Page 51 of Crosswind

Jan extends his hand. "Jan Novak," he says. "It's good to meet you."

My father shakes it. "Willem." A beat. "Patrick's told us about you."

"He's told me about you as well," Jan says. Then, without pause, precisely: "He mentioned you were in engineering before you retired. Civil. I work in finance but I studied economics — I've always found infrastructure financing interesting. The way large-scale projects get funded and why so many of them don't."

My father looks at him.

Then he says: "That's a more interesting question than most people ask about it."

And something in Jan's face does the very subtle thing, the almost-smile, the look of someone who has correctly identified the approach and is not making a production of it.

"I think so," Jan says.

They sit down.

I look at my mother across the room.

She looks back at me with the expression she has been using since I was approximately twelve years old, the one that means I know exactly what's happening here and I approve, and she turns and goes back to the kitchen before I can say anything.

Lunch is the warmth of my parents' table.

My mother's stamppot — exactly right, the kind that requires attention and time, that has been made for someone specific. She asks Jan about his work with the focused curiosity she brings to everything, leaning forward, following the threads. Jan answers with the same precision he brings to all conversations, adding detail where it's useful and removing it where it isn't. He is, I watch him across the table, he is entirely himself. Not performing, not managing, not deploying a version of himself calibrated for the room. Just Jan, being Jan, in my parents' house.

My father asks about his family in the Czech Republic. Jan answers without deflection — the small town, the move at twenty-two, what Amsterdam gave him that he couldn't have had there. My father nods slowly, the way he nods when he's taking something in properly.

Jan, I notice, has been doing something quietly throughout lunch that I recognise from watching him in other contexts. He asks questions. Not the polite questions of someone filling silence — real ones, the kind that require the other person to think and that signal genuine interest. He asked my mother about the garden before we sat down and she talked for ten minutes. He asked my father something about the neighbourhood's history and my father, who rarely volunteers information unprompted, explained the entire development of the street from the 1960s onwards.

This is Jan managing stakeholders. Not cynically, he is genuinely interested, he is always genuinely interested, but with the competence of someone who has run meetings and handled boards and knows that the way to a room is through the right question at the right moment.

I watch him do it and feel something I don't have a word for. Something that is pride and more than that.

At some point my mother asks, very simply: "How did you meet?"

I look at Jan. Jan looks at me. Then, rather than waiting for me to answer, he turns to my parents fully and says:

"I should tell you…I’d seen Patrick's videos before I met him. I work in finance, I travel for work, and I used to watch his videos. He has a way of explaining things that makes you feel like you understand something you didn't before." A small pause. "I saw him first through the hotel gym glass. I was on the treadmill. He was outside on the beach. I noticed him… I didn't know who he was yet." A pause. "The next morning I saw him at breakfast. I walked over to his table and said: I think I recognise you. You have a YouTube channel about aviation."

My mother looks at him. Then at me. "You approached him first?"

"I did," Jan says. He is entirely composed, entirely present. "But I wanted to be sure I was doing it for the right reason. Because I wanted to know him as a person, not because he was someone I'd seen on a screen."

"And then?" my father says. He is leaning forward slightly — I notice this, my father who rarely leans forward.

"And then he was engaged," Jan says. Simply. "So nothing. For a long time."

My mother is quiet for a moment.

My parents already know this. I told my mother on the phone, simply: Maya and I ended. Then Jan. In that order.

My mother is quiet for a moment. Then she looks at Jan directly.

"We liked Maya," she says. "I want to say that clearly. She was a good person and it was a shock when Patrick told us it was over." She pauses. "We worried. You always worry."

Jan meets her gaze without flinching. "Of course," he says.

"But—" She glances at my father. Something passes between them, the communication of thirty-five years. He nods slightly. She turns back to Jan. "We have not seen Patrick like this. In a long time. Maybe ever." She says it plainly, without performance. "He is…” She looks at me, briefly, and the look is the one I have seen my whole life — the one that has always meant you are mine and I am paying attention. "He is happy. Properly happy. And that is what matters to us."

Jan is very still for a moment.