It was short notice. For everyone.
Nina looked down to where Calvin cuffed her shaking hands with his thick fingers, his thumb brushing over the diamond engagement ring that Nina had purchased for herself only a week before. She studied the lace that covered her body from wrist to neck like a straitjacket and forced herself to breathe. Then she looked to the floor, where the tips of her Zanotti pumps peeked from under the layers of tulle and taffeta.
Everything suffocated. Everything.
Don’t cry, she thought to herself as she pressed into her feet to stand tall. Don’t cry. You mustn’t cry. They’ll never stop talking about you if you do.
And wasn’t that the point of today? To fade into obscurity, away from their prying eyes? Marry a nondescript man in a nondescript dress and live a nondescript life until it didn’t matter anymore?
All she had to do was not cry while she did it.
It was very, very hard.
“Nina.”
For a moment, she saw him. Peppe. The slightly worn skin from too many summers under the olive trees. The salt-and-pepper hair curled a little too long over his ears. The large friendly eyes protected by the glasses that constantly slid down his long nose.
She imagined he was the one standing at this altar, clutching her hands, waiting for her to make the promise that would bind her to him for life. She imagined that they hadn’t said goodbye that terrible day at the station. That he hadn’t gone back to his wife and children. That she wasn’t here. Pregnant. Alone.
Well, she was alone. Wasn’t she?
“Nina!”
Nina blinked again, and it wasn’t Peppe’s voice calling her back to the present, but Calvin’s. The man who had stumbled upon her somewhere outside a nameless Queens clinic, then sat with her in silent support as she made a decision that would change the rest of her life.
For that, she supposed she owed him everything.
In front of them, people were openly whispering. Celeste scowled. How one person’s expression could contain all number of threats, Nina would never understand. But she felt them. And would endure all of them if she embarrassed herself and everyone there by doing what she desperately wanted—to walk out of this church and leave it all behind. Even if it meant she risked the sincere wrath of Celeste de Vries to claim her freedom.
Because it would be wrath.
Make an honest woman out of you.
It wasn’t a proposal. It wasn’t even a question. Calvin had made this marriage seem like he was doing Nina a favor. Her. One of the two apparent heirs to the great de Vries fortune. Him, a no-name, amateur investor. Doing her a favor.
Eric hadn’t shown today. Of course he hadn’t. Because of what Celeste had done to his girl. His love.
So many ruined because of her grandmother’s vengeance. Nina had witnessed the blackness in her grandmother’s face when she swore that no one in the family was above punishment. She had felt the sear of her threats when she announced to the entire family, time and time again, that she would not tolerate disgrace.
An honest woman out of you.
And so, Nina had said yes.
The announcement was placed the next day. St. Mark’s was booked two weeks later. And here they were.
Grandmother knew it was a farce. Of course she knew. Celeste de Vries loved a spectacle, and Nina was this family’s princess. This wedding was supposed to be at St. John the Divine, with a thousand guests, three separate receptions, a Vogue spread, and a season full of engagement parties and events that would last at least a year. Not this. A paltry hundred and change smashed into this sauna of a church. A quick garden party reception with chicken breasts instead of king crab. A weekend-long honeymoon on Long Island instead of Europe for the summer.
This was Celeste de Vries’s version of a shotgun wedding. And if Nina dared run away now…she was terrified to find out what Celeste’s version of the actual shotgun might also be.
“Nina.”
This time, Calvin’s voice was a hiss again, full of serpentine consonants. Frantic and incensed.
Nina blinked, and Peppe’s face was replaced by Calvin’s. He was wearing lifts today, and her, only kitten heels, so for once they were almost eye to eye. It was Calvin who had insisted on this absurd dress in the middle of summer. Who demanded Nina choose (and pay for) the gaudy engagement ring at Tiffany’s when she would have done with something smaller and more tasteful, or nothing at all.
“Can you say something?” he whispered fiercely.
A thin line of sweat drew a streak through his face. The man was wearing makeup, Nina realized. She was about to marry a man who was wearing makeup, sweating like a pig through his tuxedo, and was looking at her across the altar like he wanted to beat her black and blue.
“Ms. de Vries?” ventured the minister, who now looked equally uncomfortable in the afternoon heat. “Do you need a moment?”
But Nina’s tears were gone.
Her heart was numb.
Peppe was gone. And Nina already had the only thing from him she could keep.
A baby. Who would maybe, one day, have a father.
She cleared her throat and stood up straight, now taller than Calvin again, even in his lifted shoes.
“No, I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “I’m ready.”
And then, in a much louder voice:
“I will.”
Now
Chapter Four
June 2018
Nina
I counted to one hundred before opening my eyes.
Waited for the door to catch.
For the footsteps to recede.
For the invasion to cease.
Yes, okay. Perhaps it was a bit extreme. But to be candid, I think you would do the same if you had put up with the man for ten years.
You would fake sleep to escape that ham-fisted touch. The intrusive fingers. The painful slap.
It’s the least you would do. Truly.
It wasn’t until the shuffle of leather soles on parquet and marble completely faded, and the faint ring of the elevator announced my husband’s departure that I finally greeted the day. On the other side of the triple-pane windows, the sun shone, but New York threatened. I couldn’t hear her, of course. Such was my privilege, ensconced in my tower. Twenty stories above traffic horns and subway rumbles. Silence is one form of currency in this city, and only the rich—like me—have it.
But even here, the tips of the high-rise buildings of midtown, just across the park, still threatened to pierce. New York is a dangerous city. A city full of weapons. Some I’d been learning to use all my life. Others I couldn’t touch.
There was a soft knock on the door, and I sat up, checking that my injuries from last night weren’t visible.
“Mrs. Gardner?” The familiar, timid voice of my personal assistant sounded through the oak.
I sighed. What an unemployed housewife needed with a personal assistant, I really couldn’t say. It was even more pathetic than the fact that I couldn’t do without her. I wasn’t sure when Moira Lemon and I began our daily routine of wake-up calls like I was the dauphiness of France, but close to a decade later, here we were.
“I’m up,” I called as I swung my legs out from under my duvet. “Come in.”
Moira strode in, followed by a maid wheeling the espresso cart, just as I was wrapping a gray silk dressing gown over my torn chemise. The maid left, but my assistant remained outside the door as I walked into the en suite to examine the damage to my body in the mirror over the vanity.