10. Nina
— ? —
Nina
The cottage is small and white and perfect.
It sits near the water, weathered shingled siding that’s seen a hundred storms, a porch that wraps around two sides like arms waiting to hold me.
The view of the harbor catches the morning light just right - boats bobbing at their moorings, seagulls wheeling overhead, the kind of postcard New England scene that usually belongs to other people.
It’s nothing like the Bellevue Avenue mansion. Nothing like anything I’ve lived in since I married Adrian.
It’s exactly what I want.
I found the listing the morning after the ultrasound, while my husband slept three doors down the hall and I lay awake in our bed understanding the thing I couldn’t unlearn: a heartbeat on a screen can’t fix a man who isn’t sure it’s real.
He held my hand in that exam room like a drowning man.
And that night he still turned toward the guest wing, and I stopped waiting for the knock.
“The owner’s motivated,” the real estate agent says, flipping through her folder with manicured fingers. “She’s relocating to Florida next month. If you’re interested, we could close fast.”
“How fast?”
“Two weeks, maybe less. She’s motivated enough that you could have keys this weekend.
” She glances at me sideways, probably trying to figure out why a woman with a Bellevue Avenue address is looking at a cottage that costs less than the mansion’s annual property taxes.
“It needs some work, of course. The kitchen’s dated, and the bathroom could use-”
“I’ll take it.”
She blinks. “Don’t you want to think about-”
“I’ll take it.” I turn to face her, and whatever she sees in my expression makes her stop arguing. “Draw up the paperwork. I’ll sign today.”
She beams like I’ve given her a gift. “I’ll have everything ready by this afternoon.”
***
Moving boxes arrive the next day.
I pack systematically, room by room, keeping only what’s mine.
The books I brought into this marriage - dog-eared paperbacks and poetry collections, things I read before I became Mrs. Adrian Moretti.
The art I bought with my own money before there was Moretti money to spend - a small watercolor of the Providence skyline, a print I found at a flea market years ago.
The clothes that don’t carry the weight of Newport expectations. Which isn’t many. Most of my wardrobe belongs to the woman Adrian married - the one who attends charity galas and garden parties and dinners where the wrong fork is a social death sentence.
That woman can stay here. I don’t need her anymore.
I leave everything Adrian gave me. Every piece of jewelry except the Barcelona sapphires, and I don’t let myself ask why.
Every designer item purchased to make me fit into a world I never quite belonged in.
The diamond earrings from our fifth anniversary.
The tennis bracelet from last Christmas.
The emerald pendant he said matched my eyes.
It all stays in the velvet-lined drawer where it’s always lived.
It feels like shedding a skin.
***
The wedding china stops me.
I’m standing in the butler’s pantry, surrounded by stacks of Wedgwood that we’ve used exactly three times in ten years, and I don’t know what to do with it.
It’s ours. Or it was supposed to be. Twelve place settings of Blue Italian, the pattern I picked because it reminded me of my grandmother’s kitchen.
Adrian’s mother had wanted us to register for something more formal - Bernardaud or Hermès - but I’d insisted on this. On something that felt like mine.
I run my finger along the edge of a dinner plate, tracing the blue pastoral scene. A bridge over a stream. A tower in the distance. A world that never existed except in someone’s imagination.
Take it, part of me whispers. It’s yours. You chose it.
But did I? Or did I choose a compromise - something traditional enough to satisfy Evelyn, personal enough to satisfy myself? A pattern that belonged to neither world entirely?
I pick up a plate. Set it down. Pick it up again.
In the end, I take four place settings. Enough for me and the baby and two guests, if I ever have guests. The rest I leave stacked in the butler’s pantry, a monument to dinner parties I’ll never throw in a house I’ll never miss.
***
Evelyn arrives without warning.
I’m wrapping the four plates in newspaper - the Newport Daily News, which feels appropriately symbolic - when I hear the front door open. No knock. No announcement. Just the distinctive click of Prada heels on marble that means my mother-in-law has decided to make her presence known.
“Nina?”
I don’t stop packing. “In here.”
She appears in the kitchen doorway, immaculate as always in cream-colored silk and pearls that cost more than the cottage I just bought.
Her silver hair is swept back perfectly, not a strand out of place, and her posture is the kind of straight that comes from decades of finishing school and social obligation.
Her eyes sweep the room - the boxes, the newspaper, the dismantled life spread across the counter - and something cold settles into her expression.
“What are you doing?”
