Her son-in-law's friends were few. She knew this had to do, in part, with what he and her daughter had done for a living, and was compounded after Malorie's death and his flight from the country. Since his return, he'd not added to the list, but there was one she could always expect to see, around the holidays or occasionally at birthdays: the lean and quiet young man with the black hair.
Her grandchildren called him uncle, and despite his sometimes severe bearing he was patience incarnate with them. He would play with them when Dominic needed a break, and indulged their interrogations with sly smiles (she was sure most of his answers were spun from pure fantasy; he did not seem a man to reveal private details, even to his friend's children). He was about Dominic's height, making him perfect for antics practiced on their father, but where Dominic was a solid and comfortable-looking man, almost rumpled, his friend was whipcord muscle and sinew, elemental and angular in his perfectly tailored clothing.
He impressed her as the son of wealth and academia, and as a man who'd been in the military. These three things were at odds, but somehow in him they meshed together seamlessly. He carried himself with the confidence that came from experience in dealing with paralyzing situations, and yet over dinner he and her husband and Dominic could discuss business, then later he would sit and chat with her in French (he spoke it almost as a native would) while she prepared the dessert.
He moved elegantly, like a dancer. (She wondered if he'd been made to take ballet lessons when he was young. It would seem the kind of thing a man like him might have endured for the sake of a well-meaning mother.) His emotions were almost always buried, though every now and then she would come across him and Dominic sitting on the porch, talking about work, and then a boundless intensity would leak through.
He wasn't reckless like Dominic; he preferred to not act on things that hadn't been weighed or measured to his satisfaction. In that respect, they worked together very well: Dominic to urge them on to take chances when necessary, and him to hold Dominic back when the danger was too great. (They had worked even better with Malorie to mediate when their differences became too polarized. Who mediated them now, she wondered?)
He was unmarried, and didn't dally with partners. The later she knew from her son-in-law's gentle teasing of him (he was careful not to do this too much, and she imagined that was because the solitude stemmed from their mutual work, and not through stubbornness or choice). The former she had determined on their first meeting; a spouse knows another spouse when they see one, and he wasn't a husband yet. He probably needed a partner who was willing to club him over the head and drag him off, and no doubt that pesky line of employment of his didn't provide much in the way of opportunity for that.
He had stood by Dominic's side throughout everything. Being under scrutiny himself (as one of her son-in-law's associates) he hadn't been able to visit the children during Dominic's exile, but he'd passed along information, gifts, and messages as often as he could. Once the charges had gone away he'd reappeared, though not for many months, and on that first visit he'd looked tired and worn, and he and Dominic had shut themselves up in her husband's study for over two hours (and gone through a bottle of wine).
Right now her grandchildren were stalking him through tall meadow grass and summer wildflowers. His clothes didn't afford much in the way of camouflage, but he was hard for them to locate regardless. Dominic was dozing on the porch in a wicker couch, having served out his sentence as prey earlier. They caught him, and he laughed as they tackled him to the ground and demanded he go hide again. He glanced to see if Dominic was still asleep, and finding him so, agreed.
She returned to skinning the peaches. Dinner wouldn't be done for another hour.
He was a good friend, if an enigmatic one.