understand, pulled her close enough that she could smell his mild scent of cheap deodorant, aftershave, and sweat. His light brown eyes were unwavering, unwilling to let her look away.
“Oh—okay,” she said, surprising even herself. “Yes, I would appreciate that. Thank you.”
Gardner released her wrist then, but only to prop open the door. He then took her other hand and helped Nina limp up the stairs in her broken shoe, all the way to the clinic on the second floor. Into the waiting room that was as predictably beige and decrepit as she had imagined. Where three other women sat with their toes touching, trying as hard as she was not to make eye contact with anyone else in the room.
Nina sat down while Calvin went to the receptionist to check her in. He returned with a form in hand.
“Do you want me to help you fill it out?”
Nina’s hands were shaking. Shame and dread pressed on each of her shoulders.
Principessa. I love you.
Oh, would Peppe still say that if he saw her now? Or would he be relieved that she was saving him from another kind of shame and ruin?
“No,” Nina said. Suddenly, she couldn’t stop shaking her head, back and forth, back and forth. She couldn’t do this, could she? No, she should. Or maybe she shouldn’t.
She was twenty years old. Too young to be a mother. Too young to weather the tabloids, the press, all the unwanted attention when she was discovered pregnant out of wedlock. Too young for her family to turn on her like they had turned on Eric.
Would Peppe be the next to die in a bathtub?
She was much too young for that, just as Eric had been.
Ultimately, she was too young for love.
Principessa.
Nina turned to Calvin, a man she hardly recognized, but who was the only person in that moment who seemed like he knew her at all. His face was blankly sympathetic, like a character on a sitcom. Practiced and flimsy, but still kind. Like he was doing what he thought he was supposed to in this awkward situation, rather than what Nina actually needed.
It was all she deserved anyway.
Nina stared down at the paper and raised the pen to the first line of the intake form. It wanted her name and address.
She scratched a line.
Terror shot through her.
Everything was wrong.
She dropped the form to the floor and turned to Calvin.
“I c-can’t,” she said, her voice barely a whisper. “I need to go home. Can you take me home?”
Calvin swallowed, looked at the empty form on the floor, then back up to Nina. “Are you certain?”
That same strange eagerness pervaded his voice.
Do you want me to get an abortion? Nina almost asked. But instead: “Y-yes. Yes, I’m sure.”
Calvin eyed her for one moment more, almost like she was an animal in a zoo doing something out of the ordinary. But the expression only lasted a moment before several others consumed him. Sympathy. Kindness. Friendship.
And then…knowing.
“Don’t worry, princess,” he said as he helped her back up onto her ruined shoes. “I’ll take you home. And we’ll take care of everything.”
Chapter Two
June 2008
“You’re going to have to do something about that, you know.”
Nina turned from where she was watching a few tourists in a canoe push away from one of the docks in front of the Boathouse on the Central Park Lake. When Calvin had asked her to meet him at the tourist trap, she’d agreed partly because it was a nice day, and partly because he’d simply been so nice to her in the four weeks following their awkward meeting in Jackson Heights.
Well, perhaps nice wasn’t the right word.
Knowing.
Attentive.
Invested.
These were more accurate, and Nina wasn’t sure how she was supposed to feel about them. But Calvin was the only one who seemed to care what happened to her these days. And he was the only one who understood what was going on beneath the surface since that strange, hot May afternoon.
“I’m sorry?” Nina asked as she pushed a bit of lamb around with her fork. Everything was disgusting right now. “Do something about what?”
Calvin took a large bite of his hamburger, and Nina tried to ignore the way grease pooled slightly at the corner of his mouth or when a fleck of ketchup landed on his shirtfront. His clothes were always stained, either from food like this or the uneven bleach he used to get it out.
Nausea roiled in her stomach.
“Well, you’re getting bigger every day,” Calvin said through a mouthful of meat.