“I’m not going to tell her that today,” Sébastien said, appalled. Then aloud, “But Laura still hasn’t officially agreed to marry me yet, Mom.”

I froze like a deer in headlights, feeling sick to my stomach. Instant nausea was a natural human reaction to such a statement to a semifiancé’s mother, but I should also mention that Jean-Charles was in top competitive French driving form today, and there was a big wet golden Lab in the car.

“No!” Claudine twisted her red head again, apparently not in the least troubled by carsickness. She fixed me with brown eyes only a shade lighter than her son’s, her gaze unwavering as Jean-Charles accelerated at top speed to within an inch of someone’s bumper. “Why not?”

“Umm . . . we haven’t known each other very long,” I stammered.

Claudine continued to gaze at me in polite inquiry.

“Only eight months,” I tried.

Jean-Charles braked on a dime and roared something at the driver he’d been tailgating. Claudine’s gaze did not waver.

“I’m not sure I can take a lifetime involvement with the French culture?”

Claudine frowned. Maybe she didn’t know the French were so difficult.

“Are we very far?” I murmured to Sébastien. “Because otherwise, we need to stop so I can throw up.”

Sébastien’s maternal grandparents lived an hour outside of Paris, in a small, old stone house with a huge and at that moment soaked garden. The mist had turned into rain during the night, and now rain poured down on verdant green lawns, and poured, and poured, making it clear it had no intention of stopping that day and probably not even that week. Sébastien’s grandfather, a small, stocky man with a luxuriant shock of gray hair, came out with an umbrella over his head to open the gate for us. The golden Lab jumped out and quickly started tracking mud in the entrance hall. We had barely arrived when she was joined by two others of her race, who leapt from the back of an old Fiat, followed immediately by shouts to behave. “Olive! Hermine! Descendez! Ah, ces chiens! Bonjour!”

The two men climbing out of either side of the Fiat could not have been more different physically. Sébastien’s uncle Titi—small, stocky, and dark—had a diamond stud in one ear. His real name was Jean-Pierre, but people always called him Titi, the French name for Tweety Bird. Barring any sudden sprouting of yellow feathers, I was going to have to assume that was for his personality. Though his hair was cropped short and had not yet grayed and his mannerisms were far more ironic, he resembled his father in a younger, more robust form. His partner, Bruno, sliding out of the driver’s seat, topped him by a foot.