He turned his attention to Leland. “When I heard that, my first thought was that you had died in the war, but Aunt Maisie insisted that you had returned unharmed from wherever you were posted. That bit of information is what sent me searching through the Mathison family papers in the library in Cheltenham. That’s where I saw the letters you wrote home to Great-grandmother Adele from Korea. Armed with that, including the fact that you were with the Royal Marines, I then used their veterans’ organization to track you down, and here you are.”

  “Yes, we are,” Leland agreed, looking around the beautifully appointed room and deftly changing the subject. “You have a lovely place.”

  Jeffrey nodded and smiled. “It’s lovely now,” he agreed, “but you’re seeing it after the construction project. I didn’t think it was ever going to end. It’s been nonstop for the better part of two years. We bought two flats, you see, this one and the one directly below us, both in desperate need of refurbishing. We kept this one as our primary living space so we’d be able to take full advantage of the view. When it isn’t the dead of winter, we have a fabulous view of the park. Putting in the staircase was a nightmare, but we’ve converted the flat downstairs into what we like to call our bedroom wing. That way, if we have wild parties—which Charlie and I have been known to do on occasion—there’s no one directly below us to be bothered.”

  Looking back toward the entryway, Ali realized that she had been so focused on the rest of the room that she had failed to see the polished wood banister leading to the lower unit. Prior to the trip, she had spent a little time cruising the pricey world of London real estate, so she had some idea of the going rate for single units in the area. The fact that Jeffrey and Charlie had purchased two units—fixer-uppers or not—left Ali duly impressed. In view of her hosts’ upscale circumstances, Ali was glad she had insisted that she and Leland stay at the Langham. She didn’t want anyone looking down their proper British noses at Leland as some kind of poor relation.

  The door from what was evidently the kitchen swung open into the dining room. A dark-haired man several years younger than Jeffrey hurried into the room, smiling as he came. He was of Asian ancestry, with handsome good looks that were at odds with the studied plainness of Jeffrey, who was still dressed in a suit and tie. There was an intensity about Charles that wasn’t softened by the colorful Hawaiian shirt he wore. Several inches shorter than Jeffrey, he moved with a peculiar catlike grace.

  So maybe opposites do attract, Ali thought, taking Charlie’s proffered hand.

  “I think it’s all under control now,” Charles Chan said. “You must be Ali. I’m Charlie.” Once the introductions were complete, Charlie sat down on the other couch while Jeffrey hurried back to the bar, then returned with a glass of white wine that he handed over to Charlie. “What have I missed?” the new arrival asked. When Charlie spoke, Ali thought she detected a hint of an accent that wasn’t British, although it wasn’t one she was immediately able to identify.

  “Not much,” Jeffrey answered with a laugh. “I was just giving them a blow-by-blow description of our two-year construction war.”

  “Oh, that,” Charlie said, taking a small sip. “It’s not over a moment too soon. They’ve only just finished painting the nursery, and the baby’s due in less than a month.”

  Leland blinked at that bit of news. He took a quick sip of his drink, leaving Ali to field the ball Charlie had casually whacked into the air. “You’re having a baby?” she asked. Looking around that elegant room, she wondered how the gorgeous furniture and the exquisite wallpaper would survive assaults from an active toddler, but neither Jeffrey nor Charlie seemed dismayed in the slightest by the prospect of raising a kid who might turn out to be your basic human wrecking ball.

  “Not us, of course,” Jeffrey interjected. “We’re using a surrogate. It’s a boy. We’re naming him Jonah, after your father,” he added in Leland’s direction. “We haven’t broken the news to all the relatives yet, especially the aunties. We’re planning to unveil him officially at the family reunion in Cheltenham next summer.”

  “The aunties?” Ali asked.

  “That would be Leland’s cousins, the twins—Maisie and Daisy, Adele’s sister’s daughters. You’ve yet to meet them,” Charlie said to Ali. “They’re the family’s self-appointed resident busybodies. Rather than telling them about Jonah in advance and letting them get all hot and bothered about it, we decided we’d spring him on them as a fait accompli this summer and count on the baby to provide enough charm to win them over.”

