More Than Words

“So what did you say on the phone?” Nina asked, as the car drove up the West Side Highway, knowing that even for them, this was a crazy thing to do.

Tim shook his head. “I just said it was for you. You’ve got a lot of power in this town, Nina Gregory. Especially at the Met.”

“Not true,” Nina said. But she thought about his words. In New York City, money was power, and she did have a lot of it. Or at least she would soon. At one of the events she’d gone to with her father in the Met’s rooftop garden, a woman had cornered her. “Just look around,” the woman had said, swooping her arms around the party, her champagne sparkling along with her beaded dress. “Look who’s here. We run this city.”

Was that Nina now? Was she one of those people who would drink champagne on the roof of the Met, absorbed in her own importance?

* * *

• • •

“Quarter for your thoughts?” Tim asked from his seat next to her in the car. They’d decided years ago that the penny hadn’t ever been adjusted for inflation, so they’d made their own adjustments.

“Just thinking about power,” Nina said.

“The measure of a man is what he does with power,” Tim said. “A woman, too.”

Nina looked at him for a beat. He wasn’t usually someone who quoted Plato—quoted anyone but Mark Zuckerberg or Steve Jobs, actually. “So you’ve used yours to close the Temple of Dendur for us?”

“No,” he said. “I’ve used yours. But I can’t think of anything better to do with power than make the person you love smile.”

He slid his hand into hers and held on tight. The car merged into the traffic to cross through the park on 79th Street, and she looked at the trees her father would have seen from his bedroom, might have been looking at just before he died.

35

A few days later, the board of directors of the Gregory Corporation were having a meeting. Nina knew she should go. She should show her face. She should show them how much she cared. How much she’d absorbed just by growing up as her father’s daughter.

Nina got up. She stood in front of her closet staring at the rows of grays and blues and blacks and browns and creams. Pantsuits and skirt suits and sheath dresses and blouses.

“Do you need help choosing?” Tim asked, already dressed, on his way to the kitchen.

“I have nothing to wear,” she told him.

He laughed, but she didn’t crack a smile. “Of course you do,” he said. “Look at this closet. You have everything.”

And Nina started to sob. “I don’t,” she said. “I don’t have everything. I don’t have my dad.”

Tim paled. “I didn’t mean that. Nina, I didn’t mean—” He tried to hug her, but she pushed him away, fought her way out of his grasp.

“Go away,” she said. “Just go away.”

He took a step back and she melted to the floor, her arms wrapping around her knees, curling herself into a ball.

“Go away,” she said again.

And she sat there on the floor of her walk-in closet and cried.

She didn’t make it to the board meeting that day.

36

Later that week, Nina was at her father’s apartment with Irena, packing up boxes of his clothes to donate to Housing Works. Nina wasn’t getting very far, though, because she kept remembering the last place her father wore that tie, or that tuxedo, or that striped button-down with paisley cuffs. She hoped whoever bought that button-down would love it just as much as her father had. He’d worn it to his birthday dinner this past year.

Nina folded the shirt, first fastening every other button, then pulling the sleeves toward the back and bending the shirt in three, with the collar and buttons on top. She realized that she folded shirts like her father. So much of the way she lived her life was the way he did. He talked about his legacy, about keeping the Gregory legacy alive, but Nina realized that as long as she lived, so did he. He would be alive in her every time she folded her laundry, made coffee, celebrated a holiday, took a ski trip, went for a swim, ran a race. And so, so much more. He’d always be there. Except that he wouldn’t.

Nina put the folded shirt into a box, then went to his dresser to sort through his T-shirts and shorts. She thought about the ten years’ worth of Gregory Corporation finances that she still hadn’t managed to get through. The numbers swam whenever she looked at them. Even with a ruler, she couldn’t keep the lines straight, couldn’t keep the strings of profits and losses clear in her mind. But she had to. Soon. She would, she promised herself. She’d figure it out tomorrow.

