Jack nudged his elbow into Ethan’s ribs and said, “Stop staring, you putz.”
“I’m just listening,” Ethan lied, trying to play it cool, an ardent grin taking over his face.
“You’re looking at her like prey, like she is a naked Victoria Secret model that just told you she had a master’s degree in business and knows how to code.”
Brooke turned toward them and dipped her sunglasses, as if the alignment was causing her to see double. The twins were used to all kinds of reactions when people first noticed them. They couldn’t hide their identical features, or their height. (At six foot five, they almost always stood out in a crowd.) Ever since they started Stalker, people called them “the other Winklevoss brothers,” referring to the very tall and athletic twins that claimed to come up with the idea of Facebook, settled with Mark Zuckerberg for millions, and went on to Bitcoin, making billions. To avoid further comparisons, the Stone brothers had done their best to differentiate themselves with shears and blades. Ethan always wore a full beard and long, rock-star locks. Jack was always clean-shaven with a closely clipped Caesar cut. But those differences were never what fooled anyone. Especially Brooke.
“Some say people can’t really change,” she continued, “that they reveal themselves over time. But we don’t believe that here. Dancing Rabbit is not only an educational center and leadership forum, but also a place to reflect, renew, and transform. Our goal for this weekend is to inspire you to set new intentions, explore spiritual possibilities, and pioneer new paths for change…”
“For the love of God,” Jack mumbled, “what on earth is she going on about?”
“Who the hell cares?” Ethan moaned lustily.
“As a self-sustaining community, we harvest nine thousand pounds of lettuce, broccoli, and kale, and compost five tons of organic waste every month. Does anyone know what we do with all that compost?”
She nodded toward the twins. “Any idea over there?”
Ethan tapped at his chest and his voice cracked. “Me?”
“No,” she said with a flirty grin, “the handsome one on your left.”
When the laughter faded, Jack said, “You use it to fertilize, I suppose.”
“I guess that one got the looks and the brains,” Brooke joked. “Binary opposites.”
Bailey’s throaty laugh echoed noticeably over the others, as did his bright color-coordinated Patagonia outfit that he had likely bought just for this weekend, never to be worn again. He turned to Emily and explained, “’Cause they’re twins.”
Emily looked up at him, bugged. “We get it.”
“They all get it, Mr. Duff,” Brooke teased. “Is that not why we hire people smarter than ourselves?”
Bailey and Brooke already had a good rapport from their dealings in organizing the retreat, but those interactions were limited to phone calls and emails. This was the first time Bailey had seen what she looked like and it rendered him more awkward than his usual ungainly manner. And less witty.
Bailey snickered and his complexion went flush. “Good one.”
A cell phone rang and Ethan realized it was his. Jack glanced at his caller ID and gushed-whispered, “It’s that bimbo you’ve been shtupping. Answer it.”
Ethan picked up. “I’m in a thing. Call you back—”
Brooke advanced with a seductive gait and said, “We are going to completely unplug this weekend. We call it mindfulness.”
Before Ethan could excuse himself, apologize, or say goodbye, Brooke grabbed his phone and told the girl on the other line, “He won’t be available for the rest of the weekend. Maybe ever.”
As if she already knew.
Everyone awaited Ethan’s response.
“That’s one way to break off a doomed relationship,” Ethan joked. “Mindfully.”
Their eyes locked, and time stood still, irresistibly.
—
Ethan sat on the edge of his bed staring at the note she left behind.
Please be mindful. WTF!
At Dancing Rabbit, they talked about mindfulness with utter awe, as if discussing the wind, gravity, or evolution; the notion that every living thing looked through a different prism and that honoring every point of view was the only way to manifest true understanding. Now he had to look through a different lens to make sense of his new reality.
Ethan went outside and sat out on the porch for hours that night, cursing mindfulness and the horse it rode in on. He couldn’t find a reason why Brooke would leave, or his brother, and why he couldn’t see either abandonment coming. He blamed them both, separately and together. He had once prided himself on his optimism and unrelenting faith—faith in God, love, loyalty, business fundamentals, and hard work.
Now he doubted everything, even himself.
Was I blind or was I just blindsided? Had I been selfish and self-involved? Did my ambitions leave Jack and Brooke each with a void? Had I betrayed my brother by wanting him to go away, to be with Brooke…alone?
His thoughts grew darker as the night grew long.
Betrayal; premeditated and cruel; temptations justified; loyalties shunned; too ashamed to face the truth, or me; both of them knowing how they would leave me. Did they know what they would be doing to me once I was left behind, alone, without explanation? Did they care? Could I get them back? Would I want to?
The two people closest to me, whom I trusted and loved the most…
He drifted off, slept better than he should have, and dreamt vividly of a fatal car accident.
In the dream, a car was racing up a winding road. The road was slick. It was raining. Oncoming cars were wailing on their horns as the car sped by, skidded, spun out of control, and went up and over a barrier. It fell and fell and fell. There was a thunderous explosion. Then nothing. Nothing but silence. Deadly silence. He couldn’t be sure who was in the car.
