10. Nina #2
“No. You just assumed the worst.” I don’t turn around. “Like mother, like son.”
Another long pause. Then the click of her heels on the marble, retreating.
“Nina.”
I stop. Don’t turn.
“I hope-” She falters. Evelyn Moretti, who has never faltered in her life. “I hope you’re telling the truth.”
“I am.”
“Then I hope my son figures that out before he loses everything.”
The front door opens. Closes. The house falls silent.
I sink onto a packing box and press my hands to my face, breathing hard. My whole body is shaking - adrenaline, probably, or the particular exhaustion of finally saying things I should have said years ago.
You’re doing the right thing, I tell myself. You’re building a life that’s yours.
I put my hand on my stomach, on the life growing there that my husband might never fully believe is his.
I think about how I always assumed this child would be born into a family. Into a marriage. Into something stronger than fear.
I think about how wrong I was.
***
The last box is the hardest.
It’s not heavy - just a few items, things I should have dealt with days ago but kept avoiding. Our wedding album. The guest book from the reception. A small velvet box containing the pearl earrings Adrian gave me on our wedding morning, the ones I wore when I walked down the aisle.
I sit on the floor of the bedroom - our bedroom, though it doesn’t feel like ours anymore - and I open the album.
There we are. Ten years younger, impossibly hopeful, looking at each other like the rest of the world had disappeared.
I’m wearing my mother’s veil, the one thing I insisted on even when Evelyn tried to steer me toward something “more appropriate.” Adrian is crying in half the photos - happy tears, he said, the happiest day of his life.
I turn the pages slowly. The first dance. The cake cutting. The moment we ran through sparklers to the waiting car, laughing, drunk on champagne and each other.
Who were those people? Where did they go?
I close the album and put it in the box. The guest book follows. The pearls stay in their velvet case - they were his grandmother’s, they should remain with the family.
Everything else goes. The years. The memories. The woman I was when I believed love was enough.
***
That evening, I stand on the porch of the cottage, looking out at the harbor.
The sun is setting, turning the water orange and gold, and I think about everything this place will become. A home I made myself. A future I’ll build alone. A child who will grow up knowing their mother chose survival over surrender.
“You didn’t tell me you were moving.”
I don’t turn around. I knew he’d come eventually. I’ve been waiting for it all day - dreading it and craving it in equal measure.
“You weren’t speaking to me.”
“I would have helped.”
“I didn’t need your help.”
His footsteps on the weathered boards. He stops a few feet away, close enough to feel his presence, not close enough to touch. Close enough that I can smell his cologne, the one I bought him for Christmas three years ago.
And my body, my stupid disloyal body, leans a half inch toward that smell before I catch it.
Ten years of sleeping against this man taught my skin things my anger can’t unteach it.
Stop, I tell myself. He packed a suitcase.
You do not get to want the hands that packed it.
My skin has no opinion on suitcases. My skin only remembers the hands.
“I don’t want you to go.”
“What do you want?”
“I want-” He falters. Starts again. “I want to understand. I want to fix this. I want things to go back to the way they were.”
“The way they were.” I finally turn to look at him. He’s backlit by the sunset, his face half in shadow, and he looks older than he did a month ago. Tired in a way that goes bone-deep. “You mean back to when you trusted me? Or back to when you were just better at hiding that you didn’t?”
He flinches. Good. He should flinch.
“I made a mistake, Nina.”
“You packed a suitcase.”
“I know.”
“You looked at ten years of marriage and decided a few weeks of suspicion outweighed all of it.”
“I know.”
“Then you stood in our foyer and asked me if I was telling the truth about our baby.” My voice cracks, and I hate it.
“Our baby, Adrian. The one we spent years trying to have. The one I’ve been protecting every minute of every day since I saw that heartbeat on the screen. You asked me if I made it up.”
“I was scared.”
