A tug of compassion. “Why would you say that?”
“Because it’s true,” Alice replies. “I’ve known about it for a while. Actually, no, that’s not true. I’ve felt it for a while. But I refused to acknowledge it. I preferred to ignore it. To pretend like it wasn’t obvious.”
Gina feels a pang of recognition. The same could be said about her when it comes to Bobby’s affair with Zofia. Gina had ignored the signs. The late nights at the office. The refusal to come to Sag Harbor that weekend. The work emergencies that kept popping up at odd hours.
“Nick loves you,” Gina says, her voice soft. “How could he not? Look at you.”
Alice flicks her tiny wrist. “He cares about me. That’s not the same.” A pause. “And he likes living here. I’ve been ignoring that, too. Because I didn’t want to leave without him. Because I love him. Even if he doesn’t love me.”
A stretch of silence.
“I think he’s still in love with her,” Alice says.
Who is her?
Gina doesn’t realize she’s asked the question out loud, but she must’ve because Alice continues.
“A girl he dated in college. He told me about her when we first met. I was hurting, too, though for other reasons. We sort of… bonded over it. What a joke.” A macabre half-laugh leaves Alice’s mouth. “I fell in love with him. But he never fell in love with me, at least not without falling out of love with her first.”
“Oh, Alice,” Gina says. “I’m sure that’s not true.”
“Did you ever meet her?” Alice says. “Pearl?”
Gina feels a shiver go down her spine. Why would Nick be so careless as to have mentioned her middle name to Alice? But then she realizes this probably happened right when they first met. Back then, Nick couldn’t have known he and Alice would get married, that they’d move back to Alma. Settling down was never in Nick’s plan. Besides, it’s not as if Alice knows Gina’s middle name. Gina doesn’t know Alice’s, either.
She eyes her sister-in-law to see if there’s any suspicion dancing behind her eyes. But, no. The question is genuine.
Lies. The things we tell to protect the ones we love. To give us a fighting chance in an unpredictable world. To allow us to start over.
Gina leans over and takes her sister-in-law’s hand. It’s all she can do.
Fifty-Two
Nick
Friday, November 1st
When Nick walks in, Alice and Gina are holding hands. The scene is almost as shocking as finding out about his dad’s affair with a twenty-nine-year-old woman.
“Alice, could I have a moment with Gina?” he asks.
She nods quietly, lifting her tiny body from the ground in a single, fluid motion. She leaves the office without meeting his gaze. She’ll probably schedule an emergency session with Cassie after this. Alice’s answer to everything is either therapy or sex.
“Do you want your office back?” Gina asks. Her neck is stiff. She gets up from the floor and sweeps her palms over her black jeans.
“I want to talk to you.” He moves closer, but she takes a step back. He stops. “Can we sit?”
“I don’t have anything to say to you,” she says coldly.
“Gina, please let me explain—”
“You knew.” Her voice cracks. “You knew he had an affair.”
“I didn’t know about it when it was going on,” he says. It’s a distinction he wants to make, one that matters. “I only found out about Zofia a few weeks ago.” Nick had been furious—and shocked. How could his brother have been so stupid, risking his marriage like that? At least Bobby hadn’t bothered defending his behavior. He admitted his guilt, point blank. I fucked up, I know. I take full responsibility, he’d said to Nick. But please help me. I can’t lose my wife over this. He’d never seen Bobby cry like that before.
Nick had gone to Tish hoping for advice, which caused her to reveal the truth about Charles’s involvement with Eva, and ever since then Nick’s thoughts have been flitting around like moths at light.
“I wanted to tell you,” Nick continues. “But I didn’t know what it would do to you. You’ve always loved Bobby so much. And you were upset about Missy running—”
“Missy!” Gina tilts her head back. “Missy was the least of my concerns.”
There is a lot Nick could say. He could say that it isn’t about Missy, obviously—but really about what her candidacy represents to Gina. Her place in this town, in the ASC. In their family. Everyone knows how much Gina loves Alma, but Nick is one of the few people who understands why. He knows about her parents, who everyone thinks are dead, but who are very much alive and choosing not to speak to their own daughter. He knows about her brother. He even knows about her son. Their son.
“I didn’t want to see you get hurt,” Nick says. “I swear it. I swear it on our… on Calan.”
A sharp intake of air from her. She meets his gaze, wordlessly. They stay like this for several seconds: Gina eyeing him with animalistic intensity.
“You know,” she says. Her words are soft, stunned.
“I do,” Nick says. They’ve never talked about it, but of course he knows. Did she really think he didn’t? He reaches for her hand. She pulls away.
“How…?” Gina lowers her body onto the couch.
Nick takes a deep breath as he sits next to her. This will be the hardest part. But he wants to come clean, wants to purge his secrets away. He won’t be worthy of her otherwise. It’s something Cassie is forever reminding him and Alice of: secrets poison relationships.
“Has Bobby ever told you he was really sick as a child?”
Gina frowns. “With mono?”
“Mumps. It was… pretty bad. He had to be hospitalized. My parents almost split because of it. My dad blamed my mom for accidentally giving me an extra dose of the MMR vaccine. She denies it—she’s like you: she can tell us apart. But we were babies and she was exhausted, so
