Under the Same Sun (Stone Trilogy) (41 page)

chapter 39

J
on could have sworn her body temperature went up as they crossed the lobby of the hotel.

He followed behind her, hands sunk in his pockets, amused by the way she carried herself: her shoulders straight and stiff, her chin raised, hands tight around her purse. She kept looking around, taking note of every little thing going on—the flowers on the counter, the uniforms of the doormen and bellboys, the shine of the brass plate around the elevator buttons—and he could have sworn she raised her eyebrows at an empty coffee cup on a table that had not been cleared away instantly.

“You know you scare the living daylights out of these poor people, don’t you?” he murmured into her ear when they were in the elevator. “I can see them breaking out in a cold sweat as soon as you walk through the door. I wonder if they do that with Olaf too?”

“I’m sure they don’t,” Naomi replied with a huff. “And I’m sure he doesn’t even bother to check the lobby himself. Want to take a bet that he uses the hotel garage and never goes there? Leaves it all to the manager?”

“Who, dear heart, is paid to do that.” He let her step out first. “And maybe your family relies on that.”

“Jon.” She stopped and turned around. “My hotel in Halmar, the Seaside. There was not a single thing in that house that would have embarrassed me. A guest could have gone anywhere, at any moment, and not found anything to complain about. I was proud to have it that way. Those plates I dropped…”

He raised his hands in defense, laughing at her. “I know, I know. Custom-made in England, and you paid a fortune for them. And you still haven’t forgiven me for making you drop them by walking through that door. I’ve offered to pay for them a million times; stop blaming me already!”

“I have forgiven you.” Her lips softened into a smile. “But still. I was trying to make a point, Jon.” She waved her hand at her surroundings. “I’m not impressed by this, just the way I wasn’t impressed by the Oceano in Positano. Don’t get me wrong; they aren’t bad places. But they aren’t excellent places either. They are not outstanding. If they were mine, they would be outstanding.”

Jon nodded, but he didn’t reply. Taking her by the shoulders, he gently pushed her forward and knocked on the door of the penthouse apartment.

Lucia opened the door. “You’re here; you’re here,” she said, embracing Naomi and then Jon. “Come in, I’m so happy to see you! Kevin and Olaf are on the patio.”

For an instant, before Naomi could answer, Jon felt an echo of her resentment, a stab of anger at Olaf’s intrusiveness, at the way he was sneaking his way into his own family and their lives.

Calmly, Naomi answered, “Good. Then we can have this discussion and be done with it,” and stalked through the room and out into the sun.

They were sitting at a table set for lunch, Olaf and Kevin, while a cook was grilling steaks for them on a mobile barbecue.

Jon stopped in the doorway.

The roof garden was a lovely place, well kept; set with many terra-cotta pots, it was a green oasis high above the New York traffic. From where he stood Jon could see the fountain outside the Met, and the graceful arches of the opera house. It was a lovely spot.

“Father,” Naomi said, dropping her purse on the table. “You look well.”

“As do you, my dear. Have a seat.” Olaf pulled out a chair for her, which she ignored.

“You know we have to talk. You know I don’t like one bit that you talked Joshua into quitting Juilliard. It was not your decision to make.”

With a glance at Jon, Olaf laid his napkin aside and leaned back. “And neither is it yours. It’s Joshua’s. All I did was show him alternatives, possibilities. No one is forcing him to do anything.”

“He’s meant to be a musician!” Her voice didn’t sound quite as stable as she wanted it.  “Joshua has a great talent, and he should be a musician, like his father. You abused Jon’s kindness when he retracted that court order by coming here and alienating Joshua from me by putting these ideas of Harvard in his head.”

“And you,” Olaf replied pleasantly, “should have been the head of the Carlsson business and decided otherwise. So why don’t you give your son the same freedom that you claimed for yourself? It’s different when your child is concerned, isn’t it? It hurts, doesn’t it, when they don’t go in the direction you wanted for them, don’t I know it.”

“That is so totally not the point.” She balled her fists at her sides. “The point here is that Harvard was
not
Joshua’s idea, or his wish; it was yours. You are seducing him into it. I made my own decisions. No one told me to run away with Jon.”

