At thirty-five, Bruno was the younger man in the couple, but his hair was pure white, classily cut, and silky, just long enough for him to toss it expressively or run his fingers through it, as he did as soon as he stepped out of the car. “Et voilà la petite Laura!” He seized me for kisses on each cheek, confused when I stopped after two. “No, no! Here it’s four!”

He passed me to Titi for more kisses, and then Sébastien’s grandfather René caught my shoulders and held me there to look at me. “Et voilà la petite Laura!” he said as well, with four warm kisses. His eyes sparkled with pleasure. “Mais elle est jolie!” he complimented Sébastien. Pretty, hmm? I decided I liked him.

The dogs were banished to the entrance hall, since they had already covered it with mud, anyway. The rest of us crowded into the kitchen, where Sébastien’s tiny, round, and round-faced grandmother Pierrette was washing dishes. Shyer and quieter than her husband, but with the same attentive kindness, she dried her hands on a dishtowel and gave me four bises.

The kitchen and dining room were one and the same room, one that seemed much too small to hold the nine of us. It seemed even tinier when another small table was pulled in from another room and pushed against the rectangular dining table, a tablecloth thrown over them both to hide the crack. “There are four more people coming,” Titi explained cheerfully, his diamond stud catching the light. “My sister and her family later, when we get to the galettes.”

“Oh,” I said, having forgotten them. Always eager to be introduced to new future in-laws, that was me.

“They’re bringing the galettes, so they’d better get here,” Claudine said as she pulled food out of sacks: smoked salmon, pâté, and even a pressure cooker, which unsealed to reveal a pot full of rabbit.

Pierrette turned back to the dishes again, although I was a little confused, because it looked as if she was taking the clean dishes from the dish drainer, rewashing them, and putting them back in it to dry. Jean-Charles installed himself at one corner of the table and proceeded to dominate it with his size and growly, humorous presence. Titi and Sébastien started picking on Justine, who continued to be preternaturally patient, and Bruno moved to center stage, telling some hilarious story from the last party all of them had attended. It involved mimicries of Titi in an advanced stage of inebriety.