“Well, isn’t that an adorable story,” Sarah gushes, scribbling the last of Lena’s exposition into her notebook. “And now you’re the MOH. I love that.”

Sarah loves a lot of things.

“Did you know right away?” Sarah asks me. Lena visibly slouches now that she’s no longer the focus of the conversation.

“I did,” I say, slowly, pretending to think about it, as if I hadn’t had this answer prepared since the day I pressed Submit on the application. “The second I saw him, I knew he was the person I’d been looking for.”

Sarah puts her hand over her heart and then writes my line down in her notebook, underlines it, and then surrounds it with a bold box. That’s what you call being quotable.

“I love that,” she says, managing to emphasize each syllable equally. “Now, he went to Yale and you went to—”

“—Brown,” I finish. The Ivy Package, essential to any New York Times Vows coverage. You couldn’t be a future Walker if you didn’t go to the kind of school you don’t have to explain.

She nods, scribbling little check marks along different lines in her notebook. “Yes, of course. We’ve got all that in with our fact-checkers now.” I swallow the sip of sauv blanc sitting over my tongue with nary a flinch and set my glass back on the table. The fact-checkers will come back empty-handed, all their i’s dotted, their t’s crossed. Someone named Elizabeth Bennet went there. Someone.

“And you work at—actually...” Her pen hovers over a question mark at the bottom of the page, like she is tempting herself, until it lands with a thud. “Before we get into that...can you give me some details about your parents? All you included in the application were their names.”

I reach for the stem of my wineglass before stopping myself, letting my fingers linger on its base, twirl the sip or two left. It would be in bad taste to take a sip after this question; it might reveal my hand.

“They passed away. A long time ago.”

I can feel Lena sitting between us and looking at me, but I stare straight at Sarah. She is nodding, uncomfortable. She clearly needs more information, but I don’t give her anything. Any questions she wanted answered, she needed to ask. I am no fool to the old journalistic tactic of leaving long silences for your interviewee to fill with nonsense they’ll eventually regret. I’m not afraid of silence.

“What did they do for a living?” she asks.