“So was I.” I wrap my arms around myself, suddenly cold despite the warm evening air. “But I never stopped believing in you. I never looked at you and wondered if you were lying. I never packed a suitcase.”
“I know.” He moves closer, and I step back, maintaining the distance. “And I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Nina. I know that’s not enough - I know words can’t fix what I did - but I’m sorry.”
“It’s not about sorry.”
“Then what is it about?”
I look at him - this man I married, this man I loved, this man who broke my heart with silence instead of conversation.
“Your mother came to see me today.”
He goes still. “What did she say?”
“She assumed I was running away. That guilty people run.” I laugh, and it tastes bitter. “Like mother, like son.”
“Nina-”
“I told her about Cole. About the cancer. About everything I’ve been carrying alone because no one in your family trusted me enough to ask.
” I watch his face, watch him absorb the words.
“She didn’t know, Adrian. Vivienne’s been telling everyone I’m having an affair, and your mother believed it, and you believed it, and no one - no one - thought to just ask me what was happening. ”
“I should have asked.”
“Yes. You should have.” I turn back to the water, unable to look at him anymore. “I left the wedding china. Most of it, anyway. I took four place settings because they reminded me of my grandmother, but the rest is still in the butler’s pantry. You can do whatever you want with it.”
“I don’t care about the china.”
“I know you don’t. That’s not the point.” I take a breath. “The point is that I’m choosing what to keep and what to leave behind. I’m deciding what parts of the last ten years belong to me and what parts belong to a woman who doesn’t exist anymore.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I don’t want your house.” I turn to face him again. “I don’t want your money. I don’t want anything you can offer me right now.”
“What do you want?”
“I want to know I can survive without it.”
The words hang between us, heavier than the November air.
“I want to stand on my own two feet and know that if this all falls apart - if you never believe me, if this marriage ends, if I’m raising this child alone - I’ll be okay.
” I gesture at the cottage behind me. “I spent ten years building a life inside your world, Adrian. Now I need to know I can build one in mine.”
He doesn’t respond. Maybe there’s nothing to say.
“I’m moving in this weekend,” I say. “You can visit. If you want. But you don’t get to live here. Not yet.”
“Okay.”
“And you don’t get to ask me to come back.”
“Okay.”
His hand lifts like he’s going to reach for me - I see it in my peripheral vision, the instinctive movement toward touch - then falls back to his side.
“And you don’t get to act like you’re sorry until you understand what you’re sorry for.”
He’s quiet. The sun has almost set now, the water turning from gold to purple to black.
“What if I never understand?”
“Then we never go back.”
I say it firmly. Clearly. Like my voice isn’t threatening to crack.
“The china,” he says suddenly.
“What?”
“The four place settings you took. That’s-” He swallows. “That’s you, and the baby, and two guests.”
“Yes.”
“Who are the guests?”
The question catches me off guard. I hadn’t thought about it consciously, but the answer comes anyway.
“Cole. When he’s well enough.” I pause. “And whoever I decide deserves a seat at my table.”
“Not me.”
“Not yet.” I meet his eyes in the fading light. “Maybe not ever. I haven’t decided.”
He nods slowly, and I see him file this away - another piece of evidence, but not the kind he’s been collecting. This is different. This is understanding dawning, slow and painful.
“I’ll go,” he says quietly.
“Okay.”
He turns toward the porch steps, then stops.
“The earrings,” he says. “My grandmother’s pearls. You left them.”
“They’re yours. They should stay with the family.”
“You are the family, Nina.” His voice breaks on my name. “Whatever I’ve done, whatever I’ve made you believe - you’re the family. You’ve always been the family.”
I don’t answer. I can’t.
He waits another moment, then walks down the steps, across the small yard, to his car parked on the street. I watch him go - watch the taillights disappear around the corner - and I stay on the porch until the stars come out.
Then I go inside my cottage.
My home.
Mine.
And for the first time in weeks, I sleep without dreaming.