He only knew that it wasn’t him.
CHAPTER 5
Ethan’s body shut down. Fortunately, he had crashed so hard that he slept through the night and awoke well rested. Unfortunately, when he remembered what he was waking up to, he had to experience the entire ordeal all over again.
He was grief-stricken and overwhelmed; his gut wrenched with an ache in his stomach that felt like his world had collapsed, which it pretty much had. He went for a five-mile run on the beach to clear his head, which it didn’t, and then decided that the best thing would be to get to work and act normal, like nothing had happened, so that the staff could stay focused on the Stalker mission, not his personal life.
Wishful thinking.
He took a long scenic route to work, up Ocean Avenue, past the gateway to the beachfront city, the Santa Monica Pier and its multicolored Ferris wheel, Muscle Beach, the crimson Palisades Park skyline. He passed by the seaside bars, restaurants, music venues, and artisanal shops—all the reminiscences of the city on the beach he had come to conquer with his brother, and then Brooke; all the experiences they had shared whirled by like the constant motion of joggers, bikers, and rollerbladers; the visual triggers he was left with, now a backdrop laced with fading memories; the warm tech bubble by the ocean Ethan had once seen as paradise now felt like a lonely ghost town.
He turned up Montana Avenue, driving past an upscale strip of bistros and boutiques that he used to stroll with Brooke on weekends. Sometimes they would walk north, all the way up to the Pacific Palisades, admiring the magnificent Tudors, Cape Cods, and Mediterranean villas on large lots—some of the most desired real estate on the Westside. Brooke had told him that the natural beauty reminded her of the coast of Spain and Italy, and that she always dreamed of starting a family in such a place.
Ethan stopped at one of Brooke’s favorite up-market haunts, Cafe Montana, where they used to talk about their future plans while sipping cappuccinos and watching young couples push strollers past them. This was the life Brooke wanted.
Cafe Montana was a healthy gourmet brasserie that guaranteed purely organic fare grown locally, which Jack once joked only guaranteed heart failure when you realized the dent it put in your Apple Pay.
Ethan laughed about it as he ordered an egg white and vegan cheddar on a croissant, mixed Vega-shake, and double-shot mocha for the same price as a month’s worth of groceries in Minneapolis; then he headed back to his car, remembering how his brother would so often make fun of the SoCal lifestyle. Almost everyone in Los Angeles has a story about how they came for the sunshine but stayed for the lifestyle.
Not Jack.
He never considered himself an Angeleno, and never cut LA transplants any slack that did. He was especially tough on New Yorkers who acted elitist about their East Coast pedigree but never moved back.
The perfect weather, year-round surfing, and close proximity to the desert and mountains weren’t enough for Jack to put up with the celebrity worship, lack of intellect, contagion of narcissism, and unrelenting congestion. He reduced the tech renaissance on the beach to “the new black”; Hollywood redux; high school with money; passion without spirituality; social mobility without regard.
Ethan told his brother he had missed his calling as a comedian or talk show host. Jack used to do hysterical bits poking fun of the LA lifestyle, from the predictable clichés about phony people and fake breasts to the coffee bars that had the nerve to charge nine dollars for a cup of joe loaded with butter and coconut oil, promising to upgrade brain and sexual prowess. Or his rants about the yoga studio next to a family planning center where a former rock-and-roll guru cranked seventies rock while barking orders over the din in a hundred-degree room packed with sweaty opportunists trying to out-yoga each other in a likeminded community of shallow, entitled wannabes and has-beens angling to feel superior.
“Some things in LA don’t need a punch line,” Jack used to say. “Kale, quinoa, and Arctic char don’t belong on a menu at a burger shack!”
Ethan knew that his brother used humor as a defense mechanism because he had so often felt like a fish out of water, but he started to wonder if his brother’s witticism was just his reflection of the truth and if he was just being honest. Ethan always laughed, but maybe he should have taken Jack’s cynicism at face value; maybe Jack had been trying to tell him that he really didn’t like it there.
Maybe Brooke didn’t really like it either.
She came down to Santa Monica only because Ethan couldn’t go up north to Big Sur every weekend. She was more flexible. And she had her own funny jabs about the life and lifestyles of the Westside.
“All you need is a few million, just for admission,” she would joke whenever they talked about raising a family like the couples pushing strollers past Cafe Montana.
And she wasn’t wrong. Living in the natural beauty that reminded her of the coasts of Spain and Italy didn’t come cheap. Teardowns north of Montana Avenue started at $2.5 million. A decent education for children meant private school, about $40,000 a year, per kid; $600,000 from preschool through twelfth; a million per kid when you factor in college and grad school. Then there was the cost of nannies, drivers, camps, sports, clubs, trainers, and tutors. And that didn’t cover the cost of eating organic, shopping at Whole Foods (aka “Whole Paycheck”), frequenting trendy restaurants, vogue vacation destinations, and all the social expectations of the limousine liberals.
