The New Husband(34)
“That would be great,” Nina said. “I’ll talk it over with him.”
But Nina had no intention of talking it over, because Simon had no idea she was seeing a therapist. She didn’t want him to think she wasn’t perfectly happy with him.
Telling Simon the truth about Dr. Wilcox might open up a number of issues, but lying to him took a different sort of toll. She’d already made up several reasons to keep him in the dark about her therapist. One time, Nina had almost arrived home from a session, but had to turn around and go to the market because that had been the reason she’d given for coming home late.
In truth, a part of Nina was still with Glen. She thought of him constantly. If he were alive, why had he abandoned his family? Nina was well aware men do have midlife affairs, but they generally don’t run away, or strip the family of all security. Did she have a part to play in this? Or did it have something to do with why he got fired from the bank? She had no doubt that, alive or dead, Glen had taken these and other secrets with him, wherever he’d gone.
Simon made her happy, made it possible to love again, but below the surface Nina’s heartache lingered. The slightest reminders of Glen—a movie on cable they had watched together, a photograph from a family trip, even something as mundane as seeing his brand of coffee on a supermarket shelf—could bring on the waterworks.
There was much to resolve, which reminded Nina to move on with the session so she could move past Glen and get on with her new life.
“I should talk about Teresa,” she said.
CHAPTER 19
Dr. Wilcox turned a page in her notebook, flipping back to refresh her memory.
“Right,” she said. “The other woman.”
“I mean, I was dealing with a lot back then,” Nina said. “Glen missing, losing his job, the lies, and the affair on top of it all. It was too much for me to process. But I was worried, you know?”
“About becoming a Dateline special.”
“That’s right,” Nina said. “I knew the police were going to investigate the lead, but I didn’t know when. And I was also thinking about the children—What would happen if word got back to them about their dad’s affair before I knew the whole story?”
Dr. Wilcox nodded with understanding.
“So I thought I needed to get some answers for myself. I didn’t want to wait around for someone else, and I was tired of feeling like a victim. I needed to do something, take some action of my own. In the back of my mind I was hoping that it was much ado about nothing.”
“So what did you do?”
“I went looking for Teresa,” Nina said, making it sound like the only logical choice. “I had to learn everything I could about the girl with strawberry hair, even if I got to her before the police did.”
Nina did not know if Dr. Wilcox had ever been to Carson, if she was at all familiar with the town of eight thousand residents. It was typical of New Hampshire in that it was old (founded in the 1700s), steeped in history, and lacking in diversity. To the east lay Bear Brook State Park, and off to the west rambled the Connecticut River, the longest in New England. Main Street in Carson followed the rise of a gently sloping hill, and quaint brick buildings lined the street, with stores on the ground level and apartments above.
Nina still couldn’t wrap her mind around the deceit. She and Glen had shared everything—a bed, a home, the children. How could she love someone heart and soul and not know him at the same time? He had a history of his own before they became a couple. Naturally, he shared stories from his past, but there were lots of years to cover and surely plenty of details omitted. And how would Nina know what was left out? They didn’t grow up together, weren’t high school sweethearts. In fact, they had met long after college. They were fully realized people when they started dating. People with pasts.
Before Glen, Nina had done what many twentysomethings did: worked her job, gone to the gym, and hung out with friends on weekends. The bar scene was fun until it wasn’t, and that shift happened almost overnight.
What had become of Jerry Collins, the college boyfriend whose heart she’d broken, or Keith Middleton, the man who had broken hers? The only thing Nina knew for certain was that her jealousy had grown as her friends paired off, got engaged, married, and became young mothers while she stayed stuck on the scene. One by one her social circle had grown smaller, like a herd being culled by some super-predator. Nina went out on dates, fix-ups with friends of friends, hoping to find that connection, believing in her heart she’d know when it was right. But it was never right.
She had worried about being too selective. Maybe something was wrong with her, not with all of her dates. When Nina suffered these thoughts, she reminded herself of the real issue: she gravitated toward a particular type. She dated broken guys, much like the people she saw each day in her social work practice. Men with issues she could unravel with the same delight she took in working with clients. They were mysteries, enigmas for her to figure out. Secrets to unlock.
The older Nina got, the more dismal her prospects seemed to become. She’d tried her best to break the wounded bird habit, but the younger men she dated were too immature, and the older ones too set in their ways. She had too many bad coffee dates that felt like job interviews. Some of the men were overly desperate; others too detached. Throughout it all, she avoided online dating. She wanted her romance to have a fairy-tale element—a story she could tell her kids, with glee in her voice and delight in her eyes.