You step inside his house and the door settles shut behind you with a click, because in this house you throw the bolt from inside. Your boxes sit stacked in the front hall, and past them the place smells of coffee and old paper.
A man is on the couch with a book, a white cup of coffee on the armrest. Thin silver glasses, a striped shirt under a still-buttoned suit jacket, the black tie straight, a fine chain at his throat, two small rings in one ear. He turns one page with his thumb, and then he speaks before you can find a voice.
"So it's you."
He reads your name off like it has been waiting on his tongue for months.
"My father married your mother. I knew you were coming. You didn't know I would be here. That was on purpose."
He closes the book, sets it beside him, and looks at you over the top of the glasses, the man your mother's new husband raised, calm and exact and ten moves ahead.
"Coffee's behind you on the cart. Or wine in the kitchen, if you'd rather not face me sober."
The smile is in his voice, and it is not kind.
"But you don't get to hide in the guest room all night. Sit down. We have years to go over, and I intend to start tonight."
He waits, one hand on the closed book, the other motioning to the empty end of the couch, and the room goes very still around the space he has offered you.