Lee looked slightly off balance at the fact that Tarin had simply announced their pending engagement while standing in the front yard of the house. Tarin hadn't thought about how she would feel about the announcement, it seemed like things were going smoothly enough. His mother had complimented Lee right off the bat and as Lee held her hand out, Tarin's mother moved forward to shake it.

"The pleasure is all mine." Adele Brooks said, sizing up the woman her son had brought home and introduced as his fiance as she grabbed her hand and shook it. Josh had mentioned it, but actually meeting the woman was something else entirely. Two sons off the market, one of which Adele was seeing for the first time in over a decade. Now if only for the third...

Adele simply shook her head at that thought and stepped away from the young woman. "Well, are you three going to stand outside all day or are you going to come in and have some lunch."

Tarin grinned as his mother walked away from Lee and him and went back into the house, "She likes you." he said with a smile, "Or she'd have never offered food...at least if nothing has changed over the last decade or so."

So in they went, and instantly Tarin was swept away in nostalgia. There were differences, some of the walls were a different color, and the furniture and a few appliances were updated, but it was still the same house. Tarin stared, then stared some more, a hundred different emotions and memories trying to surface at once.

"Some things never change..." he said, walking to the pictures that had always hung on the wall. There were new ones, but the ones that stuck out to Tarin the most were the school pictures. There they were, grades one through eleven, he, Josh, and Ash were all there with the generic school backgrounds the photographers used every year.

"You can visit with the things that don't talk later Tarin!" His mother's voice called from the kitchen, "The food is out on the table."

He smiled and made his way to the "lunch" his mother had prepared for his arrival. "Wow...." he breathed at the huge spread laid out before them.

"Well, I figured that flying all the way from New York City would make you awfully hungry." Adele said with a shrug of the shoulders and Tarin laughed, "You bet..."

All Lee could do as she shook Tarin's mother's hand was smile. The woman seemed nice enough, seemed happy enough to be meeting her. But how could Lee really know? She might just be being polite...

But then the woman was asking if they were staying outside or coming in for lunch before turning back into the house herself. And then Lee saw Tarin grinning at her. "Really?" Lee asked softly. Before they had gotten here, Lee hadn't really thought much about Tarin's mom liking her; with how things were with her own parents it really hadn't seemed all that important to her. Now, with Tarin telling her that his mother liked her or she wouldn't have offered food like that, Lee couldn't help the smile crossing her face as Tarin grabbed her hand and they followed into the house.

It was slow as they walked into the house, Tarin seemed distracted by the sights and the memories they caused. So Lee simply followed him silently, her hand entwined in his. Just by how he was looking at things, Lee knew that there were a ton of memories there, and just as many stories. She also knew that they had lots of time for that since their return flight wasn't until the new year.

A thought that apparently Tarin's mother shared as she called from what had to have been the kitchen. Following Tarin, all Lee could do was blink as she saw what his mother called a 'lunch' because she thought they'd be hungry after their flight.

It was so different than anything Lee had had in over ten years; a home cooked meal laid out on the kitchen table to enjoy with family. So completely different, considering Lee's idea of getting dinner ready was to run out to grab take-out.

"Is that normal?" Lee asked Tarin in a whisper, referring to the food laid out in front of them. What was Tarin going to think after this trip, because it wasn't just that Lee didn't cook, she couldn't. How much would Tarin end up missing the home cooking once they were back in New York?

"That looks amazing," Lee then said in a louder voice directed toward Tarin's mother.