The Dinner, Part One
The kitchen smells like thyme and scotch bonnet peppers and the specific warmth that Jade has spent twenty-seven years associating with her mother's cooking. Isabelle Moreau is not a woman who does things halfway. The table has been set with the good placemats the embroidered ones that only come out for guests and there are candles lit even though it is a Sunday and not a special occasion, because Isabelle has apparently decided that this qualifies.
Léa is at the counter pouring wine, watching Nolan with the focused attention of someone conducting a field assessment. She is not subtle about it. She was not raised to be subtle about things that matter to her.
"So," she says, handing Nolan a glass. "How long?"
"Léa," Jade says.
"It's a normal question."
"You asked it before he took his coat off."
"He has his coat off." Léa gestures. He does, in fact, have his coat off. It's on the hook in the hallway, which means her mother must have taken it, which means Nolan handled the coat-removal moment well enough that Jade missed it. She makes a note of this.
"A few weeks," Nolan says, which is the answer they agreed on. He says it naturally, without rehearsal, the way someone says something true.
Léa looks at Jade. Jade looks at the candles.
"A few weeks," Léa repeats. "And she didn't tell me."
"I was going to."
"When?"
"When there was something to tell."
"This counts as something to tell." Léa turns back to Nolan with the pleased expression of someone who has just been given permission to ask everything. "What position do you play?"
"Forward. Left wing."
"I know. I've seen you play. I meant " She pauses, reconsidering. "Actually that was my entire question. I was just checking you knew how to answer it."
Nolan takes a sip of wine. Something shifts in his expression almost a smile. "Left wing. Number nineteen. I've been with the Wolves for four years."
"I know that too." Léa leans on the counter. "I wanted to see if you were the kind of person who gives one-word answers or actual information."
"And?"
"Jury's out. It was eleven words. We're in the middle."
He looks at her, and this time he does smile small, genuine, the real one that Jade can count on one hand having seen. "Your sister told me not to try to charm you."
Léa turns to look at Jade. "Did she."
"She said you value directness."
"She's right." Léa's expression shifts slightly some private recalibration. "She doesn't usually say that about herself, which means she thinks enough of you to tell you the truth about someone else." She picks up her own wine glass. "That's more informative than most of the things you've said so far."
Isabelle appears from the direction of the stove, wiping her hands on her apron. "Léa, stop interrogating the man." She says it pleasantly, meaning: continue, but more quietly.
"I'm not interrogating. I'm gathering information."
"Same thing with better lighting." Her mother guides Nolan by the elbow toward the living room with the particular authority of a woman who has been directing people through her house for thirty years. "Come sit. The rice needs another ten minutes. Jade" She looks over her shoulder. "The bread."
The bread is in the oven. Jade knows this. She gets it.
Dinner is served in the kitchen, because the dining room is reserved for Christmas and things more formal than this, and the kitchen table sits four comfortably and five with effort and always ends up with someone's elbow in someone else's space and plates passed overhead and the kind of conversation that happens when people aren't performing at each other across a distance.
Isabelle serves the rice and beans herself, which she does at every dinner, from the pot to the plate at the counter, because she believes that the act of serving food to someone is different from simply placing a dish on a table. Nolan accepts his plate with both hands, and Jade sees her mother register this the two-handed acceptance and something in Isabelle's posture releases slightly, like a small, quiet approval.
"You grew up in Montréal?" her mother asks, settling into her chair.
"Laval, actually." He pauses. "A few streets over from here, I think."
Isabelle looks up. "Which street?"
"Off Boul. des Laurentides. By the arena."
"I know that area," her mother says, with the satisfaction of someone who has been given geography. "My husband used to take the girls to the hockey programs there." A pause. "He passed away eight years ago."
"I know," Nolan says. "Jade told me."
Her mother looks at Jade, briefly. Then back at Nolan. "She doesn't talk about her father much."
"No," he agrees. "She told me enough."
Jade cuts her bread into precise halves and says nothing. Across the table, Léa is watching this exchange with the expression of someone reading a text in a language they mostly know.
"Your family?" Isabelle continues, because she navigates toward family the way water navigates toward low ground.
He tells it the way they discussed parents separated, his mother in Québec City, his father in Toronto, not close. He says it plainly, without self-pity or performance, the way she observed him say everything that costs him something, which is like it costs nothing while clearly costing exactly what it costs.
"Théo is in Montréal," he adds. "He plays on the same team."
Isabelle's face changes. Brothers who are close she called it, and she was right. "You play together."
"We played together before we could properly skate. Minor hockey, PeeWee, Bantam. Different teams as we got older, same league. Then the same organization again at the pro level." He takes a bite of rice. "He's a better defender than he gets credit for."
"You're biased," Léa says.
"Completely." He says it without apology. "It doesn't change the assessment."
Léa points at Jade with her fork. "I like him."
"Léa "
"I'm telling her, not you." She looks at Nolan. "She doesn't bring people here. She's brought three people to this table in her life that weren't my cousin Guillaume, and he doesn't count because he's family and also very boring."
"Léa." Jade's voice has the specific flatness of someone operating at the outer edge of their patience.
"I'm just providing context." Léa refills her wine without being asked. "Context is important. You should know you're not a casual decision."
There is a silence at the table. Her mother is watching her plate, which means she is listening with full attention and does not want to be caught doing so. Nolan looks at Jade.
She looks back at him.
There is something in his expression that she hasn't categorized yet. Not warmth, exactly. Something more specific than warmth. Like someone who has been handed unexpected information and is deciding where to file it.
"I know," he says.
He's looking at her when he says it, not Léa.
She looks down at her plate.
"More rice?" her mother says, already standing.
After dinner, Léa commandeers Nolan to help clear the table, which Jade recognizes as a tactical maneuver, and retreats with him to the kitchen under the stated premise of dish-stacking protocol. Jade stays at the table with her mother, who wraps her hands around her coffee cup and says nothing for a moment.
"He's careful," her mother says.
Jade looks at her. "What do you mean?"
"With you. He watches how you're doing." Isabelle looks down at her cup. "Marc Olivier never watched."
Jade doesn't say anything.
"I didn't say anything then," her mother continues, "because it wasn't my place and because you seemed decided." She pauses. "But I noticed."
In the kitchen, Léa is telling Nolan something at considerable volume. He's answering in the low, measured way he has, and from here Jade can't hear the words, only the rhythm of the exchange, which is easy and unhurried in a way she wasn't expecting.
"Mom," she says.
"I'm not saying anything." Isabelle takes a sip of coffee. "I'm only saying he watches."
FIN : From the kitchen, Nolan appears in the doorway dish towel still in his hand, Léa leaning against the counter behind him and he looks directly at Jade across the room with an expression she cannot name and then says, as if continuing a conversation they weren't having: "Your sister says you cried at a Wolves game once."
Jade's mother turns to look at her daughter.
"I did not," Jade says.
"Overtime," Léa calls from the kitchen. "Game six. You were twenty-two."
"That was allergies."
"In March."
"Dry air."
Nolan sets the dish towel over his shoulder and says nothing. He's still looking at her. His mouth is doing the thing it does before the real smile comes the almost, the considering.
Her mother is laughing.
And Jade, who has been doing this exactly right since they walked through the front door, who has been careful and measured and precisely what was needed Jade makes the mistake of looking back at him, and laughing too.