I Am Nina — Chapter 7 — The Fear
"I tried to buy your love." What Nina’s father hid for years.
Nina was rich, then poor on purpose, then rich again. And neither of the boys knows.
— I tried to buy your love.
He said it just like that, no dressing it up.
— Without Elizabeth next to me to hold me back, I turned into a dumb father. I was terrified you wouldn't like me. Terrified. So I convinced myself that if I gave you everything, you'd love me. Every present was an apology for not knowing how to do the rest.
— And it worked for a while. You loved me and you loved the stuff along with me, and I couldn't tell the two apart anymore.
— When you were nine I realized how big a fuck-up I'd made.
He used the hard word only once, and that was it.
— You'd become an impossible child. Not out of meanness — you were a kid. But you were abusing a power that wasn't yours. A status that wasn't yours. Everything you had, Nina, I was the one who earned it. You were still going to have to earn your own things, and you weren't even looking at that. You felt superior. And that made me sad in a way I didn't know how to carry.
— I knew it was only going to get worse from there. So on the next move, I picked the worst house I could find and cut everything. All at once.
I took a while to process it.
— Wait — I said. — You HAVE money.