Page 94 of The Perfect Deception

Tracy was cor­rect. For the rest of the week, twice a day, Adam sent Dina bou­quets. On Tues­day, he sent her chamomile with “No legacy is so rich as hon­esty” and white clover with “The course of true love never did run smooth.” Tracy re­searched the mean­ings—chamomile for ‘pa­tience’ and white clover for ‘think of me’—while Dina re­searched how to make chamomile into tea.

On Wednes­day, she re­ceived daf­fodils with a pink bow and “I hold the world but as the world, Gra­tiano; A stage where ev­ery man must play a part, and mine is a sad one.” That night, there was a de­liv­ery of daisies in pink tis­sue pa­per and “Love all, trust a few, do wrong to no one.”

Thurs­day brought ferns and for­get-me-nots—ob­vi­ously he was go­ing through the al­pha­bet, she thought to her­self. The cards were get­ting more dra­matic, too. “Love to faults is al­ways blind, al­ways is to joy in­clined.” She was tempted to send him a text with the rest of the quote: “Law­less, winged, and un­con­fined, and breaks all chains from ev­ery mind” but she didn’t want to en­cour­age him. She al­most choked when she read the sec­ond card, “No legacy is so rich as hon­esty.”

By Fri­day, when he’d sent her holly for hope and white jas­mine for sweet love, she’d had enough. Es­pe­cially when she read the cards, “ Now, God be praised, that to be­liev­ing souls gives light in dark­ness, com­fort in de­spair” and “O God, O God, how weary, stale, flat, and un­prof­itable seem to me all the uses of this world!” Cre­ativ­ity was one thing, but she was start­ing to think he was mock­ing her.

Later that night, she was sure of it.

“Jake, it’s not work­ing.” Adam paced his apart­ment and ran his hand over the crown of his head. When Dina had re­fused to an­swer his calls or his texts, he’d called Ja­cob in des­per­a­tion and told him ev­ery­thing. His ad­vice had been to woo her. So he’d spent the past week woo­ing her and still she hadn’t called.

“What have you tried?”

Adam filled him in.

“You need to apol­o­gize to her, Adam.”

“I would if she’d talk to me.”

“Then you need to force the is­sue. Un­for­tu­nately, you’ve given her the mes­sage you don’t trust her. That’s hard to over­come. You’ve shown her you want her back, but you need to show her why.”

Adam swal­lowed. “She knows I want her back. What more do I need to do?”

“You need to open your­self to her.” Si­lence stretched across the line. “She’s not your mom, Adam.”

His breath hitched and his stom­ach dropped to his knees. “I know that.”

“Do you? Be­cause it sounds like you pushed her away be­fore she could leave you. And you haven’t done any­thing to con­vince her that was a mis­take.”

“I sent her flow­ers. And herbs. With mean­ings.”

“Which she prob­a­bly un­der­stood be­cause she’s bril­liant. So you’ve ap­pealed to her mind. But you need to ap­peal to her heart, Adam.”

“Her heart? I don’t even know how she feels about me.” He’d told her he loved her, but she’d never re­sponded.

“Then ask her.”

“And what if I don’t like the an­swer?”

“At least you’ll know. Knowl­edge is much bet­ter than fear, Adam. Trust me. And her.”

Adam hung up the phone and con­tin­ued to pace. He didn’t know if he could do that. Trust her? He’d trusted his mother and she’d left him. Ja­cob might say Dina wasn’t like his mother, but how could he be sure? He passed his book­shelf, where a photo sat of his mother, hold­ing his four-year-old self on her lap. They both smiled for the cam­era. He picked it up and ex­am­ined it. The gold frame had in­tri­cate de­signs on it and the swirls some­how re­minded him of Dina’s apart­ment, which was weird, be­cause noth­ing about the apart­ment was sim­i­lar to his mother’s dec­o­rat­ing style. She had loved per­fectly matched an­tiques, or­der­li­ness and calm. Dina’s apart­ment was boho chic, with mis­matched ev­ery­thing that some­how co­or­di­nated and con­veyed warmth.

His mother’s smile didn’t reach her eyes. When Dina smiled, you knew she was happy. Her nose crin­kled, her frizzy hair vi­brated and her eyes shone. Her en­tire body soft­ened.

Had he ever made his mother happy? He as­sumed so. She hadn’t been a bad mother. She just turned into an ab­sen­tee one. But he re­mem­bered them play­ing on the swings, mak­ing bub­ble peo­ple dur­ing his bath time, snug­gling to­gether when she read him a story. He also re­mem­bered try­ing to im­press her so she’d stay longer—she was al­ways hav­ing to go some­where or do some­thing and he would beg for one more story, show her one more amaz­ing rock he’d found or ask for one more hug. But she’d al­ways left soon af­ter.

With Dina, he never had that un­der­ly­ing fear. When he was with her, she showed how much she liked be­ing with him. He never wor­ried about hav­ing to im­press her or beg­ging her to stay. He never won­dered if she’d let him see her again.

Dina and his mother were com­pletely dif­fer­ent peo­ple. And it was time he gave her what she de­served. His trust.

Chap­ter Twenty-Six

That night, af­ter wa­ter­ing the white jas­mine, she’d rushed to get dressed and raced to tem­ple. Walk­ing in five min­utes late, she tried to slide into her seat un­ob­tru­sively while the rabbi was read­ing one of the open­ing prayers. A move­ment to her left caused her to look up just as Adam slid into the seat next to her. Her mouth dropped.

“What are you do­ing here?” she hissed.

He leaned for­ward, pulled out the prayer book and opened it to the cor­rect page. Hand­ing it to her, he reached for an­other book for him­self be­fore an­swer­ing her.