Grandma Betty’s house

Grandma Betty’s house moves from the backdrop of a family gathering to a practical part of Alex Nilsen and Poppy Wright’s imagined life together. The planned work on the house—stripping wallpaper, choosing paint, and settling into Linfield for Alex Nilsen’s summer break—makes it a place they can try on as a home, rather than merely a stop on one of their trips.

A family gathering and a first impression

After dinner, the party at Grandma Betty’s house improves the evening for Poppy Wright and Trey. Alex Nilsen’s brothers crowd around Trey with questions about his band, R+R, and even whether Poppy Wright snores. The youngest brother, David, jokes that she must sound like a machine gun in her sleep. Trey takes the attention in stride, fitting easily into a family scene that might otherwise have been awkward.

Poppy Wright values Trey’s ease with other people and his lack of jealousy; she enjoys watching him charm bartenders and strangers in the cities they visit, while keeping a hand on her shoulder or back. At the house, that same openness lets him meet Alex Nilsen’s family without turning the gathering into a contest over Poppy Wright’s past with Alex Nilsen.

Betty’s approval arrives in a quieter domestic moment. She brings Poppy Wright into the kitchen to put candles on the German chocolate cake she has baked for her son-in-law, and says Trey seems nice. She also compliments his tattoos. The small exchange gives the house a role beyond hosting a party: it is where family members assess a new person through ordinary acts of hospitality and conversation.

Family candor and the past

A conversation with David at the pool brings a more difficult part of Alex Nilsen’s history into view. David explains that Alex Nilsen had a ring and was supposed to propose to Sarah Torval, but that she was gone before he could. The news lands heavily for Poppy Wright, who recalls Sarah Torval mentioning the proposal in Tuscany and realizes she had dismissed the remark too casually.

David tells Poppy Wright that he had always thought she and Alex Nilsen should be together, while also insisting that Sarah Torval was wonderful and that she and Alex Nilsen loved each other. He wants Alex Nilsen to be happy and to stop worrying about other people. The house’s family setting permits an unusually direct account of the past: David’s affection for his brother does not erase Sarah Torval’s importance, and Poppy Wright has to absorb both truths at once.

Repairing the house, imagining a life

The house becomes part of a future plan after Alex Nilsen and Poppy Wright imagine spending the rest of his summer break in Linfield. They will stay at Grandma Betty’s house while Alex Nilsen fixes it up; Poppy Wright imagines sitting on the floor eating Twizzlers and finding new ways to make him blush. Together they will tear down wallpaper and choose paint colors, turning renovation into shared work as well as play.

Their plans extend beyond the house itself. They expect to have dinner with Alex Nilsen’s father and brothers, along with his nieces and nephew, and to sit on the porch with Poppy Wright’s parents looking out over the remains of Wright family cars. They mean to try on their hometown as they have tried on New York together, testing where they might want to belong. The house is therefore one element in a wider return to family and place, not a declaration that they have already settled permanently in Linfield.

A home measured by belonging

The future scenes place renovation beside the ordinary rituals of family life: meals, the porch, and deciding how a room should look. That contrast matters to a relationship formed through travel, where a shared destination could once feel like a temporary escape. At Grandma Betty’s house, the imagined future includes maintenance, relatives, and the question of where to live.

Poppy Wright’s certainty is ultimately expressed not as a preference for a particular building or town, but as a preference for Alex Nilsen’s presence: wherever he is will be her favorite place. The house gives that conviction a concrete possible setting, with wallpaper to remove and colors to choose, while leaving the larger question of where they belong open for them to answer together.