“No one would have either.” With a sigh, Olaf pushed his chair back and rose. “Naomi, darling. I’m not trying to seduce Joshua away from you. I’m not even saying he shouldn’t be a musician like his father. But honestly, I can’t see any harm in him going to business school, no matter whether he decides to be a musician or to take over the hotel business. It’ll be good for him if he knows what it says in his contracts. I bet Jon here would have liked that knowledge too.”

Jon  leaned against the doorframe, and grinned. “Oh, I have that knowledge. I didn’t go to Harvard, but Columbia doesn’t have a half-bad business program.”

Distracted, Olaf stared at him. “I never knew you went to college.”

“You never asked.” Jon sauntered over to the grill. “You never bothered to look beyond the bright lights.”

“That’s true,” Olaf said softly.

There was a very juicy-looking rib eye steak sizzling on the fire, and Jon pointed to it. The cook laid it on his plate, together with mushrooms and onions and a good serving of fried potatoes. A piece of bread in his other hand, Jon sat down at the table, right next to his brother, and began to eat.

“Are you telling me, Naomi, that you think Harvard is a waste of time?” Olaf asked.

She was looking at Jon’s food. “Of course it’s not a waste of time. It just wasn’t your decision to make. You should have talked to me first, before you put that suggestion to Joshua. I’m his mother, after all.”

“And Jon is his father.” Impatiently, Olaf waved at the cook, who brought over a platter with meat and sausages, grilled tomatoes, more mushrooms, and a bowl of potatoes. “Sit down, Naomi, and eat something. Stop ogling your husband’s plate.”

“You’re…” Her throat was so tight she could hardly speak. “You’re treating this as if it doesn’t matter, as if I’m making a scene for nothing. You’re treating me like an obstinate child. And you’re acting as if our wishes in this don’t matter at all.”

Olaf regarded her thoughtfully before he replied. Then he said, “You know, I actually do think they don’t matter at all. Just like mine didn’t matter when you made your decisions. It took me a very, very long time to come to terms with that. Indeed, it took me until after the shooting, until Jon threw me out of that hospital and we had to watch from a distance how you made your recovery. Only then, Naomi, only when someone else was keeping me away from you, and not your own stubborn actions, did I realize that you as my daughter meant more to me than the business. I’d gladly have given away everything I owned to see you healthy and happy again.”

Lucia came to stand beside him and take his hand, which he pressed.

“Maybe,” he went on, “giving Joshua this option, offering him something other than just the music, is my kind of atonement for pushing you all the time, for seeing you as an asset and not as my beloved child.”

Naomi took a step back. “I can’t take this. I can’t take you saying these things. And I don’t believe you. You’re hatching a new plan to save your precious empire, that’s all. You’ve given up on me, and now you want the boys. You’re just skipping a generation.”

Olaf threw down the napkin he had been holding. “You know what? Yes. I do hope to pass on what generations of Carlssons built to my grandson, and maybe to my new grandnephew. I’ll not lie to you; that’s my hope. For the life of me I can’t see what’s wrong with that. You opted out, fine. Joshua might like owning the Carlsson estate though. He might like being a hotel tycoon. He might enjoy what you resent. And I can’t see what it has to do with you. You have everything you ever wanted, Naomi. You have the man you love more than anyone else; you live the life you always wanted to live, married to him; and you make your own choices. Joshua is grown; it’s his right to make his own too.”

“What it comes down to,” Jon said around a mouthful of steak, “is that you should have asked our consent before talking to Joshua about leaving Juilliard and going to Harvard. That’s pretty much it, Olaf.”

Olaf shot him a brief grin. “I know. It wasn’t a planned thing though; it just crept up. And then one thing led to another. We had this dinner party, the one for my birthday. Carl was here, and some friends. A couple of them are pretty important Harvard people, and they took an interest in Josh. That was pretty much how it all started.” He shrugged. “Not that I’m unhappy about it. But it wasn’t planned.”

“And now?” Naomi asked, “is Harvard getting a new library? New labs? A new supercomputer? What did you have to do to make them take both Ethan and Joshua just like that?”

“That’s not how it works,” Olaf said. Jon choked on his food. “You don’t get admitted to Harvard if you’re not an outstanding student, no matter how wealthy you are.”

“And dogs have wings.” Defeated, Naomi sank down in a chair. She took the fork from Jon’s hand and pierced one of the mushrooms on his plate with it.

