His family texted him more than usual.
I noticed this not because I was surveilling his phone, but because he would go quiet for a few minutes and then emerge from the silence with that particular expression.
The bet-on-your-decency expression.
I had begun to find it tiring.
Galina called me directly on the Thursday after the visit.
I was at work and let it go to voicemail and listened to the message in my car at lunch.
She was worried.
She could tell something was wrong.
She didn’t want any hard feelings.
She hoped I understood that she and the family just wanted to be close to Marcus and, by extension, to me.
That it was how their family showed love.
Her voice was warm and slightly wounded in exactly equal measure, and I recognized the combination—warmth and wound—as a compound instrument played to produce a specific result.
And I thought, she’s good at this.
Then I thought, she’s had a lot of practice.
I texted back.
Thank you for calling, Galina. All fine here. Take care.
And left it at that.
That weekend, Marcus told me his parents were thinking of visiting the following weekend.
He told me on Saturday morning over coffee, framing it carefully.
“I wanted to give you plenty of notice this time.”
I looked at him over my mug and thought about the phrase this time.
Its implication that the only problem before had been logistics.
Not the fundamental dynamic.
Not the absence of consultation.
Not the expectation that my home was available on demand to whoever his family decided to send.
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