More Than Words(29)

“What do you want me to do?” Tim asked.

“Just . . . be here,” Nina said.

Tim slipped an arm around her shoulder and squeezed. “That I can do,” he said. “But you do have to eat something at some point today.”

Nina looked up at him. She thought about all the meals she and Tim had eaten with her father. All the times the three of them snuck to the hot dog stand across the street from the Seaport hotel, even though they knew Caro wouldn’t approve. With Tim, she would have that extra piece of her father. His memories as well as her own. I should just tell him I want to marry him now, Nina thought. But every time she opened her mouth to say the words, something stopped her.

“So, Dune?” Tim asked.

“Of course,” Nina said. Her father’s obsession with the movie had caused Tim and Nina to dress as Paul and Chani one Halloween in the late ’90s. No one knew who they were, but they didn’t care.

As Tim turned on the TV to order Dune, Nina dimmed the lights and grabbed a fleece blanket from her rocking chair. It was blue, with an embroidered Y in the corner, and was big enough to cover two people, if not three. Her father had picked it up at his last Yale reunion and given it to Nina. She held it to her nose, but it didn’t smell anything like him. As the movie started, Tim and Nina sat together under the blanket, Nina’s head leaning against Tim’s chest, his arm around her back. He was keeping her from falling apart—holding her up, literally and figuratively.

“I love you so much,” she said to him, as she unfolded the list of phone numbers.

“Me, too,” he answered, resting his cheek on the top of her head. “Me, too.”

Nina made phone call after phone call, telling practically everyone she’d ever met that her father had died. She accepted their condolences and swallowed everything she wanted to say when one of his longtime squash partners asked her if she was going to see a medium to speak to her father from beyond the grave and when their neighbors in East Hampton launched into a story about how their dog died a week ago last Thursday and how they thought it might be from the pesticide the gardeners put on the hydrangeas.

“Everyone’s a lunatic,” she said to Tim, who’d been half listening to her end of the conversations and half dealing with the e-mails on his phone.

“I’m not going to disagree,” he said. “Well, except for us. We’re the only nonlunatics out there.”

Nina sighed. “I don’t know,” she said. “We might be lunatics, too. Do you know if you’re a lunatic?”

Then Nina’s eyes went to the television screen and she realized the poison capsule in Duke Leto’s tooth was about to kill him. Nina flinched against Tim. This part had never bothered her before, but now she couldn’t watch.

“Turn it off,” she said. “Tim, please. Turn it off. Don’t let it get to that part.” She heard the panic in her voice but couldn’t stop it.

Tim fumbled for the remote control and hit pause.

“He’s Paul’s dad,” Tim said, realizing the problem.

Nina nodded. “I forgot that happened. Can we . . . can we put something else on?” she asked quietly.

“Of course,” Tim said.

Nina laid her head back against his chest and he stroked her hair with one hand while flicking through the options on the screen with the other. “Here,” he said. “How about this one?” He put on Matilda. “You used to like this.”

“Better choice,” Nina said, her voice small. “Thank you.”

She took her glasses off and closed her eyes, listening to the familiar dialogue, feeling Tim’s chest rise and fall against her.



* * *



? ? ?

About an hour later, Nina woke up to the sound of a text message. She looked around and realized she and Tim had fallen asleep on the couch together. Somehow they’d both stretched out so they were lying like spoons, her body just in front of his, his arm draped across her stomach, the fleece blanket pulled up to their chins. She could feel his even breath on her neck.

Nina slowly reached in front of her to grab her glasses and phone from the coffee table, not wanting to wake Tim. She slipped on her glasses, flicked the phone to silent, and then looked at the text. There were two. Both from Rafael. They’d come one right after the other. The fact that there weren’t any others meant the press release hadn’t gone out yet.

Hey, Palabrecita, the text said. Just wanted to see how you were doing. When my dad died, I was a real disaster. And that was with my brother and sister and mom there with me. Hope you have people to lean on.

The office isn’t the same without you here.

Nina took a quiet breath. In reading the text, she could hear Rafael’s voice. She could see him, sitting at his desk, texting while drinking a cup of Jane’s horrific coffee. Maybe he’d rolled up his sleeves and anyone who was watching could see the muscles in his forearm ripple every time he moved his thumb to type. Nina closed her eyes and let herself melt against Tim. She shouldn’t be thinking about Rafael.

She reread his message.

Should she respond? What should she say? She didn’t want to write anything that would’ve made her father say, You’re smarter than that.

She’d planned to go back to work at some point before election day. Help Rafael win. But was that even fair, to take so much time off right before an election? And Nina knew her brain wasn’t functioning properly. She’d be no help to him in the state she was in. Plus, there was the connection that they both knew was there, even if they’d never spoken it aloud. It wasn’t smart to put herself in that situation. Even now, thinking about him made her cheeks feel warm.