More Than Words

“The old Nina would be so excited,” he’d said the other night. That was how he started a lot of comments now. “The old Nina wouldn’t have put pimentos in this sandwich.” “The old Nina wouldn’t have gone and gotten her ear cartilage pierced in the middle of the day.” Which Nina had done. Two days after she’d spoken with TJ and realized that her dad was definitely not the star businessman she’d always assumed he was. The day she’d put off her meeting with the board.

It turned out TJ had been making most of the decisions, doing his best to keep the business in the black while her father networked and hobnobbed and was the figurehead of the corporation. He was the publicity driver, but TJ had done the real work. And he’d done it in a way that Nina didn’t always agree with.

She’d felt like she was living in a house of mirrors, where up was down and left was right. Then, for some reason, she remembered back to when she was sixteen and wanted to get the cartilage at the top of her ear pierced, and her father had told her no. That it looked low-class. She didn’t agree. She’d made a list of girls at school who’d gotten their cartilage pierced. But he’d still said no. So now, seventeen years later, she’d done it herself. And her fiancé hated it just as much as her father would have.

As Nina took a bite of her English muffin, she wondered if maybe she could volunteer at the campaign. Just a few hours a week to help out. It might make her life feel more grounded, less like she’d walked into a movie about herself, where the best friend became the fiancé and the main character was left rudderless, floating in a sea of half-truths and outright lies.

Then her phone rang—it was campaign headquarters.

“Hello?” Nina said, wondering who she’d find on the other end.

“Nina? It’s Christian.” Other than coming to her with a few introduction requests, Nina and Christian hadn’t had a ton to do with each other while she was working for Rafael.

“Is everything okay?” she asked.

Christian made a noncommittal sound on the other end of the phone. “Well,” he said, “we were hoping that Marc Johnson’s donors would come on board after the primary, but they haven’t. At least, not in the way we’d hoped.”

“Oh,” Nina said, “I’m sorry to hear that,” while her brain spun, wondering who had donated and who hadn’t, whether her calls might make any difference. “Do you want me to try to convince some people?”

Christian cleared his throat. “Your father used to host fund-raisers at The Gregory Hotel,” he said. “A thousand dollars or more a head.”

Nina was nodding. “Right,” she said. “He would raise a few hundred thousand dollars for the candidate.”

Christian cleared his throat again. And Nina realized: “You want to ask me if we can do that for Rafael?”

“Perhaps next week?” Christian answered. “I wouldn’t ask except . . .”

“Except you need it. Rafael needs it. I understand. Let me make some phone calls. I’ll see what I can pull together.” She wondered if Rafael had authorized this ask. He must have. Maybe that was why he’d been wanting to meet her for coffee.

There was a sigh on the other end of the phone. “Thank you,” Christian said. “So much.”

Nina said good-bye and then called Caro. After explaining what they wanted, Nina said, “What do you think, Aunt Caro? Is this possible?”

Nina heard Caro’s mouse clicking. “The ballroom at the Park is free Tuesday night. I know it’s not a lot of time, but . . .”

“But we’ll make it work,” Nina said. “That’s fantastic. Do you know how Dad used to do these? How he would choose who to invite?”

Caro was quiet for a second. “Darling,” she said, “I planned those fund-raisers with my team. I gave him the list—went through his Rolodex and added the people I thought were most likely to donate to the particular candidate. He just invited them.”

“Oh,” Nina said. “Right. Of course. Well, I’ll invite everyone this time.” Something else she’d given her father credit for that he hadn’t deserved. “And I can make my own list. You don’t have to do that for me, Aunt Caro.”

She could imagine Caro nodding on the other end of the phone. “How many are you thinking?” Caro asked.

Nina knew the room held three hundred comfortably if you put tables on the dance floor. Two hundred forty if you didn’t. “I’ll aim for three hundred,” she said. “Do I need to run this by anyone?”

