Chapter 7
7
Nora
I t would have been easy to get mad at him. Easy to throw my water in his face and storm out of the diner. I didn’t owe him my story.
Going back to normal was impossible. There was too much past between us. Too much heartbreak. But we were moving on to someplace new. Different. So maybe it was time to put the past, firmly in the past.
I took a deep breath and my entire body fought me. My throat closed up. My brain shut down. Nick reached across the table and squeezed my hand.
“It’s just me, Nora,” he whispered, half his mouth lifted in that smile I used to love.
I blew out the breath and the story just…fell out of me. “I was an idiot. I’m not sure what more there is to say. Part of me was on top of the world. And the other part of me was…missing something. He stepped in and made me forget that.”
“With money?”
“No,” I scoffed. “Everyone wants to think that, but I had my own money. It’s why he targeted me.”
Our eyes met over the table and I didn’t want him to think that he had anything to do with what happened to me. And he didn’t – I’d made my own mistakes. But there was a part of my reaction to Nick that led to what happened.
“Rene was very expressive. I felt like I knew him because he conveyed every emotion every moment he had one. He talked constantly.”
“It prevented me from seeing the lies.”
Nick grunted. His eyes shuddered.
“He was charismatic and old school chivalrous. He filled the void with more adventure than a person was supposed to have.”
“What was so adventurous?”
“Private jets, parties at clubs with only the most famous celebrities. Wealth like you couldn’t imagine. Bodyguards wherever we went. He showed me a France I simply wouldn’t have ever seen. The opulence was jaw dropping. And then there were the great escapes.”
“Great escapes?”
“That’s what I started to call them. We’d be at a club, and his bodyguards would rush us from the floor saying we needed to leave now. We’d get in these dark cars and drive around Paris as if someone was actually following us. It was scary, but it was also exciting. Like we were playing this game, and every time we made it back to his hotel, we won.”
I picked at my eggs with my fork. It was all so stupid.
“Was anyone ever chasing you?”
Nick’s expression was tight, maybe a little angry. I reached my hand over the table to tell him it was all nothing, but touching him while telling this story didn’t feel right, so I stole a piece of his toast instead.
Which was stupid because I had the same pieces of toast, but me stealing Nick’s food was normal . And that’s what he wanted us to be.
I bit into the toast, chewed and swallowed.
Maybe I could convince Jolie to open a French boulangerie in town.
“Nora,” he urged.
“No,” I finally said. “It was all a lie. The money, the bodyguards, the chases through the streets. But the con…wow, it was real. Impressive. Like, that asshole took his time. It all started so slowly. He needed cash to get out of town fast. They were tracking him through his credit card transactions. Could I pick up the watch he’d reserved at Tiffany’s, he’d pay me back as soon as he saw me. Then he got ahold of my credit card. When I tell you how far in debt I was before it occurred to me that something was off…”
“Bad?”
“Stupendously bad, epically bad. It was good that I’d saved all the money I’d earned in Paris.” I took a bite of my eggs, which, even though I was so miserable, were just like I remembered, fluffy and delicious. There was satisfaction in knowing so many things about Calico Cove hadn’t changed.
“But eventually you figured it out?”
I chuckled. “Too late, but yes. He started showing me these texts from this unknown number. How they wanted to get in contact with him. That he had information they needed. When I finally asked him who that person was, he told me…oh God, this is so awful.” I buried my head in my hands. “He told me it was classified because they were with the CIA.”
Nick, who had been taking a sip of his coffee, nearly spit it out.
“I know. I know! It was like I woke up out of this stupor, looked around and realized it was all a sham.”
There had been signs. A few people in my friend group had tried to make comments. Does he seem too good to be true? Did you ask him why his credit card was declined when he tried to pick up a dinner bill? Why is he borrowing money from you instead of a bank?
But the thrill of the shiny and new had been both distracting and served my delusion that this life was better than home. Better than Nick. Who cared about Calico Cove when I was jetting off to Iceland for a night just to see the Aurora Borealis? What did it matter that my family was hosting their annual BBQ party without me, if I was sitting on a lounge chair roasting in the sun in Monaco? What did some little crush on Nick matter when I was having a grand love affair all across Europe?
