to try. Would you like to have coffee or something? Let me know. Your little nephew Peter, ha ha.”
Nina looked at it for a long time. She could always ignore it. She really had things pretty much together right now; she didn’t need any new complications. Then again, what if there was a very sporty member of her new family who could help her edge out Quizzard? And why was that guy getting under her skin so much, the big, good-looking dumbass? She decided her friends at book club were right: She was being a little Lizzy Bennet about him. I care not one fig, she told herself firmly. I am not in any way intrigued. And besides, I have plenty of other things to think about.
“Dear Peter,” she wrote. “I must admit this whole thing has been a bit of a shock, and I have no real comprehension of what just happened. It would probably be helpful to get my head around it with someone who understands it all. Here’s my number. Why don’t you text me if Friday lunchtime works for you. Love, Aunty Nina, which is hilarious even to write.” Then she put a smiley face so he’d know she was joking, and hit send.
See? Not distracted by the guy in any way. Totally focusing on more important things. One hundred percent not thinking about him. Or his hands. Not at all.
Six
In which Nina feels less alone,
but not necessarily in a good way.
Peter Reynolds and Nina had agreed to meet for lunch at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the modern art museum in mid-Wilshire. It was right next to the Tar Pits, with their disturbing, life-sized models of mammoths stuck in the tar-filled pond. Nina remembered standing by the fence around the pond as a child, agonizing over the baby mammoth. He (or she; it was hard to gender-identify a mammoth at fifty feet, probably even for other mammoths) was standing at the side of the pond panicking because his parents were having a problem he couldn’t understand. Nina had been a child with a rich imagination and way too much empathy, so after a few tearful visits, her nanny, Louise, had stopped bringing her.
“It’s only a model, baby,” she had explained. “It’s not real.”
“I know,” wailed eight-year-old Nina. “But it could be real, right? Mammoths did get stuck in the tar. That’s why all their bones are here, right?”
Louise had nodded.
“Well then,” cried Nina. “This is a model, but it’s Real Life, too, and a real baby mammoth might have watched his parents get stuck and starve because they couldn’t get out and days and days would go by, and they’d keep telling him to go find food, or somewhere safe, and he would say, ‘No, Mommy, come out of the tar,’ and then she would say, ‘I can’t, baby,’ and she would have cried and he would have cried or maybe some nasty dinosaur would’ve come and eaten him and his mommy wouldn’t have been able to help and it would have been awful . . .” And then Louise, who didn’t think it was the right time to point out dinosaurs and mammoths hadn’t lived at the same time, realized it really would have been awful, and then the Tar Pits were ruined for her, too.
It was the same way with everything Nina experienced; fictional characters were as real to her as the people she met and touched every day. Eventually, she developed a tougher skin and a more critical appreciation of literature, but she still cried at endings, happy or sad. Certain books had left an indelible impression, and Liz never let her forget the occasion she’d been explaining the plot of Flowers for Algernon and had started crying in the middle of the store. Not that Nina needed reminding.
She’d arrived a little early for her appointment with Peter Reynolds and had taken a table where she could watch the door. Sipping her coffee, she examined the people coming in. Every arrival was scrutinized carefully for familiar mannerisms, walks were studied, and of course she missed her actual nephew completely. A man approached her table, a broad grin on his face.
“Oh my God, you must be Nina. We totally have the same hair.” He sounded as giddy as a kid opening a packet of Pokémon cards and finding their favorite.
Nina goggled at him. He was very tall and handsome, and debonair would be the only word to describe the tweed jacket