  “The twins,” Leland repeated, shaking his head. “I had almost managed to forget about those two. Whatever became of them?”

  Jeffrey turned to Ali. “Are you familiar with the family tree?” he asked.

  “Not really.”

  “Maisie and Daisy Jordan,” Leland explained. “My mother, Adele Mathison Brooks, and theirs, Beatrice Mathison Jordan, were sisters. The twins were about ten when I left home. Their family was somewhat better off than ours. Whatever became of them?”

  “They both married,” Jeffrey said, picking up the thread of the story. “Maisie is Maisie Longmoor now, and Daisy’s married name is Phipps. Their younger brother, Billy, was never quite right in the head. He was a late-in-life baby with Down syndrome. He lived at home with his parents his whole life and died of pneumonia in his twenties.”

  “I didn’t know there was a brother,” Leland said.

  Jeffrey nodded. “It was a tragedy. He was never able to look after himself, and taking care of him was a terrible burden on his parents. They died just a few years after he did, in their late sixties, and within a few months of each other. When their parents died, both twins happened to be at loose ends. Maisie had recently divorced her husband, and Daisy was widowed. When they inherited their folks’ place in Bournemouth, they decided to pool their resources. They changed the place into a B and B—using the term loosely—and call it Jordan’s-by-the-Sea. Guests stay in the main house, while the two sisters live in the carriage house out back and oversee the running of the place.”

  “What a shame,” Leland said. “I believe we’re booked into the Highcliff up on the bluff. If we’d known about this, we could have stayed there.”

  Charlie laughed aloud. “Don’t give that idea a moment’s thought,” he said. “To hear the aunties tell it, Jordan’s is everything in luxury, but don’t be fooled. It’s not. I’ve read some of the online reviews. Dreadful is more like it. That’s one of the reasons we’re having next summer’s family reunion in Cheltenham, home to the Mathisons, rather than in Bournemouth. We didn’t want having to stick visiting guests in Jordan’s-by-the-Sea.”

  “And we didn’t want to have to explain to the aunties why no one wanted to stay there,” Jeffrey added.

  Charlie looked down at his watch. “It’s probably about time,” he said. “I’ll go check on things in the kitchen while you open some wine.”

  “White or red?” Jeffrey asked.

  “Let’s live dangerously,” Charlie told him. “Open a bottle of each.”

  The wine they served was divine, and dinner was nothing short of delectable. It was impeccably served by a dark-haired young woman who brought dishes in and out, poured wine, and then cleared the table, all without saying a word to anyone. Although silverware was available, so were chopsticks, which Ali and Leland managed to maneuver properly without embarrassing themselves. The centerpiece of the meal was Peking duck, but there were any number of side dishes—spicy noodles topped with grilled shrimp; saffron fried rice flecked with bits of chicken and pork; tangy barbecued ribs; and a batch of spicy bits of beef that would have been welcome at any Mexican food joint on the planet.

  Conversation was easy. When Jeffrey and Charlie questioned Leland about what he did for a living, Ali jumped into the breach, explaining that he was the property manager for both her home and her fiancé’s. That took them off into a discussion about B.’s business and into a discussion about B. and Ali’s upcoming wedding. For a dress, Jeffrey recommended the name of a small but exclusive shop on the main square in Bournemouth, Anne’s Fine Apparel. “Bournemouth’s not the best place for world-class shopping, but Anne’s the wife of an old school chum of mine, and her place might just fill the bill.”

  It was during the following brief pause when Ali asked Jeffrey how long he and Charlie had been together. The question was casual, the kind of thing strangers ask strangers when they’re trying to get the lay of the land. As a pall fell over the table, silencing what had previously been a carefree conversation, Ali would have done anything to take it back.

  “Not quite ten years,” Jeffrey said quietly. This time there was no hint of a smile in his voice or in his face. “We met in Thailand. In Ao Nang on the day of the tsunami.”

