Nina raised a hand to her mouth in shock. I was about to tell her it was all right, that it was long past and I was over it. But before I could, something else caught my eye.
“What’s this?” I picked up her wrist. There was a ring of bruising around the delicate skin, mostly turned yellow, but a few darker spots remained underneath a diamond-encrusted watch that, to be honest, was a little tacky compared to the rest of her minimalist style.
“Oh, lord.” Nina jerked her hand away. “It’s—it’s nothing.”
I tipped my hat back. “Nothing?”
“Yes, nothing.”
Every internal alarm bell I had was going off like fuckin’ sirens.
“That’s what my mother used to say after my father left cuts on her cheek,” I said. “Shit, I’d use it myself sometimes when he gave it to me instead.”
“Matthew!”
“No one believed us then either.” I pulled her hand back to look more closely. “Nina, these look like fingerprints. Who the fuck did this to you?” A thought occurred to me, one that made me feel suddenly murderous. “Was this Calvin?”
For a half-second, I almost wished it was. Not because I would ever want anyone to do something like this to her, but because it would mean I wasn’t crazy. That the suspicions I had about the guy weren’t just because I was stupid jealous, but because vilifying Nina de Vries’s husband somehow made me the good guy here. That there was something about this marriage that was off, and I was supposed to be pulling it apart.
Nina, however, cast me a long, dry look as she took her hand back and shoved it resolutely into her pocket. “Matthew, honestly. You can’t be serious.”
“My office has its own separate bureau for domestic violence, sweetheart. We see shit like this all the time.”
“Do you really think that people like me end up in court cases undertaken by your office?”
I narrowed my eyes. I didn’t like what she was implying. I didn’t like it at all. “We see all types, Mrs. Gardner. All fuckin’ types.”
She opened her mouth like she wanted to argue back with me. And I half wanted her to. I liked Nina pretty much any way I could get her, but she was especially fun to rile up. I got the feeling she didn’t let herself do it too much. And you know what? Sometimes it’s good for a person to get a little mad. You can’t bottle everything up forever. Otherwise the glass breaks. And everyone gets hit by the shards.
“My horse did it,” she said finally.
“Your horse.” I shook my head. “I’ve heard some tall ones in my times, doll, but that about tops them. What are you going to tell me next? The sky is actually falling? Is the emperor wearing clothes?”
“It’s true!”
She chuckled as she shoved a hand against my chest again. I fought the urge to trap it there, both so I could keep her close and also to examine those marks a bit more. She was laughing, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that this was some elaborate ruse to throw me off the scent.
“If you can tell me where you keep a horse in New York City other than Central Park, I’ll call you the Queen of England for the rest of your life, baby.”
But she pulled her hand back and examined her wrist in the open. “Not here, silly. Long Island. I went to our estate in the Hamptons last weekend. Too cold for the beach, of course, but the horses were happy to see me. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of wrapping the reins around my wrist. Petrosinella was stung by a bee and threw me—the leather bruised my wrist.”
I examined her, waiting for more. Most lies were easy to spot—they were either too detailed or not enough.
But Nina didn’t continue. She let the story sit while we walked a bit more.
Fine, I thought as we stopped for a pretzel. Maybe she was telling the truth.
It wasn’t until I had eaten a solid half of the warm bread that one particular detail occurred to me. “Wait a second. You named your horse ‘Parsley’?”
She hid a smile. “And here I thought your family was from Naples. Don’t you know the most famous story from there?”
I blinked, frowning. Something about that was familiar…finally, it hit me. “Oh! That’s the original Rapunzel, isn’t it?”
Nina grinned. I swear to God, it was brighter than the springtime sun.
“Very good.” She tipped her face up toward the rays and basked in the glow. “It’s my favorite fairy tale. When I was in college, I wrote a paper on it. There are so many other variations than just the Grimms’ version. But I really liked the original from Naples. At the end, after the prince helps her down from the tower, she uses these three enchanted nuts to attack the ogress as they escape.” She smiled dreamily. “She doesn’t just need the man to rescue her, you see. They work as a team. He helps her, and she helps him right back.”
“You are kind of like Rapunzel. Gorgeous. Blonde. Stuck up in your tower.”
Her face darkened, though I meant it as a joke. “I—I’m not—”
“Jokes, doll.” I frowned at her wrist. “You’re here, aren’t you? So you’re not totally stuck.”
She rubbed a thumb over the diamond on her ring finger. “Sometimes I do wonder…”
A few children shouted from the playground behind us. Nina glanced back at them.
“I never wanted my daughter to feel that way,” she admitted quietly—maybe to the point where she didn’t intend for me to hear her.
“Is that why you sent her away?”
She looked up. “What?”
I tore off some of the pretzel and held it out to her. “Is that why you sent Olivia to Boston? To get her out of the tower?”
Nina examined the bit of bread for a long moment. I was tempted to feed it to her directly, but I sensed that this was one of those moments where she would prefer to do things herself.
“Maybe,” she said finally as she took the bread. “Maybe not.”
We continued to walk.
“Why, then?” I asked. “If you miss her so much, why send her away? There are loads of good private schools in New York. And it’s not like you can’t afford them.”
Nina winced, like the mention of her family’s money caused her pain. We didn’t talk about it much, but it was a fact. She came from everything. Me, not so much.
“Perhaps it’s because I’m not a good mother,” she said. “Did you ever think of that?”
“I would if it were the slightest bit true.”
She stopped. “How can you say that? You have no idea what I’m like with my daughter or what kind of person I even am at heart. The women in my family—they aren’t warm, Matthew. They are calculating and cold at best, vapid and neglectful at worst.”
I turned, and immediately tossed my pretzel on the ground for the squirrels. The expression on Nina’s face told me she needed my full attention.
“I don’t need to witness you with your daughter to know basic things about your personality, doll,” I told her. “I know you’re kind. I know you’re thoughtful. I know you’re the kind of person who cares enough to come all the way across the city just to say you’re sorry.”
We stared at each other for a long time. But the pain I’d seen before had disappeared, or at least lessened. Something I said had landed, and that terrible sadness in her had lifted a bit.