“I don’t think we can,” Caro responded. “I think we don’t say anything. We’re the only ones who know.”
The women had reached the park and walked in through the Artists’ Gate, making a left on the park’s footpath. Nina thought about that, about keeping this secret her whole life. About asking Rafael to. She’d have to. They’d have to.
“You were right to tell TJ to retire,” Caro continued. “If anything comes out, TJ will take the fall. As he should. I told him as much. But hopefully it won’t come to that.”
Nina’s heart felt battered. So much had happened over the past six weeks. She thought about the person she was, the life she was living on primary day, and it seemed so foreign to her, like that woman was someone she’d once read a book about long ago. There was so much she wanted to say but she didn’t know how to express. At least not now. Maybe she’d call Leslie later. Leslie would help her figure all of this out.
“Are you taking the day off today?” Nina asked Caro, as the park drive turned north. “Want me to walk you home?”
“We can go in that general direction,” Caro answered. “But I think I might stay at the hotel tonight. This isn’t just about the company for me. I wish he’d said something. That he’d told me so I could’ve talked him out of it. That he trusted me.”
Nina should’ve realized that sooner. Honesty. Partnership. The two things Caro valued most had come crashing down around her. “You can stay at my dad’s place if you want,” Nina offered. “It’s empty.”
“Thank you,” Caro answered. “I’d prefer that. Fewer questions.” She shook her head. “When you’ve been married to someone for nearly forty years, you think you know him. I guess that’s not always true.”
Bikers and joggers were whizzing by, women with baby carriages—a couple of men pushing them, too. Nina often wondered what stories people had tucked inside them as they went about their day. No one would expect that she and Caro were having the conversation that they were. Anyone who saw them would probably assume they were mother and daughter, out for a stroll.
“While we’re talking about secrets,” Nina said, thinking about it for a split second before following her heart and asking. “Do you know what happened the day my mom died? I found a letter in the house upstate that my mom had written, talking about my father’s affair.”
Caro turned to Nina with a look of alarm on her face. “Oh, Nina. I’m so sorry you had to find that out.”
“So you knew,” Nina said.
“I did. Your father thought you’d never need to know. He felt terrible about it.”
Nina shrugged. “It’s the least of my problems at the moment.”
They walked by a playground, and the sound of children laughing floated toward them on the breeze.
“I don’t know how much you read,” Caro said, “but your father was having an affair with a British gallery owner he’d first met when he studied at Oxford. Veronica something. I can’t remember her last name. But she’d moved to New York after a divorce to open a gallery here.”
Nina could see her father being attracted to an Oxford-educated gallery owner. Like with her mother, he was interested in intelligence when it was paired with something slightly more bohemian. “Was he going to leave us for her?” Nina asked, feeling for a moment like the small child she once was.
Caro stopped walking and looked squarely at Nina. “He would never have left you, darling. Even if he and your mother divorced, he never would have left you. In spite of whatever flaws he may have had, your father loved you more than anything in his life. And from what he said to me afterward, he’d told Veronica as much when she suggested he get divorced, that they split their time between New York and London, that he build a Gregory Hotel there. He’d said no, but she stopped by with a Christmas present on her way home to England for the holidays anyway. And that changed everything.”
Caro started walking again, and Nina followed. “It changed everything,” Nina echoed.
She wondered what her life would’ve been like if her father hadn’t had that affair, or if Veronica hadn’t dropped the Christmas present off. What if Nina herself hadn’t put it under the tree. Or her mother hadn’t decided to go to the country that evening.
“Your father never saw her again after that,” Caro said. “He felt too guilty.”
Nina couldn’t imagine what that must’ve been like. The guilt he must’ve been carrying for decades. She’d felt a piece of it when she broke up with Tim. Whose mother she was talking to right now as if she were her own.
“If . . .” Nina started, not quite sure of where to go next. “If Tim and I stopped dating,” she said to Caro, “would you . . . would you still be . . .”
“Oh, darling,” Caro said, “of course. We’re family. Are you and Tim still going through a rough time? I’d hoped you’d worked things out after the fund-raiser. I remember when my sister passed away, everything TJ said and did was wrong. For months. If you don’t want to talk about it, we don’t have to—if it seems too strange. But if you do, I’d be happy to listen and offer any advice I can.”
“I broke up with him,” Nina said quietly. “Yesterday morning. He wants us to be the same as we always were, but . . . I’m different now.”
Caro stopped walking. Nina stopped, too, waiting for her to say something. Anything. Caro’s face was blank, until she looked at Nina’s open, pleading eyes. Then she gave her a rueful smile. “If you were my daughter, I’d say, ‘You need to go after what makes you happy.’”
Nina hugged Caro. And as the older woman’s arms tightened around her, Nina felt tears overflowing her eyes. Caro had forgiven her. She loved her anyway. Through her tears, Nina let herself imagine that her father would have, too.
72
That Saturday morning, the third of the month, Nina put on one of her old black dresses, her grandmother’s pearls, and her mother’s diamond studs. I need your resolve, Mom, she thought as she slid her stockinged feet into a pair of black pumps.
When Caro had called last night to say that she was going to stay in 21-B for a while, the two women decided that the Gregory brunch the next day would be just them. Nina asked Gene to pick her up, and then get Caro, so they could enter together.
“Good morning, darling,” Caro said, as she got into the car, her eyes covered by a pair of large tortoiseshell sunglasses. She slipped them off once she got inside. Her makeup was impeccably done, as always, but that didn’t disguise the puffiness under her eyes or the raw spot on her lip beneath her lipstick. She must’ve been picking at it. Nina could never, in her life, recall Caro doing that.
“You don’t have to come today,” Nina said to her. “I can call Pris. I’m sure she’d be happy to have brunch with me.”
Caro gave her a sad smile. “Do I look that bad?” she asked.
“No one would know but me,” Nina said. “But if you want to go back and—”
“No,” Caro said. “I’ll be fine. And I’m not leaving you alone for this. I can’t stop thinking about your mother and what she would think of it all.”
The car stopped in front of the hotel, and Gene put it in park, exiting his door to open theirs.
“What would she have thought?” Nina asked.
Caro sighed, putting her sunglasses back on before getting out of the car. “I don’t think she would’ve been surprised.”
The brunch was just as bad as Nina had imagined it would be. From the moment she walked in, guests wanted to shake her hand, give their condolences, tell her a story about the hotel, or her dad.
But she was able to squash down her tangled emotions and keep her head up. In piercing her father’s myth, she’d found strength. In finding his flaws, she’d learned how to grow. With that knowledge, she was able to be the gracious hostess, the bereaved daughter, the role everyone expected her to play.
Neither she nor Caro touched their food. But they made it through.
As they left the hotel, Caro gave Nina an uncharacteristically tight hug. “You need me, you call,” she said. “Do you hear me, darling?”
Nina nodded. “I do. And if you need me, you call. Okay?”
Caro pressed her lips together and nodded. Nina could tell that behind her sunglasses, she was trying hard not to cry.
73
A few nights later, Nina was on the phone with Rafael, walking through her apartment, wandering from room to room. He’d just gotten home from yet another fund-raiser.
“This sneaking around is killing me,” he said.
Nina circled through her living room.
“Me too,” she said. She imagined what it would be like to walk hand in hand with him in Central Park. To sit next to him at a bar, enjoying a glass of wine. To have burgers and concretes at the Shake Shack in Madison Square Park.
“Where would you want to go?” Rafael asked. The sound of his voice made Nina crave his presence; talking on the phone was an exquisite kind of torture. “If we could go out right now. This minute.”