Nina walked back to stand next to me. Sitting on the arm of the chair again, she said, “Then we need to check every room in this house. Just that one room alone with the secret room next to it has at least half a dozen pieces that could be hiding what we’re looking for. And don’t forget the attic.”
I shook my head. “There’s nothing in the attic. Trust me. Just some old things that were my mother’s.”
“No, Tristan, that’s not right. There are all sorts of letters and pictures up there. And that’s just in one trunk. I bet there are tons of places we can look.”
Nina and Daryl began to draw up a plan of attack for searching the house as I wondered why she knew so much about the attic. I hadn’t been up there since I’d moved in. Rogers had been responsible for storing things, so I’d had no reason to even think about it.
“Let’s head upstairs,” Nina said in a chipper voice as she pulled me from my chair. “I feel like Sherlock Holmes.”
“Does that make me Dr. Watson?”
Standing on her toes, she kissed me and smiled. “A very sexy Dr. Watson. Now let’s go find this evidence so you can nail that bastard to the wall.”
Her blue eyes were ablaze with determination. I’d missed her presence in every part of my life. Even when she tried to be tough, she was still my Nina—sweet and gentle, no matter what.
The attic was very much like every other attic in the world. Stacks of boxes, some reaching nearly to the beams that transected the ceiling, and trunks ranging in size from small to enormous lined virtually every square inch of space. A seamstress’s mannequin stood silently watching guard in the corner near the south window, giving that area an eerie feeling despite the rays of light that brightened up that section of the space.
Nina lowered herself to the wood floor in front of a large trunk and looked up at me. “I think we should start here.”
Looking down, I watched as she lifted the lid and began rummaging through stacks of papers and pictures. “How did you know these were here?”
A sheepish look crossed her face, and she held her hand out. “Sit with me. I want you to tell me about these pictures. I hope you’re not mad at me for coming up here.”
I lowered myself to the floor next to her. “When were you up here?”
She stopped looking through the trunk and sighed. “Right after I moved here last year. I swear I wasn’t snooping. It was just that I was lonely out here all alone with no one but Rogers and Jensen to talk to and I went exploring.”
The mention of Rogers’ name made a flood of memories rush back into my brain, and I saw by the look on Nina’s face that my expression had changed. Taking her hand in mine, I brought it to my lips in a kiss. “I don’t think you were snooping. It’s okay.”
My forced smile didn’t fool her, and she took my hand to kiss it in return. “You’re still hurting over him, aren’t you?”
I shook my head, trying to lie. “It’s okay.”
She kissed the back of my hand again and gave it a gentle squeeze. “I’m looking forward to hearing about these pictures. I want to know if the stories I made up were anywhere close to the truth.”
Taking the largest photo out, she held it up and looked over at me. “How old were you when this was taken?”
I studied the portrait of my parents, Taylor, and me posing when I was no older than four or five. As with every picture ever taken with the four of us, I sat in front of my mother and Taylor sat in front of my father. Dressed identically, I grinned for the camera while Taylor sat looking so serious, as he always did, and our parents’ expressions told the story of their marriage. Self-satisfied and smug looking, my father’s presence in the picture bordered on overwhelming, too much strength and not enough kindness. My mother’s expression was the one she wore nearly every waking moment of her days. Her mouth appeared to form a smile, but on closer inspection, anyone who knew her could see the sadness in her face.
“I think we were five then,” I answered, struggling to remember anything of that day.
“Your mother was beautiful. You have her eyes, but your brother doesn’t.”
I turned to look at Nina and chuckled at her comment. “Taylor and I were identical twins. I think if I had eyes like hers, then he did too.”
She shook her head and smiled. “Nope. Look closely. See your mother’s eyes? They’re brown, like yours and Taylor’s, but they’re softer than his. Yours are like that. His eyes look a little harsher. Not yours, though.”
For a long moment, I stared at that picture and finally saw what Nina had seen. So many people had always told Taylor and me that they couldn’t tell us apart, but now I saw that it was a simple matter of looking into our eyes. “You’re right. How did you see that?”
Nina stroked her palm over my cheek. “How could I not? It’s impossible to miss. You look like your mother, at least in your eyes. The rest of your face may look much more like your father’s side, but those eyes are all her.”
Propping the portrait up against the back wall of the trunk, she looked for another picture while I kept my gaze on the four of us. I didn’t remember the day we sat for that picture, but the fact that my father even appeared in it was noteworthy. Only formal portraits included him. Any other time a picture might be taken, he was absent, at work or on a business trip that was likely anything but.
“I have a confession to make, though. I didn’t notice how much like your mother you were until now. The first time I saw this picture, I thought you looked like your father.”
“I did,” I admitted, knowing Nina had every right to hate that in me after what my father had done. I didn’t like that truth any more than she likely did, but it was the truth. Taylor and I both looked more like Stones than my mother’s family.
“It’s expected that you’d look like your parents, Tristan. It’s okay.”
Happy to avoid the comparison between the man who had her father murdered and myself, I reached inside the trunk to lift out a stack of photographs I recognized as pictures from when I played sports as a child. Each one showed me smiling and happy, a winner every time.
“You looked so cute with all your trophies. It’s hard to imagine this guy who wears a suit all the time playing anything.”
“Then I’ll have to take these pictures when we leave so I can remind you from time to time,” I joked. “Right now, we need to look through the rest of this trunk.”