a restless slumber for the first time in what seemed like forever, I permitted myself to imagine a life where I wasn’t just Mrs. Calvin Gardner or Celeste de Vries’s granddaughter.
A life where my name was only Nina.
And I belonged to myself.
Interlude I
August 2018
Matthew
The line for confession was long, even for a Saturday. It wound around the corner of the apse where the big wood box was housed, down the left aisle of the church until it was halfway to the main entrance. And because I had nothing else better to do while I shuffled along with this week’s collection of sinners in Belmont, I shot off a quick picture to my sister, Frankie.
Me: I’m going to be here all damn afternoon. Tell Nonna to leave a plate for me. I won’t make lunch.
Her reply was almost immediate.
Frankie: What do you expect? School doesn’t start for another week, and everyone’s guilty about yelling at their kids all summer long.
I snorted. They were doing more than that, I was willing to bet. Domestic violence cases involving minors did go up in the summer, partly because, yeah, everyone was at home with their kids. I could speak to that from personal experience. My old man was a mean fuckin’ bastard when he was drunk, ten times worse when I was home mouthing off in ninety-five-degree heat with no air conditioner. New York was a swamp in August. I started running errands for my grandfather’s garage when I was just eleven, as much to get out of the house as for extra pocket money for me and my sisters. The little ones could go to Nonna’s to escape the chaos of our house during the day, but at night, we all had to go back to the belt, and later, for me, the fist.
I peered down the line, looking for the guilty ones. The guys with extra bruises on their knuckles or the mothers holding the collars of their kids’ shirts a little too tight. None today that I could see, but they were out there.
Me, I didn’t have any kids, but I had a lot to atone for.
Cursing, sure.
A few white lies here and there, okay.
But the coveting. Yeah, by far, the coveting was the worst.
I hadn’t exactly slipped back into my old ways that involved too many one-night stands with too many taken ladies. It was because even now, two and a half months since I’d last seen her, Nina de Vries was still stuck in my mind and my heart, right where I knew she’d probably stay until I took my last breath.
Okay, so even that wasn’t totally true. Because like a maniac, I couldn’t help but stalk her a bit. I was like a junkie who needed just a little hit to get through the day. I’d justified it by telling myself her building needed to be watched. Her husband was a suspect, and Derek was busy enough.
It was how I knew that, like always, she spent most of her time alone in her penthouse apartment.
It was how I knew that her daughter, the little blonde girl with sun-kissed skin and dark, brooding eyes, had come home for exactly a week this summer before leaving again (I was guessing for camp).
It was how I knew that Nina spent most days and nights alone at that apartment, waiting for someone to come find her.
God, I wished it could have been me.
She must have known I was there. Why else would she linger outside her building, chatting up her doorman for several minutes longer than necessary when she returned from the gym or some ladies’ lunch? Or turn suddenly to gaze up and down the street, lingering on parked cars or the street’s shadows with the intensity of a hawk scouting its prey? Though I knew she couldn’t possibly see me from where I sat in the back of a cab or under the awning of the building across the street, I knew she felt me, just like I felt her, as immediate and sensory as the wind on my cheek or the hum of the subway beneath my feet.
“Fuck,” I mumbled, momentarily forgetting where I was.
The woman in front of me, who looked maybe ten years older, but maybe a little too overdressed for confession, gave me a dirty look over her shoulder. I almost said something, but was interrupted by a text.
Jane Lefferts: Got plans in a few days? We’re hosting a big party up at the house on