  While Ali sat wishing to disappear under the highly polished parquet floor, Jeffrey continued, his voice flat and his eyes etched with pain. “We were both there with other people,” he said. “Other partners. We didn’t know each other then, but it happened that we were all four staying on the sixth floor of a beachfront hotel. Charlie and Michael had flown in the day before after visiting Charlie’s grandmother in Hong Kong. I was there with Philip; we’d been together ten years. We had already been there for the better part of a week, and we were due to come home the following day.

  “That morning Philip and I were scheduled to do a climbing expedition on Railay. Unfortunately, Philip and I quarreled that morning. He decided to stay in Ao Nang and maybe do some scuba diving. That’s where Charlie and I met, on the climb at Railay. We were up on the cliffs over the water when we saw the water recede.

  “I had never been around a tsunami, so at first I really didn’t understand what was happening. Charlie did. He got on his cell phone immediately, trying to warn Michael and tell him to get to higher ground. The call didn’t go through. We were still up on the cliff when we saw the first huge wave crash ashore. From where we were, there was no way to grasp the size of it or to understand what had happened.”

  “By the time we got back down, all hell had broken loose,” Charlie said, taking up the story. “There were six of us in the group—Jeffrey and me and four guys from Sweden, all of us from the same hotel. The guides were too concerned about what had happened to their families to worry about us, so they took off. The rest of us all stuck together. We spent the better part of twenty-four hours making our way back to Ao Nang. The devastation was unbelievable. Cell phones didn’t work. There was no way to contact anyone. When we finally made it back to town, the hotel was standing, but everything on the first three floors had been washed away. Up on the sixth floor, where our rooms were located, everything was just the way it was when we left. The beds were even made. We never found any trace of Michael or Philip. They were just gone. Two of the Swedes were eventually reunited with their wives. The other two weren’t so lucky.”

  For a long moment, no one said a word. There was nothing to say.

  Charlie took a deep breath. “Because of the restaurants, I had to come back home as soon as I could catch a flight. Jeffrey stayed on for two more weeks, searching for Michael and Philip. He called me with daily reports, but he never found a trace of either one. When he came back home, we were both in the same boat. No one really understood what we’d been through or what we’d lost.”

  Jeffrey nodded. “When you’re gay and your partner dies, it’s not like you’re a widow and all the old family and friends rally round and pitch in, bringing you hot dishes and sympathy. It was more like Charlie and I were stuck together on a deserted island. By the time it was over, we were . . .” He stopped and shrugged.

  Charlie looked at him, smiled sadly, and came to the rescue. “We were a couple,” he finished. “It was a year or so later when we moved in together. We’ve been here a little over two years. Doing a live-in remodel may be easier than surviving a tsunami, but don’t quote me on that. The jury’s still out.

  “Come on,” he added. “Let’s go back into the living room so Sari can finish clearing up.”

  Back in the living room over snifters of Courvoisier, Ali tried to get the evening back on a somewhat sounder footing. “So tell me about your restaurants,” she said to Charlie.

  “There are three,” he said. “One’s up the street here on Sloane; one’s near Whitehall; the third is just off Covent Garden. I’m happy to say business is booming in all three. The catering business is in a warehouse district out near Heathrow, where the rents are lower.”

  “It sounds as though you’re very successful,” Ali offered.

  Charlie nodded. “I have to be,” he said. “I have a very demanding silent partner—my grandmother.”

  “The one you were visiting in Hong Kong?”

  “My parents left Hong Kong in the mid-eighties. They were worried about what would happen when Hong Kong went back to China. The truth is, nothing much happened. They thought they could come here and turn me into a perfect English schoolboy and gentleman. That didn’t work out very well, because from the time I cooked my first batch of chow mein when I was eight, I knew that’s what I wanted to be: a cook; a chef. My parents kept trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. That didn’t work, either. When I had my gap year, they sent me back to China to see my grandmother. They thought she’d be able to shape me up, and they were right. She just didn’t do it the way they wanted. They wanted me to go to university. She paid my way to Cordon Bleu.

