, "Paris."
There was a silence in which the fire popped and a log shifted and somewhere in the kitchen the refrigerator hummed to itself. Barbara's eyebrows rose very slowly toward her silver bangs.
Delia set down her fork. She turned to Wes's mother and gave her a smile of such sweetness and composure that Wes felt it all the way down in his corduroys.
"A laundromat. In Paris."
Barbara put the carving knife down. She pressed one hand flat over her heart, over the cranberry wool and the pearls, and her whole face lit up as though someone had switched on a lamp behind it.
"Oh, how wonderful," she breathed. "Oh, Wesley, you never told me that. A laundromat in Paris." She looked from one of them to the other, glowing. "And the wedding?"