“Go ahead and say it,” I prompted him. “Give me your worst. How stupid could I be? That was your question, right? Incredibly stupid. Undeniably na?ve. He didn’t just steal my money, he robbed me of my self-confidence. Of who I thought I was.”
The story had emptied me and I sat there feeling like I was made of humiliation and bad news. I shrugged and let my hands fall open on the table. “Tell me how I’m supposed to come back from this. I don’t know how I’m ever going to trust another human being again. I’m back in Calico Cove because I’m broke as hell, but it’s also the only place I can go where I know people. I mean really know them.”
Nick looked at me for a long time and I sat there and let him. I let him see right into all the broken and strange places Rene had left in me. I waited for him to say that nothing was as bad as it seemed. That I was still a person with value and worth. That I wasn’t an idiot.
“You’ll get over it,” he said.
It was such a Nick thing to say.
Rub some dirt on it. Shake it off. Get over it.
I laughed, but it was sharp and grumbly.
“This from the man who has suppressed every real emotion he’s ever felt,” I said, because my feelings were hurt and maybe I wanted to hurt his too?
“Have not,” he said, munching on some buttered toast. “Annoyed is an emotion. Sometimes I get real annoyed. Is hunger an emotion? I get hungry. Sometimes I get horny-“
The word split the air between us.
“So why are you still single? You’re thirty-six, Nick. Everyone in this town is wondering when you’re going to settle down. Mom worries you’ll never meet The One.”
“There is no One ,” he said. “There is convenience, time and compatibility.”
“So romantic.” I glanced around the diner like I was looking for an audience. “Someone sign this man up for The Bachelor. ”
“I know people talk, but I don’t care. I’m not going to be rushed into something because everyone thinks I should be settled down at this age.”
“Don’t you want a wife? Kids?”
“I don’t know?” He shrugged, playing it so cool, but he forgot I knew him better than anyone.
“You’re not going to be like your dad,” I said. “Or your mom.”
“You don’t know that. A lot of shit went down before Antony and Birdie found me and that doesn’t just go away.”
“I do know that,” I said with authority. “You’ve been around kids since you were fifteen and you’ve never been anything other than kind or patient with any of them. My parents trusted you with me when I was just a toddler.”
“Well, that didn’t work out so well, did it?” He said with a self-deprecating wince. I was stunned that he was even making a joke about it. “I actually think what has me the most nervous about settling down is Birdie.”
“Birdie?” I asked. His adoptive mother had been nothing but loving towards him.
“She cares so much, you know?” He looked up at me and then back down at the eggs he was pushing around on his plate. “When something good happens, like opening the garage? She’s so happy for me. Like the most happy, but sometimes I think she’s worried too. Like, what if it’s all taken away and I get hurt again?”
It was true. It was how I thought my parents looked at me sometimes too.
Being a parent was hard. He wasn’t wrong.
The mood at our celebration breakfast had dropped and I was reeling from this amount of Nick Renard honesty. So, I did a very Old Normal Nora thing and cracked a joke to change the mood.
“Sure, it could be that,” I mused. “Or you’re still dealing with abandonment issues, which have resurfaced given your two half-brothers, born of the mother who abandoned you first, have returned to reclaim you.”
He glared at me, and I beamed at him.
“Finish your eggs, Kiddo .”
I stuck out my tongue and he smiled. We both went back to our eggs and bacon. I wouldn’t tell Nick, what telling him the whole truth did for me – but I did feel better.
“Hello, I’m home!” I called out as soon as I opened the front door. “Someone pop the champagne, your oldest daughter has a job!”
“Nor,” my dad called out. “We’re in the kitchen.”
There was something about his voice. A tightness that made me feel like a teenager coming home late for curfew.
In the kitchen, Mom and Dad sat at the table with a man I didn’t recognize wearing a suit, a buzz cut and a grim expression.
