More Than Words
Jill Santopolo
For my father
1949–2015
prologue
He’d imagined the baby would be a boy. A son to take to ball games, to watch his favorite movies with, to teach to drive stick. A son who would slay the Jabberwock with him, who would pick up his own sword and fight the manxome foes alongside his old man. The way he had. A son who would continue his legacy, the family’s legacy. An heir.
Standing with his baby girl in his arms, her head resting in the crook of his elbow, he felt the need to say he was sorry. To apologize for imagining her a boy. Because from the moment she was born, the moment he first saw her, it was as if a seed had been planted in his heart. It quickly rooted there, and now, three days later, he felt it growing, filling him with pride and love and determination.
“Nina,” he whispered to the fragile baby in his arms. “I will raise you to be strong. I will raise you to be powerful. I will raise you to be fearless.”
His daughter stared at him, her eyes blue like his, her cheeks round and pink. “And I will protect you,” he said. “Until the day I die. That’s my pledge to you.”
The baby reached her hand toward him, touching his chin with her fingers.
The pact was sealed. The deal was made. And Joseph Gregory would spend the rest of his life trying to keep that promise.
1
Sometimes Nina Gregory got lost in the elasticity of time. When she was concentrating on something with a singular focus, time seemed to stretch, like a rubber band pulled taut, until—snap!—the sound of a cleared throat or a car horn would make time feel normal again.
She was lost there now, putting the finishing touches on the speech her boss, Rafael, was going to give at tonight’s campaign fund-raiser. “You’re in the Nina zone,” her college roommate, Leslie, would have said if she were there.
Then, just as Nina got to the last sentence, her phone buzzed, bringing her back to the present. It was Tim.
On a call that’s running over. Probably be about 20 mins late tonight. Sorry!
No worries, she typed back. I’ll be there.
Can’t wait to see you quickly appeared on her screen.
Nina smiled. Same, she wrote.
Tim’s answer was a smiley face and a thumbs-up emoji.
When Tim was on forever-long conference calls with the start-ups he worked for, he would scroll through emojis, sending strings of them to Nina, summarizing his day in cartoon images. Getting those texts always made Nina laugh. Deciphering them reminded her of the rebus puzzles the two of them used to solve together as kids, when they shared the backseat of her father’s car, before they knew their futures would twine around each other.
As she was responding to Tim’s text with her own emojis, Jane, the campaign’s communications director, leaned on the edge of Nina’s desk. “Big favor,” she said, twisting her micro braids into a bun. “Would you be okay staffing tonight’s event on your own? Mac and I need more time to hammer out the details of Rafael’s position on charter schools before I prep him for that New York One interview.”
Nina didn’t usually staff events. Most speechwriters didn’t. But she happened to be going to this fund-raiser because her closest friend from high school was hosting it. Actually, Priscilla was hosting it because Nina had asked her to, though she’d made sure no one at the campaign knew that.
“No problem,” Nina said, shifting her attention to Jane. “I’m sure I can handle it. Just tell me what I need to know.”
As Nina hit print and e-mailed herself the speech as backup, Jane gave her a crash course. “Mia’s running advance for the event, so you don’t have to worry about the logistics. All you have to do is introduce Rafael to donors with information that he can use to start a conversation. I’ve got the guest list along with their photos and what we know about them—I’ll text it over. But you could probably manage without the list anyway.”
Nina nodded.
“Make sure he always has a drink in his hand—a weak one,” Jane continued. “He likes vodka soda with a twist of lime.” She was ticking the pointers off on her fingers. “And make sure no one monopolizes too much of his time. Mia will have the gift bags set up—so you don’t have to worry about that either. She can help if you need anything.”
Nina nodded again. “Got it,” she said.
“I promise, it’s not hard,” Jane answered, pushing herself off Nina’s desk.
“Don’t worry,” Nina said, gathering her bag and her blazer. “We’ll be fine.”
She grabbed the speech and walked into the hallway. Rafael was waiting right outside the elevator bank, his tie perfectly straight, his gray suit jacket folded neatly over his arm.
“So it’s just you and me, huh?” he said as Nina stopped beside him, buttoning her blazer.
“That’s what they tell me,” Nina replied. She looked up and he smiled.
The Daily News had written about Rafael’s smile twice, calling it “high-wattage” and “compelling,” part of “Rafael O’Connor-Ruiz’s Charm Offensive.” Nina could understand why. There was something about his smile—the unselfconsciousness, the way his eyes crinkled, how it showed both rows of his teeth—that made it impossible not to smile back.