Meeting Gavin’s mother hadn’t exactly been warm. Then again, warmth wasn’t something this family seemed capable of.

Elena greeted her son’s girlfriend with a perfectly measured smile — the kind usually reserved not for people, but for potential problems. Polite. Elegant. With cold appraisal behind her eyes. Her gaze swept over the sundress, the hair, the hands, as if she were already scoring her silently in her head.

Gavin noticed immediately.

Of course he did.

He rarely missed anything, especially when it came to his mother.

His father had been Elena’s first love — the kind of man people ruin their lives for when they’re young, then spend the rest of their lives pretending they have no regrets. An ordinary guy: no money, no connections, no family name that opened doors before you even knocked. But he had the right kind of eyes. The kind of man women gladly destroy themselves over with a perfectly happy smile on their face.

Then he died.

Like everything good — too early and at the worst possible time.

Elena mourned for exactly as long as society expected her to. A few quiet months, black dresses, the proper grief of a proper woman. Then she married again — wiser this time.

Her second husband belonged to the kind of families that didn’t “become” wealthy; they had simply “always been that way.” Old Detroit money. People whose family silver was older than most modern marriages.

He died too.

He left Elena a large house, a perfect garden, antique china, and enough money that she would never have to worry about anything again.

Since then, she had lived alone.

At the first dinner, Gavin’s girlfriend handled herself well.

She didn’t fidget. Didn’t try to win anyone over. Didn’t chatter nervously. She simply sat beside him calmly, as though the icy atmosphere at the table had nothing to do with her.

And Elena entertained herself.

Every twenty minutes, she casually brought up the daughters of her friends. So well-bred. So refined. So perfectly suited for her son.

And they survived that dinner.

The way people survive an interrogation: silently, stubbornly, without letting the other side see where it hurts.

A month later, Elena called him herself.

“Come by for the Fourth of July,” she said in that sugary tone Gavin had hated since childhood. “It’ll just be close friends. Margaret’s daughter will be there — she’s an absolute delight. You’d like her.”

It was the kind of enthusiasm people usually reserve for champion-bred dogs.

Gavin said nothing.

He didn’t mention he wouldn’t be coming alone. He just ended the call and slipped his phone back into his pocket.

The idea of going there without her never even crossed his mind.

Elena’s Fourth of July parties always looked like an advertisement for the American dream filmed by people who no longer believed in it.

The garden drowned in greenery. Heavy white linen tablecloths draped over wooden tables. The wind stirred ribbons tied to the backs of chairs. Peonies, antique silver, candles in tall holders. Perfectly trimmed lawns. Perfectly rehearsed smiles.

She had tried to clean him up.

She really had.

She went through half his closet, rejected several T-shirts, and at one point even suggested a button-down shirt.

Gavin looked at her as if she’d suggested voluntary prison time.

In the end, he stayed exactly as he was.

A black T-shirt with the cracked logo of an old rock band. Dark jeans that showed off his legs unfairly well. Expensive boots worn down into perfection. Nothing polished about him — just that effortless masculine carelessness no one can fake, the kind that makes girls weak in the knees.

And unfortunately for Elena, he looked insanely good.

She wore a white sundress.

So light it seemed the wind itself held the fabric together. Nothing extra: no lace, no obvious luxury. Just the quiet beauty of someone who didn’t have to try to be beautiful.

Loose hair. Flat sandals.

It was the kind of dress you could wear while drinking lemonade in the garden of old money and look as though you’d grown up among linen tablecloths and perfectly manicured lawns.