Caro laughed. “You,” she said. “And me. So we’re all clear.”

“All right, perfect,” Nina said. “We should probably sit down together and go over exactly what else you’ve been doing, just so I know what’s going on.”

“Let’s do that after the fund-raiser’s over,” Caro said. “In the meantime, I’ll whip something together. You’ll put me in touch with the right person to coordinate with at the campaign?”

“I will,” Nina said. “Thanks, Aunt Caro.”

“My pleasure, darling.”

After they hung up, Nina called Christian back and gave him the date and Caro’s phone number. He wasn’t the kind of guy who did touchdown dances, like Jorge, but Nina could tell he was relieved. And grateful.

It felt so good, being part of this again. But it felt wrong to be part of it without talking to Rafael. She opened up a text message. Hey, she thumbed into the box. Looking forward to the fund-raiser.

He wrote back right away.

Thank you so much, Nina. You have no idea how much this will help.

She smiled, picturing his smile. How’s the campaign going otherwise? she typed.

Not the same without you. This new speechwriter is good, but you were better.

Nina smiled again. You just knew me better, she wrote.

You know it was more than that.

She did, of course she did. Maybe, she typed.

Then she saw the three dots appear. Rafael was writing something. Then not. Then writing again. She stared at her phone for at least two minutes, waiting for him to figure out what he wanted to say and how he was going to say it. Finally words appeared on her screen. Not nearly as many as she’d expected, considering how long he’d been typing.

Any chance I can convince you to review the speech Danny wrote?

She smiled once more. Rafael’s words often seemed to have that effect on her. Probably because she could read around and in between them. See the shape of what he meant to say. She was pretty sure this time it was: I want to see you. And I don’t want to wait until Tuesday night. After how complicated everything was feeling with Tim, the simplicity of this felt refreshing. Rafael missed her. He wanted to see her.

I think I could manage that, she responded, ignoring the part of her brain that was asking what this meant, why she thought this was a good idea. She didn’t. She knew it wasn’t. But she didn’t care. She liked how being around Rafael made her feel, and she wanted to feel that way again. Especially now.

Rafael’s reply took so long to come that Nina put her phone down and refilled the electric kettle she used to heat water for her French press. The best way to make coffee, she’d decided years ago.

As the kettle started to boil, her phone pinged.

Great, it said, I’ll e-mail you the speech. Can you come by tomorrow night to review it?

Tim was going to some work drinks thing the next night. Nina had said maybe she’d come but hadn’t committed. She hadn’t been out that much in public since her dad died. She’d canceled the dinner plans she’d made, changed her RSVP to no for a few fund-raisers and gallery openings. It felt weird, everyone living their lives, going on just as they had been, when her life was so different. She felt like she was on another planet, and it took so much effort to engage in small talk.

Sure, she wrote back to Rafael. See you at HQ tomorrow around 6.

* * *

• • •

The speech came over a few minutes later, attached to an e-mail from Rafael.

She got to work, and while she did, she breathed, she relaxed, absorbed completely in the world in front of her, in the words, in making them better. This was something she knew how to do. Something that felt easy.

When TJ called later, Nina ignored it. Maybe this was what she should be doing right now, not trying to figure out what message her father had left for her in the Gregory Corporation financials. That could come later.

49

That night, Nina’s door opened at close to midnight. She was asleep, but not deeply, and woke when she heard the elevator ping in her living room. She sat up in bed.

“Who’s there?” she called out. “Tim, is that you?”

“Hey,” Tim said, walking in.

“Baseball game’s over?” she asked. She knew he’d been out with some guys from work watching the Yankees take on the Twins.

“Yeah, we won,” he said.

“That’s good,” she answered, lying back down on her pillow. “You didn’t say you were coming over.”

Nina watched as Tim took off his blazer, button-down, and jeans, leaving on his boxers and his undershirt. “I just . . . I missed you,” he said. “I wanted to sleep next to you tonight.”