Ethan considered another possibility: What if Brooke didn’t think Ethan would ever be able to afford a lifestyle on the Westside with the natural beauty of the coast of Spain and Italy? What if she didn’t believe that Stalker would make it and that’s why she was so concerned about the face recognition feature going up prematurely when he told her that Jack was leaving? She was also practical and well aware of the risks and uncertainties of building a tech company.
But Brooke never demanded such a lifestyle. And Ethan never made any false promises. She strived for a simpler life and was the least materialistic girl he knew. She was generous with others, frugal with herself, always appreciative, never wasteful. She avoided leaving a carbon footprint and didn’t even have a driver’s license, which was quite the challenge when she moved down to Los Angeles. She once said that if his success didn’t manifest the way he had hoped, she’d admire him for trying, and he’d still be the same person she loved.
Who says things like that?
Brooke did.
Girls he had dated in the past were like treasure hunters assessing his potential, digging for loot or baggage. He would always be on guard, often resentful.
But not with Brooke. Never with Brooke. She had heart. She had soul. She would never tell him that she didn’t want him to pursue his dreams because she wanted security. But she did want to have kids, and if her childhood had truly been “a knotty affair,” as she had described it, then perhaps she didn’t want to go through such heartache again.
Ethan never had any doubts about Brooke before, never wondered if her intentions were pure, but then again, he also didn’t know all that much about her. She’d avoided talking about her past from the onset and they’d both agreed that all that mattered was the people they had become; everything before had just been preparation.
Sure, Ethan believed in doing some due diligence before jumping into any venture, but Brooke never gave him a reason to be cautious.
And when Jack once suggested that Ethan should slow things down and get to know her better, he told his commitment-challenged brother, “If you search for flaws, you’ll probably find some, and that only leads to analysis paralysis—like you.”
Jack had countered, “What you don’t know might bite you in the ass one day.”
Ethan disagreed. “What matters is what you feel in your gut. Brooke and I compliment each other. We’re better together, like all the great mergers. Where would J. P. Morgan be without Chase, Disney without Pixar, Exxon without Mobile?”
Jack had had a field day with that one.
Now Ethan was wondering if his brother had a good reason for warning him. What if the first girl he chose to trust implicitly had the deepest darkest secret of all?
And what if it had something to do with why they both left on the same day, without warning?
—
Ethan arrived at Stalker and parked besides Bailey’s old Jag. They were both always the first to arrive at the office and Ethan was glad that they had time alone. He told Bailey everything and showed him Brooke’s note. Bailey was bad with good news, always overreacting, but good with bad news, usually focusing on the bright side.
This time, however, he acted like he had been expecting Brooke’s flight, and even responded a lot like Jack.
“You’re better off knowing now,” Bailey told Ethan.
“Knowing what?”
“Knowing that she’s not right for you.”
“She’s perfect for me,” Ethan objected.
“Apparently, she didn’t think so.”
Bailey could also be blunt.
“Maybe something happened to her?”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Something.”
Bailey cringed at Ethan’s lingering hope. “You’re a big-picture guy. You should know better. Doesn’t matter why. She’s gone.”
Harsh.
Ethan glanced at the entrance and saw their two Stalker designers arriving, and he wasn’t quite ready to field questions or be subject to a pity party. Since Jack’s dramatic exit, which everyone had witnessed, there would be lots of questions about why he left and what his departure meant for the company. Ethan needed some distance, especially before news of Brooke’s surreptitious exodus leaked.
”I’ll be in my office,” he told Bailey. “I need some time.”
“You don’t have time,” Bailey said as Ethan walked away. “You have a job to do, to get
the site working right, to grow this company.”
Bailey, Jack, and Ethan were the only Stalkers with private offices but they rarely used them since everyone else was always visible in the open pen—like most tech companies, prisons, or preschools—and while locking himself inside his office may have given Ethan some time to process his loss, it also gave the rumor mill time to stir.
Over the next few days, no one approached Ethan. He slipped into his office before the staff arrived, and left long after they all went home. He immersed himself in the face recognition issues, everything from managing the press to dealing with complaints when some of the bugs Jack had warned them about manifested, but he also spent time tracing back through every recent interaction he’d had with Brooke and his brother, looking for inconsistencies in behavior, searching for a sign or clue about why his brother wanted to leave Stalker and why Brooke wanted to leave him.
Jack had been making mysterious plans nearly every weekend in the past few months and his secrecy had been making Ethan uneasy. Now he knew that Jack had likely been going up to the Bay Area to meet with Hounddog. That made sense. But Brooke hadn’t behaved any differently. Ethan retraced the last intimate moments they shared, wondering if he had been paying close enough attention.
—
Just that prior Saturday, Ethan and Brooke had taken a walk along Abbot Kinney—a hipster street in Venice brimming with trendy shops and restaurants. He had noticed her admiring an antique pendant necklace in the window of a quaint jewelry store. He told her that he had to go inside to use their bathroom, and when he came out with a little box and presented her with the pendant, she literally burst into tears.
The Second Son Page 3