like she’d attended Wellesley instead of Smith. Studied in Florence instead of London. For a short time, she had been a girl willing to stage small rebellions, but rebellions nonetheless.
She wasn’t a girl anymore, though, was she?
Nina turned to the tiny bundle in the car seat next to her. She wasn’t even twenty-one yet, but not quite eight weeks since the birth—most of them spent at Mount Sinai’s NICU—she felt much older. Strange how something that weighed less than two pounds could change your entire life.
“But you’re not two pounds now, are you?” Nina whispered to the tiny figure, who was still fast asleep, and thankfully, healthy as ever. “And now everyone wants to meet you. So let’s do our best to shine, shall we?”
The decorations continued into Celeste de Vries’s grand penthouse, the same place where Nina had essentially grown up. Technically, her mother’s townhouse a few blocks away had been her official address, but considering her father’s absence and Violet’s preference for yachts in Palm Beach over town cars on Park Avenue, Nina had spent the majority of her childhood here, with Eric. Under the wing of Celeste de Vries, being coached on all the things expected of them as part of this tribe. For Eric, that had meant golf and tennis lessons, public speaking education, and gradually learning about the family business. For Nina, it had meant a barrage of etiquette and finishing classes along with incessant critiques of her hair, skin, nails, clothes, posture, and anything else related to her looks. The best part was the ballroom dance classes, to which Caitlyn often tagged along.
Yet despite all of her grandmother’s autocratic tendencies…this had been home until just six months ago. It was the reason Nina had fought so hard to change her name from Astor to de Vries when she was a mere teenager. It was once a place that was at least stable in its tyranny.
Now it felt surreal.
“Mrs. Gardner.” Garrett, the decrepit old butler who had been with the family since Nina’s mother was born, bowed slightly from the waist when he greeted her in the foyer.
Nina set the baby, still in her carrier, on the large table bearing nothing but a massive vase of white poinsettias. Like the lobby, the apartment was lit up with Christmas splendor. The Ming vases gleamed on their stands under the garland and lights strung around the elaborate crown molding. More clusters of poinsettias garnished the few open doors and the foot of the salmon-colored wainscoting that led through the maze of hallways.
“Is Eric here?” Nina wondered hopefully as Garrett helped her remove the white, fur-lined wool trench she had gifted herself as a “push” present. After all, it wasn’t as though her husband would do such a thing for her, and she rather thought she had earned it.
“I’m afraid not, Mrs. Gardner.”
Nina kept her face pointed away from the old man while she worked to hide her disappointment. Eric had been gone now for nearly seven months. Occasionally news had filtered to her through Caitlyn or other friends. He’d been spotted bouncing around Ibiza at one point; someone had supposedly seen him biking around Bali in November. Once the summer ended, she had hoped he might have resurfaced, if only to tell their grandmother off. But there had been nothing but silence, and then Nina had been too busy at the hospital to notice that he still hadn’t returned her emails, or that her calls now went to a number that had been disconnected. While she no longer blamed him for not coming to the wedding…a part of Nina expected him to show up here. Now. To meet the newest addition to her family.
Eric was more than her cousin. He was practically her brother.
He wouldn’t abandon her completely.
Would he?
“Nina, please, Garrett,” she said as she turned to pick up the carrier again. “After all, you’ve known me since I was this age.”
The butler simply sniffed as he brushed off Nina’s coat and hung it in the closet. “As you wish, madam.”
Nina rolled her eyes to her baby girl. “Madam” was even worse than “Mrs. Gardner.”
Garrett escorted the two of them through the penthouse, which was still structured in the classic pre-war style, with a maze of corridors blocking each section of the house from another. The help know their place and we know ours, Celeste had once said. She had never cared for the modern fashion of open-concept apartments like the lofts downtown or in Brooklyn, though