  “That wasn’t at all what my parents expected. The first thing they did was disown me. The second thing that happened is that my grandmother disowned them. My parents didn’t expect that, either.”

  “You know what they say,” Ali said. “Turnabout’s fair play.”

  “Indeed. When I wanted to start my first restaurant at age twenty-six, my grandmother was the one who provided the capital. She’s also the one who made the purchase of these flats possible. She’s Jeffrey’s and my silent partner. After payroll and rent, she’s our biggest creditor. We pay her money every month. We’re also giving her the one thing she’s always wanted and didn’t think she’d ever live to see—her first great-grandchild.” He sent a fond glance in Jeffrey’s direction.

  “I’m the contracts guy,” Jeffrey put in. “I chase after the accountants and the bankers and the lease agreements and keep track of the income and outgo. By mutual agreement, I don’t do any of the cooking. Eventually, we’ll have a nanny, but we’re thinking I’ll do the majority of the child care. I’ve worked out of an office in the past, but there’s an office downstairs now, and I should be able to use that.”

  “Sounds great,” Ali said, hoping to sound supportive. The problem was, she remembered all too well how, when her son and daughter-in-law, Chris and Athena, were expecting, they had voiced similar intentions, anticipating that Chris would be able to stay home and do artwork while looking after what had turned out to be two babies. In their case, the services of a nanny had been required sooner than later.

  Glancing in Leland’s direction, Ali could see that he was at the end of his endurance. “I hate to eat and run,” she said. “But it’s been a difficult day, and we have a long drive tomorrow. Would you mind calling a cab?”

  “Not at all,” Charlie said. Whipping out his cell phone, he dialed the number from his contact list. While he gave directions, Jeffrey took another shot at trying to talk Ali out of driving to Bournemouth.

  “They’re still predicting snow,” he objected. “Wouldn’t you be better off taking a train?”

  “No,” Ali said. “I have experience driving in snow, and we’ll have a Land Rover. Besides,” she added with a smile, “from what you’ve told me about the aunties, if they’re too tough to handle, I don’t want to be stranded in Bournemouth without our having a way to get out of town under our own steam.”

  “Now that you put it that way,” Jeffrey said, “driving yourself is probably the best idea.”

  As the cabbie drove them back to the hotel, Leland fell into a somber mood.

  “What’s wrong?” Ali asked.

  He shook his head before he answered. “Parents,” he said quietly. “How can they be like that? I thought times had changed between then and now, but it turns out they haven’t, not really. My father chucked me out like so much trash because he couldn’t accept me for who I was. Charlie’s parents evidently don’t mind that he’s gay, but they dumped him because he wanted to be a chef instead of going to university. It makes no sense.”

  Reaching over, Ali laid a comforting hand on the back of Leland’s bony wrist. “I agree,” she said. “It makes no sense to me, either, but I can tell you this. In both cases, it’s the parents’ loss.”

  Ali’s first thought was that she’d try reading once she got back to her room, but the moment she was out of her shoes and dress and into her jammies, she disabused herself of that notion. The nap she’d had before dinner hadn’t done enough to counteract her jet lag, to say nothing of the cocktails and wine. She fell into bed and slept straight through until morning, rising just in time to dress and go down to the buffet for breakfast before their car was due to be delivered at ten.

  Leland was in the dining room, sipping coffee when she arrived.

  “I suppose you’re already packed,” she said.

  He nodded. “I left my bag with the bellman.”

  Ali grabbed a bite of breakfast and then hurried back to her room to finish her own packing. By the time the Land Rover showed up at ten on the dot, she and Leland were checked out and ready to go. The GPS in the rental car said the trip down the A3 from London southwest to Bournemouth would take two hours and one minute. Maybe on a regular day, but not on a day when the drive was punctuated by intermittent snow showers followed by what came close to whiteout conditions. Grateful for the extra traction in the four-wheel-drive Land Rover, Ali kept both hands on the wheel. Occasionally, she glanced in Leland’s direction. “You don’t look like you’re having much fun at the moment,” she offered.