Three days earlier, Adrian had described the dinner as a fresh start.
“My mother wants to make an effort.”
Elena looked at him across her kitchen table.
“A real effort?”
“Yes.”
She wanted to believe him.
They had been together for nearly two years. Adrian had proposed during a weekend at the coast, without an audience or a photographer. He seemed nervous when he opened the box.
Elena had loved that.
His family had welcomed the announcement with careful politeness.
Victoria asked whether they intended to wait.
His sister asked whether Elena had considered what the family’s public commitments would mean.
An uncle joked that Adrian had always enjoyed surprising people.
Nobody congratulated Elena without adding something afterward.
She worked as a payroll coordinator for a building maintenance company. Her father repaired buses. Her mother had cleaned offices until a shoulder injury forced her to stop.
Elena did not consider any of that embarrassing.
Victoria treated it as a set of problems to solve.
She suggested a different wardrobe.
Then a different job.
Then a course in public speaking, though Elena spent much of her workday explaining complicated pay discrepancies to angry people.
“She means well,” Adrian said.
Elena stopped laughing at that sentence after the fourth time.
When the dinner invitation arrived, she nearly declined.
Adrian took her hand.
“Let her meet you properly.”
“She has met me.”
“Without everyone being tense.”
Elena studied him.
“Will you speak up if she starts?”
“Of course.”
She believed him.
On the evening of the dinner, she wore a simple dark red dress she already owned. She polished her shoes, pinned back her hair, and put on the ring.
Adrian looked at her when she opened the door.
“You look beautiful.”
She smiled.
For the last time that evening, the smile came easily.