My stomach sank. I’d met plenty of men and women who had the same look. The same grim expression. Even the same haircut. Not a single one of them ever had good news to share.
“This is Special Agent Naugle,” Dad said.
Of course he is.
“You have bad news,” I said, ripping off the Band-Aid.
I’d talked to a lot of cops in the fallout of Rene. The police in Paris. The DST. Interpol Agents.
Each time I talked to a different agency – the crime grew and my stupidity with it. Rene wasn’t just a con man, he was a world class con man, with years’ worth of victims all over Europe and in the States too.
I’d told every one of them everything I knew about Rene. His habits, how and where he liked to spend money. Places he liked to be seen. Over and over. At this point they should talk to each other instead of me.
“We’ve lost him again,” the man said as he stood up and offered his hand.
I gave it a brief shake.
“I didn’t know he was found,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest. “I hadn’t heard.”
“We caught up with him in Prague. Interpol had set up a sting operation, but he sniffed it out. I say all this to tell you we believe he’s headed back to the US. He’s been reaching out to some contacts in New York.” My stomach rolled thinking of him here. New York was too close. “I wanted to know if he’d been in contact. Or what the likelihood of him showing up in town might be.”
I shook my head. “He won’t come here. It’s too boring. To provincial. There is not enough to keep him entertained.”
The agent looked grim. “The man is on the run. Desperate. He’s going to look for some friendly shelter.”
A burst of laughter scraped my throat. “Well, he’s not going to get it from me!”
“Of course not,” the agent said, but I could tell he didn’t believe me.
I’d been fooled once, why not be fooled again? Silly little girl who thought she was in love with a prince.
To be clear. Crystal clear. I never once thought I was in love with Rene.
“Still,” Special Agent Naugle said as he handed me his card from a clip in his back pocket. “If he does contact you, you’ll let us know immediately.”
I took the card. I had dozens of these in a drawer in my bedroom.
“Absolutely,” I said.
“If I don’t kill him first,” my dad muttered behind me.
“Dad!” I scolded. “Special Agent Naugle might not realize you’re joking.” I turned to the agent. “He’s joking.”
“I’m not,” Dad said. I turned to glare at him but he was unapologetic.
With an awkward goodbye, the agent left, but the tension between my parents and me didn’t immediately dissipate. It was always like this. They could feel my shame and I could feel their pain. We were like disco balls in a room, reflecting everything to each other. Again and again.
When I first told them.
When the scandal blew up online.
When they met me at the airport and I fell into my father’s arms crying.
They thought I was both heartbroken and humiliated.
I never bothered to correct them. Humiliated, yes. But I’d only been heartbroken once in my life and that was not something I was going to share.
“Honey, what’s that face you’re making?” Mom asked.
I immediately wiped my expression and thoughts clear of Nick.
“It’s nothing. I’m going to go to my room.”
“You don’t want to talk about the fact that a criminal might have plans to show up here?” Dad growled. “Maybe we should talk about your safety.”
“Rene was never dangerous. Everything was just an act with him. It was all bullshit. And what I told the agent is true. He’s not coming to this small town. There’s nowhere to land his borrowed private plane.”
“I don’t like it. And neither does the FBI, if they thought to come here in person,” Mom pointed out. She had her sweater wrapped tightly around her waist, her hands tucked under her arms.
“Trust me,” I said and reached out to touch her arm, pull her hand free so I could hold it. “He’s just following protocol. Rene will never show up here. Now I’m off to memorize Jolie’s menu.”
“Why?” Dad asked.
“So I can translate all the dishes. It’s a French restaurant.”
“In a town in Maine.”
“Trust me,” I told Dad. “Jolie will love it! It will bring such authenticity, a little j e ne sais quoi! ”
“I don’t know what that means,” Dad said.
“It’s French,” Mom explained to him. “You go do you, honey. I’m sure you’ll be the best French speaking hostess at a French restaurant ever.”
“Right?” I said, full of hope and optimism. “This is going to be great.”