But maybe it had the answers she’d been wondering about. Maybe it talked about the mysterious Christmas present. Besides, her father was gone. Her mother was, too. Whose confidence was she really breaking?
Nina opened it again.
After the summer, after all we went through, all we talked about, you said you’d stop seeing her. I thought you’d do it, if not for me and Nina, then for your father and his legacy. But apparently you didn’t.
I don’t know if I’ll be able to forgive you this time.
I don’t know if I’ll be able to trust you again.
And if we separate, if we divorce, if the truth about this woman comes out, do you know how that will affect Nina? What the press will do to all of us?
I think maybe she and I should go away. To Colorado, perhaps. I’ll take a leave, and she can do the rest of the school year out there. We can say my sister needed me. Or we can figure out another cover story.
You screwed up, Joe. You really screwed up. I would say this all to your face, but I think I’d break down before I got through it, I think you might be able to convince me not to go through with it, but I need to, Joe, and I need you to know why.
There was more. There were pages more, but Nina stopped there. She couldn’t keep going.
Her father had cheated on her mother.
He’d taken what was beautiful and destroyed it.
And now Nina knew.
Her father wasn’t who she thought he was.
She couldn’t trust her memories.
She couldn’t trust him.
Could she trust anything at all?
42
Numb, Nina climbed back into bed, slipped between the sheets, and pulled Tim’s arm back over her stomach. Trying to draw comfort from his familiar solidity.
Her parents’ love story was fake. The People magazine spread framed in the lobby of the Gregory hotels was just a story they’d created. Or maybe it was something that once was true but wasn’t for a long time. A glamour they allowed the world to believe—wanted the world to believe.
She couldn’t believe her parents had done that. Had lied. Not just to the world, but to her.
Was her father too embarrassed to tell her the truth? Too ashamed? She thought about the line in her mother’s letter: I don’t know if I can ever trust you again. Could Nina trust anything her father had told her? And who was the woman? Was it someone Nina knew? Had known? Someone who came to Thanksgiving dinners? Ever? Still?
She pulled herself closer to Tim. He tightened his arm around her in his sleep and she let her body shape itself around his. Tim opened his eyes halfway.
“Morning,” he said to her.
“Not morning yet,” she told him quietly. She wondered for a moment about telling him what she’d found, but she needed to make sense of it herself first. She wanted to shut off her brain, so she pressed her lips against his. Tim responded, kissing her back tentatively. But she wanted it to feel like it did with Alex: primal, animalistic. She wanted her body to control her mind, instead of the other way around.
She pulled the blanket down so she could see all of Tim, so he could see all of her.
“Nina?” Tim said, more awake now.
Nina needed to feel hands on her body, the pressure of someone’s touch, even her own. She needed to focus on that. So she ran her fingers down the small slope of her breasts, across the muscles in her stomach, over the protrusion of her hip bones. Then she brought her fingers to her mouth and licked them before slipping them into her underwear, inside her.
She watched Tim’s erection grow. Watched him take off his boxers.
His body was all sinew and muscle, strong and hard and taut. Nina rarely saw his body the way she did now. Usually he was just Tim. Now he was an object of desire.
“I want you,” Nina said. There was an urgency in her voice. She could hear it. A desperation.
“Nina?” he asked again, his voice unsure. She’d never touched herself in front of him.
“Please,” she said. “Touch me.”
He ran his fingers down her stomach and she felt her body respond, the sensation cutting her brain and her heart out of the loop, like she’d hoped it would.
She slid off her underwear, climbed on top of him, and enveloped him.
He thrust against her, moving faster and faster. “Like this?” he asked.
Nina tightened her legs and pulled herself closer.
“Yes,” she said, abandoning herself to him. This was nothing like the sex they’d had earlier. Nothing like anything they’d done before. The pressure built between her legs and she called out as she came. It wasn’t a sound she’d ever made in front of Tim. He shuddered inside her and bucked one last time.
They were both breathing hard.
Her mind had been wiped clean, her body exhausted. Now it was her turn to lay her head on the pillow. She pressed against Tim, skin to skin.
And finally, she could sleep.
43
When Nina woke up, Tim was gone from the bed. She found him, showered and dressed, in the kitchen.
“Coffee?” he asked as she walked into the room.
She finger-combed her hair into a messy ponytail. “Sure,” she said. “Thanks.”
She watched him pour her coffee.
“So last night,” he said as he handed her the cup. “What was that?”
“What was what?” she asked, taking a sip.
“We’ve never had sex twice in one night,” he said. “You’ve never . . .” His voice trailed off. He didn’t have the right words.
The morning after, Nina was slightly ashamed that she’d let him see that side of her. That she’d touched herself in front of him.
Tim sat down at the island on one of the bar stools. “Don’t get me wrong. It was great. But that’s not you, Nina,” he said. “That’s not us. It just . . . I couldn’t sleep after that.”
“I . . .” Nina wasn’t sure what to say next. That she almost never let herself lose control, even when she wanted to? That discovering that her parents weren’t the perfect people she’d thought they were was somehow freeing? Or was that a cop-out? Was that a way to abdicate responsibility for her own desires? “Tim,” she finally said, “I think this is me. Or at least part of me.”
