“Are you sure you’re ready for this, Mrs. James?” said a concerned young woman.
“No,” said Nina plainly, “there’s no way I could ever be ready for this. But I don’t care. I’m doing this! And don’t call me Mrs. James.”
“Sorry, I was just trying…”
“I know what you’re trying to do. You can stop pretending I’m that frail. Mrs. Nina James was another person in another life. I’m trying to become someone else…someone who feels real.”
The Nina who said those words sounded very different from the Nina eight months, two weeks, and three days ago. The woman currently standing in front of the bathroom mirror at private club in the city might as well have been a total stranger. Compared to the woman formerly known as Nina James, she was the complete antithesis of the person in the reflection.
Not long ago, Nina James was the reserved, soft-spoken wife of a prominent businessman. Together, they lived in the same devoutly religious and very affluent community in which they’d grown up. She’d gone to a private school all her life while her husband was home-schooled by his rich, well-connected parents. In both cases, they’d been brought up with the same rigid piety that had defined their community for generations.