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41
PAIGE
After the call, I go to the nursery to distract myself for a while. I’m seated on the floor, looking at paint colors and wallpaper samples, when Nessa bursts through the door, bags hanging from her arm.
“I come bearing baby gifts!” She pulls out a set of matching onesies and drapes them over the edge of the crib. “Look at these little outer space outfits. Aren’t they the cutest?”
“They’re precious! Hopefully, they’ll have time to wear them. We have so many clothes already.”
“Babies go through outfits like crazy. All of the spitting up and drooling and diaper explosions. Trust me, you’re going to need all of these. The moment you two tell me what the genders are, I'm going to go wild. The only reason I've been as reined in as I have been is because it's hard to find gender-neutral baby clothes.”
I watch as she takes her new purchases and stacks them in the overflowing closet. These two babies aren’t even born yet and they have a wardrobe ten times the size of any I ever had.
Almost as if she can read my mind, Nessa winces. “You must think I’m being very excessive. Wasteful, even.”
“Oh, no!” I rush to reassure her. “Of course not, Nessa.”
She runs her hand along the tags hanging off all of the new clothes. Then she drops herself down in the window seat. “Sometimes, I think the same thing myself.”
I join Nessa, folding my legs underneath me. “I don’t think you’re wasteful. Really. This is just different from what I’m used to. There’s nothing wrong with that.”
She waves me away. “I know I have a tendency to go overboard. I suppose it’s the way I self-soothe.”
She looks down into her lap, and for a moment, I see what she must have been like as a young woman. Isolated and afraid, uncertain the way everyone is in their early twenties, embarking into a new marriage without any clue what her future would hold.
“I didn’t have much of a marriage, as you know. I suppose I found comfort in caring for my children. Then, when they stopped needing me, I threw myself into charities and shopping. Every time I felt sad, I went out and bought myself a new dress. Eventually, I had the wall knocked down between two guest bedrooms and I turned that into my new closet.” She gives me a guilty smile. “I know this must not seem like a very real problem to you.”
“Unhappiness is unhappiness. It doesn’t really matter if you live in a castle or a hole in the ground.”
“That’s kind of you to say.” She sighs. “It’s not the life I imagined for myself, but I wouldn’t change any of it now. He gave me my children.”
“I’ve never asked how you met Misha’s father.”
“The marriage was arranged between my father and Maksim.” She sees my frown and hurries to explain. “My husband’s name was Maksim, too; we named our firstborn after him. It was my idea, actually. Stupid. I thought that would make him love me.”
I can’t blame Nessa for having the kind of hope I’ve harbored for so long. Especially when it worked out for me. Misha and I are happy together now. My heart breaks that Nessa never got to experience that.
Nessa’s gaze is distant, hazy with memory. “It all happened so fast. I was nineteen when my father told me that I would be marrying Maksim Orlov. A few months later, I had my first baby. I thought it would bring us closer together, but my husband moved Maksi into his own nursery with a live-in nanny. Then he moved me into a separate wing of the house with my own staff.”
I shift in place uncomfortably, remembering the time Misha suggested the same thing for us. It feels like a different life now. A different man.
“It took me a while to realize that he had moved me out to make room for his mistress. I still remember her. She was a willowy blonde with the bluest eyes I’d ever seen. She used to lounge by the pool in the evening and wait for him to come home.”
“Oh God. I can’t even imagine what that must have been like.”
“It felt like a nightmare. But by the time I realized that my husband’s mistress was living in the same house as me, I was already pregnant with Misha.”
I cringe. Her pain is so tangible, so real, even all these years later. I feel it like it’s my own. “You don’t have to share all this with me if you don’t want to,” I tell her gently.
“It’s actually nice to say it all out loud,” she confesses. “I think I’ve kept it in too long. But if you don’t want to hear all of this, I don’t have to share.”
I look at Nessa and see the vulnerability there, but also the trust. Right now, we’re not mother-in-law and daughter-in-law. We’re just two women who have both been through a hell of a lot.
“I’m always here if you need to talk.”
She smiles. “And I’m always here ifyouneed to talk. I know I’m an irritant to my children sometimes.”
“They don’t know how lucky they are,” I say softly.