* * *

• • •

TJ had said he needed to talk to Nina about her father’s will, so she’d told him to come over after he finished work. When he got there, he looked exhausted, like he hadn’t slept in days, his eyes bloodshot and puffy. He was running the corporation on his own, handling the board of directors until Nina got up to speed, until she took her rightful place as daughter and heir. She felt bad about how hard he was working, but she could barely string two sentences together. She kept walking into her kitchen and finding a stack of Post-it notes in the refrigerator or a carton of milk in the freezer, completely unsure of how they’d gotten there. She wasn’t ready to do much of anything—certainly nothing having to do with her family’s business.

“You doing okay?” he asked her.

Nina shrugged. She was still standing, still moving, still living. Though her relationship with Tim felt strained. It wasn’t his fault. In the past week, the smallest word, the most innocuous sentence could set Nina off into a spiral of sobs or shut a conversation down completely. Her emotions surprised both of them. Her mind felt like a minefield and he was treading as cautiously as he could. He was treating her like she was fragile, unstable, about to explode at any moment. And even though she felt that way, she didn’t want to be treated like that. So she’d started spending more time alone, with books, on the phone with Leslie. “As well as can be expected, I guess,” she said. “I’m dressed. I ate today. I’m sorting through his race T-shirts without melting down completely.” She shrugged again.

TJ nodded. She figured he probably felt the same way. He didn’t say anything more, as if he were conserving his strength for something else altogether.

“Want to sit over there?” she asked, pointing toward the table and chairs on the other side of the great room. This, for some reason, felt like a conversation that needed a table.

“Sure,” TJ said, walking over and putting the folder he’d had under his arm on the table. Then he rubbed his puffy eyes. “So,” he said, “I have your father’s will.”

Nina nodded.

“I told you about the company,” he said. “You always knew you’d be getting his majority stake in the Gregory Corporation.”

Nina nodded again.

“Well,” TJ said. “In addition to the company, it won’t be a surprise that your father left you everything else: his stock portfolio, this apartment, your grandparents’ house in East Hampton, the two cars out there, the Mercedes in the city, the boat, and . . . the house upstate.”

Nina looked at him. “What house upstate?”

TJ looked down at his hands. He opened his mouth and closed it again.

Then it clicked. The house that her mother had been at when she’d died. The house her father had bought her as a wedding present. The house Nina hadn’t seen since she was eight.

“My mother’s house,” she said, answering her own question. “I thought he sold that a long time ago.”

“He couldn’t,” TJ said simply. “He hired a gardener to care for the property, someone to run the water so the pipes wouldn’t freeze. He had it painted every few years, cleaned every once in a while. But he couldn’t bring himself to sell it. And couldn’t bring himself to visit it again either.”

Nina was stunned. How had her father owned a house—her mother’s house—for decades and not told her?

“These are the keys,” TJ continued, handing her a key ring. It was a Tiffany ring with a heart on it. Priscilla’d had her apartment keys on a similar one when they were in high school. Nina wondered if her father had bought the key ring when he’d bought the house, if that was how he’d presented the gift to her mom.

“Thank you,” Nina said, automatically, even as she wondered what other secrets her father might have kept.

“Jack, at the investment firm, will be able to walk you through all of the finances. He’s been in touch with your father’s lawyer, who will take care of whatever legal issues need to be handled. You should talk to Jack at some point soon. Not a rush, but not not a rush. Everything is part of your dad’s estate for now, while the will is in probate. He made me the executor, so I can help, too, if you need something.”

Nina nodded, still thinking about that house. Why didn’t her dad tell her about it? He must’ve had a reason. Maybe he thought it would be too painful for her, especially when she was young. But still, that didn’t explain now. That didn’t explain the past twenty-four years.

“I mean that not just with the will,” TJ said. “I know I’m not your dad, but I’ve known you since the day you were born, and I’ve loved you just as long. So if there’s anything . . . I promised him . . .”