More Than Words(43)

Nina wiped her tears and scrolled through more pictures. And then she got to the photo she’d taken that afternoon of the drawing she’d made for her mom. The one that made her wonder if Rafael had ever made something similar. Rafael, who might be awake now. She thought about the conversation they’d had the night her father died, how he’d offered to listen if she ever needed someone in the middle of the night. Even though Tim was here, she felt like she needed someone. Someone else who could help her untangle all her thoughts. Rafael would be good at that. But then she remembered what he’d said to her at her father’s wake: We can be whatever we want to be. She wouldn’t call him.

The photo was blurry. Even though she wouldn’t call Rafael, she might want to send him the picture, say hello. So Nina lifted Tim’s arm off her stomach and slid quietly out of bed. She padded into her parents’ bedroom and opened her mother’s drawer. When she lifted the drawing to photograph it better, she discovered a sealed envelope underneath. Nina picked it up and flipped it over. It was addressed to her father in her mother’s loopy handwriting.

Nina felt her heart race. Without giving it a second thought, she slid her finger underneath the envelope’s flap and opened up the sheaf of handwritten pages inside.

December 25, 1992

The day her mother died.

Dear Joseph,

I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how it got this bad.

Nina stopped reading. She folded the letter back up and slipped it back into the envelope. She didn’t want to know. This was private. Between her parents. For her father’s eyes only.

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.