More Than Words(9)

Nina nodded. She wondered if Tim felt that way about her. That he could trust her with everything. He definitely used to. He shared his triumphs, his dating disasters, even his most secret failures, like the mistake he’d made at work the previous year that cost his company an investor. He’d barely been able to give voice to it. She knew she told him everything—all about her jobs, her boyfriends, her embarrassments and fears. And then she realized with a start that she hadn’t told him about her conversation with Rafael in the car before the fund-raiser.

She wanted to ask Caro if she thought that was a problem, but instead she said, “When you and Uncle TJ started dating, did it feel . . . exciting? Did it . . . make your heart race when he touched your shoulder?”

Caro laughed. “Watching him walk down the street made my heart race,” she said. “I’m glad you and Tim have that, too.”

“Right,” Nina said. Caro tilted her head slightly, as if she needed to see Nina’s expression from another angle.

“You two are happy?” she asked.

“We are,” Nina said, as both women moved away from the pier and started walking down the path. “Now, what was going on today with the caterers?”

Nina wished she could confide more in Caro, but right now that seemed impossible. And Nina wished, for probably the millionth time in her life, that her mother were still alive. But that was impossible, too.





8



When Nina got back to Tribeca and put her key in the elevator that led to her loft, she dialed Leslie. She needed a dose of her best friend: Just hearing Leslie’s voice made Nina feel stronger, more able to handle what was being thrown her way.

“Les!” she said, when her friend picked up the FaceTime call. “Where are you?”

“Cole’s soccer game,” Leslie said, flipping the phone around so Nina could see the field. “Why do we make four-year-olds play soccer? Half of them can’t even kick the ball when it’s two inches in front of them.”

Nina squinted and saw Cole, his dark curly hair flopping as he ran. “Well, he looks like he’s having fun at least,” she said.

“He basically just runs back and forth from one side of the field to the other,” Leslie told her. “And we pay for this. He could run in the backyard for free.”

Nina laughed. “Do you need to get back to the game?”

“Not at all.” Nina saw Leslie standing up, telling Vijay she’d be right back, and walking down a set of bleachers. “I’m glad you gave me an excuse to get up,” she said as soon as she was in the privacy of a little grove of trees. “Those benches could use some cushions. How’s everything going? Campaign? Your dad? Tim?”

“It’s all going . . .” Nina stood at the floor-to-ceiling window in her living room and looked past her phone, out at the cobblestoned Tribeca streets below her. “I just got back from a walk with Caro. I miss my mom, Les.”

“Oh, Neen,” Leslie said, sitting down on the grass, leaning against the trunk of a tree. “It sneaks up on you, doesn’t it.” Leslie’s mom had died when she and Nina were in college, and other than Rafael’s surprise moment of empathy, she was one of the only people Nina felt could truly stand with her in the darkness.

“She died almost twenty-five years ago,” Nina said, wishing she were there, next to her friend, her back against a neighboring tree. “I used to think at some point I’d stop missing her. But I don’t think I ever will.”

Nina remembered going with her mom to Columbia University when she was very young, sitting in a small office filled with books, her mother’s students asking Nina how old she was, what her favorite color was. And her mother urging her to answer “en espa?ol” after she’d answered in English.

“She’s got your cheekbones,” other professors would say.

Or: “She’s got your freckles.”

It was true—those were the two features that Nina and her mother shared. Otherwise, Nina looked like her dad. Her hair was light brown, the way his used to be, and silky. Her eyes were dark blue, like his, too, and the two of them had matching dimples and up-turned noses. Whenever people saw them together for the first time, their eyes would shift back and forth, as if matching feature for feature, checking to see where they diverged.

Nina sometimes wondered if she’d look more like her mom if she wore her hair shorter. But her hair was so much lighter . . . There must’ve been someone in her mom’s family who had light hair, too, though Nina didn’t know who. She didn’t have albums from her mom’s childhood the way she did from her dad’s, his great-aunts and -uncles and distant cousins, most of them still living in England and Wales, making appearances at various parties throughout the years.

“Yeah, I don’t think you’ll stop,” Leslie said, pulling Nina back to the moment. “But maybe that’s a good thing. If you miss her, it means you remember her. It means she’s still here.”

“I guess,” Nina said. “But does that make it any easier?”

Leslie paused for a beat. “I didn’t say it was easy.” Nina saw her friend stand up suddenly.

“Oh, no way! My son just scored a goal. Yeah, Cole! Way to go, buddy!”

Nina smiled. She heard all of the parents cheering in the background. “You should go. Tell him I say congratulations.”