“Moving.”
“Moving.” She says it like the word is foreign, like she’s never heard it applied to a Moretti before. “Where?”
“There’s a cottage near the water.” I wrap another plate, focusing on the task so I don’t have to look at her. “Small. Mine.”
“Yours.” Evelyn moves into the room, trailing her fingers across the granite counter like she’s checking for dust. “And my son?”
“Your son is welcome to keep this house. I don’t want it.”
“Nina.” Her voice sharpens, the pleasant veneer cracking just slightly. “I’m not sure you understand what you’re doing.”
I set down the plate. Turn to face her.
“I understand perfectly.”
“Do you?” She crosses her arms, a gesture so like Adrian’s that it makes my chest ache. “Because from where I’m standing, it looks like you’re running away. And guilty people run.”
The accusation hangs in the air between us. Ten years of half-acceptance, of polite smiles that never reached her eyes, of being tolerated rather than welcomed - finally showing its whole face.
“What exactly am I guilty of, Evelyn?”
“Vivienne said-”
“I don’t care what Vivienne said.”
My mother-in-law goes still. In ten years, I’ve never interrupted her. Never raised my voice. Never been anything less than the perfect daughter-in-law, bending and yielding and smoothing over rough edges to make this family work.
That woman is gone too.
“Vivienne has wanted Adrian since we were teenagers,” I continue, keeping my voice steady even as my hands want to shake.
“She’s never forgiven me for existing, and she’s spent years dropping poison in ears just like yours.
If you want to believe her over ten years of knowing me, that’s your choice.
But I’m done defending myself to people who’ve already decided I’m guilty. ”
“I haven’t decided-”
“Yes, you have.” I pick up the plate. Go back to wrapping it, my movements deliberate and calm.
“You walked in here and assumed I was fleeing the scene of some crime. You took one look at these boxes and thought, ‘The guilty flee when no one pursues.’ That’s a verdict, Evelyn.
You just haven’t been honest enough to say it out loud. ”
She opens her mouth. Closes it. For once in her perfectly curated life, Evelyn Moretti doesn’t seem to know what to say.
“I’m not leaving because I did something wrong,” I continue. “I’m leaving because I can’t live in a house with a man who thinks I’m a liar. Whatever Adrian believes - whatever you believe - I know the truth. And I’d rather live in a cottage I can afford than a mansion built on accusations.”
“This is about Cole.”
“This is about trust.” I set the wrapped plate in the box with more force than necessary.
“Or the lack of it. Cole is dying, Evelyn. He has cancer. I’ve been helping him pay for treatment because his insurance lapsed and he has no one else.
That’s the whole scandal. That’s the terrible secret I was keeping. ”
Something flickers across her face - surprise, maybe, or the first crack in her certainty.
“Adrian didn’t mention-”
“Adrian doesn’t believe me.” I laugh, and it sounds hollow.
“He saw me hug a dying man in the rain and decided I must be having an affair. He packed a suitcase before he asked a single question. And now he’s sleeping in the guest wing while I pack boxes, and you’re standing in my kitchen telling me that guilty people run. ”
Evelyn is quiet a beat. I can see her processing, rearranging, trying to fit this new information into whatever story Vivienne has been feeding her.
“If what you’re saying is true-”
“If?” The word comes out sharp enough to cut.
“If. After ten years. After I gave up my career and my friends and my entire identity to become the perfect Newport wife. After I held your son’s hand through five failed pregnancies and never once complained about the way you looked at me like I was defective. If.”
“That’s not fair.”
“None of this is fair.” I throw down the newspaper, suddenly exhausted.
“I’m pregnant, Evelyn. Eleven weeks. Your grandchild is growing inside me right now, and your son isn’t sure he believes it’s his.
So forgive me if I don’t have the energy to convince you of anything.
I’m fresh out of explanations for people who should have trusted me from the start. ”
Her hand goes to her chest - a small, involuntary gesture. “Pregnant?”
“Yes.”
“Eleven weeks?”
“Yes.”
“And Adrian-”
“Doesn’t know what to believe. About anything.” I turn back to my boxes, my back to her now. “So I’m leaving. I’m building a life that’s mine, in a place that’s mine, where I don’t have to prove myself to anyone. And you can think whatever you want about that.”
The silence stretches between us. I hear her breathing, hear the small sounds of her shifting her weight, hear everything she’s not saying.
“I didn’t know,” she says finally. “About Cole. About the - about any of it.”