He stared at her, weighing his words, not saying any of them.
She stared back at him in silence, then looked over on the counter at the paper Tim had been reading when she walked in. Her father’s face was looking up at her.
“What’s that?” Nina asked, changing the conversation completely.
“I walked into town early this morning and picked up the Times,” he said, letting her.
She looked at the picture differently now. Her father was a master manipulator. She’d known that, but what she hadn’t realized was that it wasn’t just the media and the public he manipulated, it was his friends, his family. It was her. Nina wondered what lies were going to be memorialized in this article and how angry they would make her feel. She picked up the paper.
But the anger she was expecting didn’t come. Instead, it was sorrow.
She read the obituary, saw the photo timeline of her father’s life; she was part of it, standing with her parents—one, the other, or both—throughout the years. At the end, it said: Los tortolitos will finally rest once again in each other’s arms. And then the anger hit, fast and hard.
“You know, it’s not true,” Nina said to Tim, who was sitting next to her, their shoulders inches apart. Her voice was colder than she meant it to be.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
She walked upstairs and brought him back the letter she’d found. “I only read the first page,” she told him. “Last night. Before I . . . before we . . .”
He took the pages from her hand, reading quickly. “Your father had an affair,” he
said. “Holy shit. I’m so sorry.”
“I know,” Nina shook her head.
“He was such a . . .” Tim said. “I’d never have guessed he would even think about—”
“Do you know who it might have been?” Nina asked.
Tim shook his head. “Do you want me to ask my parents?”
“No,” Nina said. “Maybe I will, but . . . maybe they didn’t even know.”
“They must have.” Tim reached out and brushed Nina’s hair out of her face. “Your dad told my dad everything.”
Nina shrugged, anger morphing into she didn’t know what. Disappointment? Resignation? Distrust? “I don’t even know what to think about him anymore. You know, when I was younger he said that my aunt Daphne didn’t want to be a part of our world after my mom died, that she didn’t like us. What if that was a lie, too?”
Tim rubbed his eyes before looking back at Nina. “I can’t imagine he’d keep you from your family for no reason.”
Nina thought about that. “Maybe he had a reason,” she said. “Just not one I’d have agreed with.”
Tim looked down, into his cup of coffee. “Your father was a good man, Nina. Don’t let that get lost in all of this.” Then he looked up and Nina was surprised to see tears in his eyes. “I loved him, too, you know.”
“I know,” she said, and leaned over to hug Tim. Love was complicated. It didn’t disappear because someone did something horrible, something you didn’t agree with. It lived there, with the disappointment, the disapproval. You had to figure out how to hold both of them in your heart, or you’d lose everyone, everything. Nina had been struggling with that her whole adult life. Now, it seemed, Tim was, too.
They spent the rest of the day going through the house, opening drawers and closets, finding a scarf that Nina threw around her neck, a stack of magazines from December 1992, and Nina’s old umbrella, pink with red hearts, that years ago she’d assumed had gotten left behind at a restaurant or forgotten at a birthday party.
“I’m surprised no one cleaned this place out,” Tim said, as they found a pile of board games in a cabinet. Trivial Pursuit, Monopoly, Scrabble.
“Me too,” Nina answered. “This seems like it would’ve been a job for Super Caro.”
Tim smiled. “I won’t ask her unless you want me to, but I bet she knows more than we do.”
Nina figured she probably did, but still wasn’t sure she wanted to know. Her vision of her father had already changed last night. She wasn’t sure how much more information she could handle at the moment.
She looked over at Tim and ran her thumb over the band of the engagement ring on her finger. She’d thought Tim had been her last gift from her father. But now she wondered. Did her father know anything about love at all?
44
When they got back to the city, Nina dropped Tim off at his place before heading over to her father’s garage to park the car.
“You sure you don’t want me to come?” he asked.
“I’m sure,” Nina said. She needed some time by herself to process, to think.
Tim assessed her for a beat longer than he might have a few weeks ago, then said, “Okay, sounds good. You’ll wear the ring around your neck?”
Nina nodded. “On a chain so it hangs next to my heart.”
They’d decided that made the most sense for now. That way there would be no questions until they were ready with answers.
“And we’ll go over those financials together tomorrow? Two MBAs are better than one?” He was trying to make her laugh. Nina appreciated it.
“Sure,” she said. “With the two of us looking together, I bet we can figure out what my dad meant. And if we don’t, we can always call Irv.”
They’d talked about it that morning, what her father might have wanted to say. It was something else that Tim suggested they ask his parents—TJ specifically—but Nina thought that if her father had wanted TJ to tell her whatever it was, he would’ve made that happen. Maybe it was something even TJ didn’t know. They’d decided Irv, the Gregory Corporation’s CFO, would be backup. But Nina felt the same way about him that she did about TJ—if her father had wanted Irv to tell her, he would’ve made that happen.
“Nina and Tim, friends until the end,” Tim said, which made Nina smile.
