name like that, beckoning her attention like she was an errant child?
“Yes, Calvin?” she said as sweetly as she could manage.
“We will talk about it.”
Caitlyn cringed. Violet and Celeste remained perfectly still.
But Nina refused to look away.
“Of course, Calvin,” she said. “We will.”
And then she helped herself to a large serving of pasta.
Chapter Twenty-Two
June 2009
Outside the thick oak door of what was now Calvin’s home office, Nina took a deep breath. Nervously she clicked her heels together, like she was Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz.
There’s no place like home. All she needed was a quick signature, and she could go there at last.
Everything was set up.
She had purchased a house in Newton, a suburb just west of Boston. Re-enrolled at Wellesley for the fall. Even sent a letter to Eric at his last known address there, though that had been returned again. No matter. He would be back, and in the meantime, Nina was making a life for herself on her own.
She fingered the thick manila envelope. This was the last piece of the puzzle.
Since the awkward luncheon with her family and Caitlyn, Calvin had been suspiciously quiet. There had been no more awkward appearances in her suite at odd hours, no more shouting matches or veiled statements. Celeste too had mentioned his requests for more money had subsided. Even his threat to “talk” about her plans for school had gone untested. It was almost as though he had been avoiding her and everyone else.
But no more.
Today was their anniversary. It had been one year exactly since she stood in that dusty church and lied in front of God and all those people when she had promised Calvin Gardner her life and love. Divorce wouldn’t be pretty, but it was inevitable. Plenty of people didn’t make it past their first year. Embarrassing, but not a scandal.
And it was, finally, time.
“It will be all right,” she said to herself. “It will be all right.”
“Nina?”
The door flew open, and Calvin’s squat, sweaty body filled the frame, face glistening with sweat and stress. Behind him, a mess of papers was shoveled atop his desk next to two open laptops and a fair amount of clutter.
“What in God’s name were you muttering about out there?” he demanded. “Were you spying on me? Listening through the door?”
Nina frowned, taking a step back. “What? No, of course not.”
Calvin scowled, then yanked absently at the fat yellow tie swinging around his thick neck and whirled back inside. “Well, then. What do you want?”
Nina swallowed and gripped the manila envelope in her hands. How had it come to this? One year ago, he had been so kind to her…now his voice dripped contempt. So much derision. And for what? What had she ever done to deserve it?
She took a deep breath. “I—do you have a moment?”
Calvin scowled harder. “Fine. If you have to, come in.”
He returned to his desk in a huff, and Nina cautiously let herself inside the room. It was musty and dank, like too many people had been perspiring close together around the desk. There were several bowls encrusted with food residue piled on a coffee table along with a few other used coffee cups. Some of the windows looking out to Ninety-Second Avenue even bore bits of condensation along the edges.
“Been burning the candle at both ends?” Nina did her best to strike a conversational tone, trying not to linger too long on any one part of the mess.
“Understatement of the century.” The desk chair creaked loudly as Calvin flopped into it, and he immediately started clicking on the computer. “Can we get on with this? I’m expecting a phone call in a few minutes.”
“Okay. Well, this shouldn’t take long. I hope.”
Nina approached the desk, but before she could offer the manila envelope, something else caught her eye lying amidst the clutter.
“What’s this?” she asked, picking up a small gold, or maybe brass, coin from a dish containing other loose staples and paper clips.
The gold was chipped, grimy, and tarnished to the point where the letters—which looked like Latin—were mostly obscured along with the two-faced man on the front. It looked a lot like the ancient coins she had seen in some of the archaeological museums in Rome. Nina frowned. Something else about the coin was familiar, but she couldn’t quite say what. For some reason, it made her think of her uncle, Eric’s father. But that was ridiculous—Uncle Jacob had died when they were children. Nina had not even been nine. She