“My mom always has tea after a meal,” Cady says to me now, by way of explanation. If Cady is a mystery to her parents, it’s clear she knows they might be a mystery to a guest, and since I’ve arrived, she’s made herself something of a guide to me, dropping in context at any possible moment of confusion. When Reid softly asks Cady about some paperwork related to her school, she proudly (and loudly) announces to me that Reid pays her tuition. When Thomas silently hands Reid a quarter-folded section of the newspaper, Cady rolls her eyes and explains that Thomas does a Challenger game in there every day, something Reid got him into a couple of years ago after a back injury.

“Now I see where he gets it,” I say, smiling at Reid again as we all stand. I watch every Sutherland around this table stack and gather their two lunch plates and their three pieces of silverware in the exact same way, and I quietly mimic it, inwardly charmed by all the tiny signs being revealed to me, all the codes that seem to lead me right to the heart of Reid, the everyday habits that help make up who he is.

It’s surprising, I guess, that I haven’t felt more nervous, more of an interloper here. But after last night—all my tearful revelations to Reid, all the trust I’d put in him—I get a strange sense about this visit. Maybe we both know it’s all too soon, but Reid has brought me here to give me something back, some comparable level of exposure to what I gave to him. The drive would have been enough to make me feel better, more stable about what had happened with Sibby—the snacks he stopped to get me after we picked up the rental car, the way he chuckled at my pop-song singing, the lines of his face when he wears a pair of sunglasses, the hand he kept on my thigh as we sped along the highway, finding signs. But the addition of this visit has been the most tender, vulnerable offering. Reid giving me something I didn’t even know I needed.

We settle in the small living room, meticulous and symmetrical, for tea. On the wall across from where I sit is a gallery of Sutherland family photos—several that show the family’s growth over time, expanding by an order of small, chubby baby every other photo or so. The most recent ones are almost class-photo-like in their population—all of Reid’s siblings, but also various partners and children. None of them, I notice—with a not-small amount of relief—feature Avery.