Page 44 of What Happened to Nina?

“I’m really sorry,” she said.

“Grace, Jesus.” I tried to hurry her past, but she resisted me. Simon’s eye was already swelling.

“S’okay,” he said. “Not your fault.”

“My mom’s just really upset,” Grace said. She would have said more, but I grabbed her upper arm and propelled her forward.

“Leave it alone,” I said.

We got to the car and climbed in. There were people watching. Too many people. I drove away, drove south in the direction of state police headquarters at Waterbury.

“Why did she do it?” Grace said. “That was completely nuts.”

I did not feel qualified to deal with the conversation. “She’s upset, Grace. And she’s angry.”

“Yeah. We all are. But why did she go after Simon? He’s just as worried as we are. And she hit him. In front of everyone.”

The same question was going around in a loop inside my head.

“Dad?”

“I don’t know, Grace. You can ask her that yourself, okay?”

She got real quiet. I drove on until we reached Waterbury. We didn’t talk again until I pulled up outside state police headquarters.

“Are they going to let her come home with us?”

“Sure they will,” I said, with confidence I didn’t feel.

We had to wait for forty minutes at the police station. It felt like hours, with Grace sitting beside me, chewing on her fingernails. When Leanne finally came out, with Wright by her side, she looked like she’d been through hell and back. Her hair was falling out of its tie, her eyes were wild, and she had smudges of fingerprint ink on her hand and on her cheek. We drove home, mostly in silence. Then in the kitchen, before we had a chance to talk or settle Grace down or do anything else, Leanne said she had to leave. She was gone for over an hour. I fed Grace and myself, and Rufus. I cleaned the kitchen, drank a beer, and then another. I lit the fire, got another beer, and sat and stared into the flames, waiting. Stewing. I was pissed. I was so goddamn tired of Lee thinking she knew best.

When I met Lee, she was twenty-three years old, and I was turning twenty-seven. I already had my landscaping business, and she was trying to turn the crumbling dump she’d bought into an inn. She knocked me out the first time I met her. I’m not going to say that it was love at first sight, but I know I couldn’t stop looking at her. I’d listed some limestone pavers, left over from a job, for sale at half price. Lee showed up at my place with Nina on her hip, looked over what I had to sell with a that-don’t-impress-me-much look on her face, and started bargaining. I was already selling the stuff at a knock-down price, but she took that price as a jumping-off point for negotiation. She was so serious. There was no flirting, no playing around. She haggled with me like it mattered. I can’t remember what discount I gave her in the end. I know it was huge. I mean, I was basically giving the stuff away, and then she asked if I’d throw in delivery. I did it too. I wanted to see her again.

That was nearly seventeen years ago. We didn’t take as many photographs back then. We didn’t video everything. I wish we had. I wish I had a hundred photographs of the way Lee looked in those days, in jean shorts and a shirt, her hair tucked under a scarf. She worked so goddamn hard. If you look at the inn today, you would think it had always been this pretty, antique-looking thing, but you’d be so wrong. About the only original things in that house are the walls. By the time I met Lee she’d already ripped out the old kitchen, which was rotting, and put in a new one. Well, I say new, but it was actually secondhand—she bought it from someone who was renovating a cabin over near the ski resort. By the time Lee was finished with it, painting it and all that, it looked like something you’d see in a magazine. Some of the floors are original, but Lee had to replace a lot of them. That stone mantel in the drawing room came from a teardown over in Waterbury. Lee bought it for practically nothing and cleaned it up, and I helped her to install it.

I didn’t ask her out or anything like that. I just started showing up at the inn sometimes. I’d bring her some plants and say they were left over from a job, and then I’d dig them in for her and try to help out with whatever project she had going on. Nina liked to be in the garden, so I got her a little kids’ spade and rake, and she would poke around in the dirt when I was planting and make her mud cakes. But Lee didn’t let me help anywhere near as much as I wanted. She didn’t let me in. The inn was always her project, her business. I figured she didn’t want to accept too much help because she didn’t want there to be any confusion about that. And I got it. Lee had fought like hell to give herself and Nina a chance. It made sense that she would want to be careful.

I kissed her one evening. I’d brought a tree for her. I told her it was a left over from a job, but it was a beautiful ten-foot Canadian maple, and I guess Lee figured out I’d paid for it myself. One thing you can never accuse Lee of is being slow on the uptake. She came outside and watched me plant the tree. She was holding two beers, one for herself and one, I figured, for me, for when I finished. After the job was done, I went to her. She handed me the beer. We both looked at the tree. The sun was going down.

“In ten years, that tree will be a knockout,” I said.

She took my hand and held it. Like it was as natural as breathing. Like she’d been doing it all her life. Even I couldn’t miss that signal. I kissed her. She kissed me back, and everything was different. I’d been with other women. Once I’d even thought I was in love. But being with Leanne made all that seem like high school stuff. I knew then that I wanted to marry her, but I waited for nearly a year before I asked her. I thought she might say no if I asked her too soon.

Lee had a hard time growing up. Her dad left when she was a little kid, and her mom was an angry woman. She treated Leanne like she was a competition that could be won. Pushed her all the way through high school. Lots of expectations, not a lot of love. Lee’s mother was a religious woman, but when Lee got pregnant with Nina and dropped out of college, her response was anything but Christian. She felt humiliated, and she thought that gave her the right to be abusive. Lee got up to insults at the breakfast table and came home to the same at dinner. Lee’s mother hit her too, not a whole lot, but some. I wasn’t around when that was happening. By the time I met Lee her mother was already dead from cancer. Lee had taken her tiny inheritance, gotten a fat mortgage (with the help of a crooked broker who lied about Lee’s income on the application form), and bought the inn.

I thought I understood why Lee was the way she was. I was sure that with time, she’d trust me enough that she would let me in. I wanted her to lean on me, but seventeen years have passed, and she never truly has. She loves me, I’ve never had to doubt it, and I don’t have to worry about her cheating on me or playing around, but it don’t feel good to know that she has never come to truly trust me. She don’t consult me on the important things. She makes up her mind what needs to be done, she does it, and then she fills me in later. I’ve been angry about that, sometimes, but mostly I’m just sorry about it. I watch her trying so goddamn hard, throwing herself at a problem like a trapped bee at a glass window, and I wish she’d just ask me if I could open that window for her. I think, when she’s in trouble, Lee don’t even see me standing there.

She was gone for nearly an hour and a half. She came in through the back door and came to find me in the living room, still wearing her jacket and her outdoor boots. I said nothing. I just waited for her to tell me.

She sat on the chair opposite mine.

“I went to the bar. To Delores Bradley’s bar. I had to speak to Julie.”

I didn’t understand. She’d just spent the day in Julie’s company. There was no good reason I could think of that she’d have had to leave me and Grace to rush off and see Julie again. But then Lee told me everything. About the dog. About what she’d overheard at the Jordans’. About Nina’s bruises.

“You think Simon hurt her?” I asked. My mouth tasted sour.

“I know he did,” Lee said.

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