Trees flank us on both sides of the longest driveway yet. At the end, his parents’ house glows in the sunset. My chin retreats, though I’ve already pored over photos of it online: a ten-bedroom Tudor estate. It’s so grand—with several chimneys, an army of shuttered windows, and a stone turret—that I feel as if I’m looking at a surrealist work, an illusion created by carefully placed mirrors. I’m not that kind of painter, but the house is so improbably vast that these are the images that come to mind. I imagine the Belmonts climbing staircases that lead up to where they begin.
My chin retreats?
