“Oh, please, call me Michelle,” she says, waving away her son and reaching out to hug me. Diamonds twinkle from her neck and her earlobes, but her left ring finger is bare. When she steps back, she smooths down her already smooth bob. “The orchid is so gorgeous, thank you.”

Blake loads our luggage into the trunk and climbs into the front seat next to his mom. I wind up in the back. Boston’s Revolutionary War–era monuments and collegiate scenery along the Charles River feel familiar to me; growing up in Maine, Boston was the nearest real city we had. (At 65,000 people, Portland was the biggest city in our state. Boston had seemed massive back then. Now, visiting from New York, it looks almost quaint.) As we drive toward the highway, Michelle eagerly peppers me with questions, beginning with what it’s like to work with my sister.

“It sounds like a lovely idea, but, I mean, can you imagine Blake and Reid working together? It’d be chaos,” she says. “They fought like cats and dogs as kids. You’ll meet him tonight, you know.”

From what Blake has told me, he and his brother weren’t ever the closest growing up, but they made a particular effort to stay tight after their father died. Reid was a lacrosse star in high school, went on to play in college, and now manages a branch of a local bank near where they grew up.

“He puts on a front like he’s this big, buff, intense guy,” Blake had told me once. “But he’s just a softie who wants his regular Friday night pizza delivered from the same place he’s been ordering it from for the past twenty years.”

“Working with my sister can sometimes be a challenge,” I admit to Michelle. I feel as if I have to select my words carefully, like any slipup could create a bad impression. “But there’s no one else I’d trust enough to launch a business with. She’s amazing.”

I don’t want to say anything more about work. If Michelle knows what I do for a living, it’s entirely possible that she could’ve looked me up online—and then stumbled across our Instagram.

The drive turns suburban, and soon enough, we’re on a winding road surrounded on both sides by a tall thicket of pine trees. I can see just a sliver of Blake’s face from this angle, but he looks transfixed by the trees, like the sight relaxes him.

“It’s good to be home,” he says to no one in particular.

“You know, you could stay,” his mom says, giving him a pointed look.

“Nah. I’d miss the city,” he replies. “And anyway, Eliza’s a city girl, too.”