I Am Nina — Chapter 6 — The Conversation
At sixteen, her father sits Nina down for a real conversation for the first time.
Nina was rich, then poor on purpose, then rich again. And neither of the boys knows.
I was sixteen when my dad called me in for a real talk.
We were going to move again — that wasn't news. The news was everything else.
— I'm tired of living like this, Nina.
I thought that was strange. He never complained. Seven years in a cramped house and he'd never said anything like that.
He took a deep breath and started telling me something I'd been waiting for my whole life without knowing I was waiting.
— You didn't get much time with your mother — he said. — I would have loved for you to have it. Elizabeth was the love of my life. The most precious thing I ever had. The only thing that compares to her, on that level, is you.
He told me how they met. He wasn't rich back then. He was poor, he said, "really poor, a bad choice of boyfriend." He doesn't know why Elizabeth picked him. But she did.
— She believed in me like nobody ever had. She pushed me like nobody ever had. She was tough and gentle at the same time, both at once, all the time. Too special.
I'd never seen my dad talk so much in one go.
— Her dream was always to have a child.
He stopped there for a while.