As she drove back across town, she thought, almost as if it were a reflex: I haven’t spoken to my dad in a while, and then realized afresh when she went to grab her phone that he was gone. That she’d never speak to him again. And that he’d lied to her. So profoundly. How could he leave, knowing that this secret existed, that if she discovered it, he wouldn’t be there to help her through it? Was that why he’d told her she should be with Tim? Because she’d need someone to support her when the tectonic plates of her life shifted? When her father tumbled off his pedestal? How could he do this to her?
Nina couldn’t stop the tears that came to her eyes then, hot and angry. They blurred her vision as she drove, and all of a sudden she thought about how her mother had died. An icy road, she knew. Up in the country. The car had gone out of control. She’d hit a tree. The car was totaled. And she was dead by the time the ambulance arrived.
But was it just ice? Or could it have been tears that made her veer off the road? Had her father’s affair killed her mother? And if it had, would anyone ever know? That would be the worst headline Nina could ever think of. Joseph Gregory’s Affair Kills Wife. Leaves Young Daughter Motherless.
A taxi honked behind Nina, and she took a moment to wipe her eyes before she stepped on the gas. There was no way she was going to let sorrow end her life. She would not let history repeat itself. Not now. Not ever.
45
It felt good to be home. Nina had taken out her contact lenses and filled up her bathtub with some fancy bubble bath Leslie had sent over a few months before. An “I saw this and thought of you” gift, which was Leslie’s thing. She didn’t celebrate Christmas and sent beautiful cards on birthdays but said that people got so many gifts then, it seemed silly to add to the pile. Instead, she bought presents when she saw things she thought her friends and family would like. It was actually nice—gifts arriving when you least expected them.
Nina looked at her naked body in the bathroom mirror and thought: This body is now engaged to Tim. It was a crazy thought. Yesterday her body had been her own; now it felt like it was partially his. It was amazing to think about how quickly a world could shift. Yesterday I had a parent, today I don’t. Yesterday I was working on a campaign, today I’m not. Yesterday Tim was just my present, today he’s my future. It hurt her brain to think about it.
Nina climbed into the bathtub, letting herself disappear under the bubbles. She hadn’t brought a book into the tub with her. Instead, she turned down the lights in the bathroom and tried to focus on relaxing. She relaxed her toes, her feet, her ankles. She relaxed her calves, her knees, her thighs. The only thing she found she couldn’t relax was her mind, no matter how long she sat there counting her breaths, closing her eyes, imagining thoughts floating out of her head like balloons. She ran her fingers down her body, the way she had with Tim the night before, but instead of his naked body, Rafael appeared in her mind. Nina opened her eyes. Tried to float that thought out of her head like a balloon, too. That thought that never should have been there to begin with. This bath was the opposite of relaxing. So when she heard her phone ring in her bedroom, Nina took the excuse to get out of the tub.
She wrapped herself in a bathrobe and checked to see who the missed call was from. Leslie. Nina called her right back.
“Hey,” Leslie said, after the first ring. “Cole made me promise I would call you today. He was reminding us last night about how the two of you made pizza dough out of beer last time you visited. He’s asked me every day this week if I thought you needed another lollipop.”
Nina laughed. “Tell him I’ll come visit soon,” she said. “We can make
pizza again. And tell him he must’ve sent me a magical lollipop, because no matter how many times I lick it, it doesn’t disappear.”
“Ha,” Leslie said. “I’d better not, or he’ll want to buy all the lollipops in the store to see if he can find another magical one.”
“Fair,” Nina said. “No magical lollipop.” She’d been remaking her bed as she talked to Leslie, and now she sat down on top of the blanket. “So, I did something yesterday. But it’s a secret.”
Nina heard a horn honk. Leslie must’ve been driving. “I’m gonna need more than that,” Leslie said.
“I told Tim I’d marry him.”
There was a pause on the other end of the line. A split-second pause. And then Leslie’s voice came through. “Congratulations! How did he propose?”
Nina straightened the pillows on her bed. “With a beautiful ring and a gingerbread house like the one we built a long time ago,” she said. “He told me that he thinks we belong together. And my dad gave him his blessing.”
“Is that why you’re marrying him? Because it’s what your dad wanted?” Leslie’s words were slow, careful.
“No,” Nina said, feeling defensive, refusing to think about Leslie’s question. She thought about forks and napkins for a moment to keep her temper in check. Calmer, she said, “I like my life with Tim. And I love him. I always have. It all makes sense.”
“That’s great, then,” Leslie answered. Nina could hear the smile in her voice. “I’m glad you’re happy, Neen. You deserve it.”
Nina didn’t feel happy, though. And she felt like she had to confess. “I’m not sure if I am, actually,” she said. “At least not completely.”
“Hm?” Leslie replied. Nina could tell her friend was trying to figure out what her role was in this conversation. Was she supposed to be supportive? Critical?
“I was,” Nina explained. “When he first proposed, I was. But then I think I made a mistake last night. I touched myself in front of him. And took charge. In bed. And I thought maybe he liked it, but then it turned out he didn’t. Or at least he said it wasn’t ‘us.’ What if I want it to be, though? At least, sometimes.”
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