“You could get your own,” Lucia remarked. “There’s plenty of food.” She sat down beside Naomi. “Why don’t you join us for lunch. Jon has, as far as I can see.”

“The meat is excellent,” Jon agreed, “thank you.”

Kevin poured wine for him. “I, for one, am very happy about this. This is what Ethan wanted to do all along; and now, with Joshua, it will be even better. For both of them.”

Naomi reached for the glass, but Jon took it from her. “If you want some, pour your own. Stop eating my stuff.”

She listened to the sounds of the street below: voices, cars, the rumble of buses, a howling siren. The hotel was not very tall by New York standards: only ten floors, low enough to feel a connection to life. This part of the roof was private; it went with the penthouse only the family used, but she knew there was a bigger patio on the other side, one that was open to guests and often used for parties and events.

“The elevator brass plates aren’t polished.” she said, “And at the hotel in Positano there was stale fruit in the welcome basket. Breakfast was really bad. The bread was downright disgusting.”

Jon held out a piece of his bread to her. “Try this; it’s a lot better.”

She took it and smelled it only to put it down on the table. “I’m wondering, Father, why you never thought of having Cesare deliver the baked goods to the hotel. You know the things they produce at the farms are superior to anything you can buy in Positano. If it was my hotel, I’d change that. I’d buy everything from Cesare.”

Olaf smiled but didn’t reply. He brought over a glass and poured her some dark red wine and set down a plate for her.

“I’d even arrange tours to the farms for the guests so they could have wine tastings, maybe even let them visit the olive groves and experience a harvest. Something like that. We used to do that kind of thing in Halmar. The midsummer night picnic was one of the favorites, and New Year’s Eve.” She held up her plate when Jon offered her meat and potatoes. “That was fun.”

“You ran that hotel superbly,” Olaf agreed. “You did an excellent job. That’s one of the reasons why I kept pushing you into our business. You have an eye for these things, and even though you say you hate it, it’s a lie. You did love it. You loved running the Seaside.”

Carefully she cut the meat and heaped some fried onions on it. “I didn’t love running the Seaside. I loved the quiet and serenity, and the slow, predictable routine. I liked the small, hidden life.”

“Yes, but you didn’t have to live there. There was no need for that kind of life; you could have had it all.” Olaf handed her the salt shaker when she stretched out her hand for it.

“I didn’t, Father,” she replied softly, not looking at anyone. “I didn’t have it all. I had nothing. Without Jon, I had nothing. That’s the part you don’t understand. That’s the part you’ll never understand.”

“I do understand.” Gently, slowly, Olaf reached out to touch her shoulder. “I understand, even though it is hard to grasp how anyone can hold on to feelings for that long.”

Before she could respond, before she had even found the breath to respond, Jon said, “It can’t be explained. If you lock your heart so tightly around someone that she becomes a part of you, being without her means part of you is missing. It hurts every day. Every heartbeat hurts, every movement, even every thought. You don’t want to make plans, go out for dinner, attend a party, anything, because it hurts. All you can do is sit quietly in a corner, develop a slow, quiet routine where every motion is well rehearsed, like a ritual, so you know what will come and you’ll not feel the sharp hurt but maybe only a dull pain. You wander through day after day and pray that nothing will happen to upset that small, reduced life you’re leading so you’ll not be surprised by that knife in your gut.” His voice sounded deep and gravelly, and yet there was a sad, melancholy melody in his words. He had put down his fork and leaned back in his chair, his hands folded on his knees; and he was gazing at Naomi, the trace of a smile on his lips. “I moved out of the house where we lived together. The one you saw when you were in LA after the shooting, Olaf. In every room, wherever I went in that house, there was the ghost of Naomi’s laughter, the memory of her essence; and I couldn’t take it. I found myself turning, thinking I’d heard her speak to me, or grasp for a shadow, imagining I’d seen her. The garden, it was even worse in the garden. I’d walk along the path to the beach, under those high jasmine bushes she never allowed anyone to cut back, and expect her to come toward me, her hands full of seashells and stones she had picked up from the surf—my mermaid, my selkie, and it was an illusion. When Naomi left me that night, my life stopped. And I knew it was my own fault. I had wasted my chance; I had driven her away. And my life stopped. I would have done anything, anything at all, to find her and win her back, every day, all my life. Nothing else mattered.”