The Distant Shore (Stone Trilogy)

by Mariam Kobras

  The

  Distant

  Shore

  by

  Mariam Kobras

  Book I: The Stone Trilogy

  Buddhapuss Ink

  Edison, NJ

  Copyright © 2012 Mariam Kobras

  Published in the United States by Buddhapuss Ink, LLC. Edison, New Jersey.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval systems without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Cover Art @ 2008 Eric G. Thompson

  Author Photo by Sarah Fulford

  Cover and Book Design by The Book Team

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2011932131

  ISBN 978-0-9842035-4-3 (Paperback Original)

  First Printing January 2012

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher has no control over and does not assume any responsibility for authors, the authors’ websites, or for third-party websites or their content. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  Buddhapuss Ink LLC and logos are trademarks of Buddhapuss Ink LLC.

  www.buddhapussink.com

  Acknowledgements

  The fact that you are able to hold this book in your hand is proof that serendipity actually exists. In my case, it came in the shape of a black cat that followed me one day on twitter. That cat turned out to be my future publisher, who, with patience, a great sense of humor, and a good dose of friendship, gave me the time and space to shape this story into something you would want to read.

  My thanks go out to MaryChris Bradley of Buddhapuss Ink who edited The Distant Shore, and taught me to be an author along the way.

  ~ Mariam Kobras

  There it was . . .

  Jon found the letter among the pile of mail he had carelessly tossed on the counter the night before. The corner of the envelope was soaked through from the puddle of milk it had landed in, and it stuck to the counter when he tried to pick it up. With a mug of coffee and the letter in hand, he wandered out onto the deck.

  Beautiful morning sunlight greeted him. He felt the fragile warmth of a late February dawn on his face. The sea had a pearly sheen to it as it retreated, the surface quiet despite the gentle breeze. Under his bare feet, the wooden boards creaked softly as the house adjusted to the rising temperature of the day.

  It really seemed much too early to be up and about, but he had been restless.

  “You’re drifting into depression again.” Sal had warned him a while ago. They had been sitting on his little deck, “Just look at you, Jon. This is a farce, you living here among shipyard workers and shop girls. The girls aren’t even pretty, and the men run around in their underwear.”

  He had paused meaningfully, staring at the frayed t-shirt his friend was wearing. “Not that they would recognize you; you look just like one of them. You have a wonderful house in Malibu, for God’s sake, and you rent it out to Art and live here, in this hovel. One day, one roller too many will shake the foundation and you’ll drift out to sea with this collection of clapboard. Then you can sing to the sharks while they gnaw your bones slowly and painfully.”

  When there was no reply, he added acidly, “But maybe that’s what you’re aiming for, right? Since you can’t do away with yourself on your own.”

  So here he stood with this letter, wondering why Sal had pressed it on him. He never accepted fan mail anymore: he’d become disenchanted with the unoriginal offers and the repetition of the contents. This one started with the same, old words meant to catch his attention.

  “You don’t know me, but my name is Joshua.”

  He stopped reading while he lit a cigarette.

  “My mother’s name is Naomi Carlsson.”

  The paper dropped from his hand and fluttered to the ground, where it lay, face up, on a small pile of sand the wind had blown onto the deck. It fluttered a little in the breeze, grating gently on the rough surface, taunting him.

  Jon bent down to retrieve it and read on.

  “We live in a small town in Norway called Halmar where she manages a hotel, the Seaside. She said you are my father.”

  Time stopped. The world around him froze, engraving these images into his memory to be forever connected with this instant: the roiling water slowly retreating, laying bare wet stretches of beach, the seagulls dancing in the air, the single sailboat skimming over the waves.

  “I’m sixteen,” the letter said, “and I really wanted to know. So on my birthday a couple of weeks ago I finally got her to tell me. It is hard to believe. I don’t really like your music, but you are very famous, it seems. How did you meet my Mom?”

  “You can’t still be pining for that girl, Jon?” Sal had asked after their third bourbon. “You’ll have to get over her at some point. There are so many out there, one of them must be good enough for you. She left you a long time ago without a word, and you have never moved on, still mourning like a lovesick boy.”

  In the end, it was more like an accusation than a question, and there was no reply.

  “My mother’s name is Naomi Carlsson.”

  As if he could have forgotten her name.

  As if he had allowed himself to forget, with those photographs on the shelves he looked at every day.

  Gone. One night she had been there, the next morning gone without a word, vanished with all the bits and pieces of her except for the single hair clip on the sink in the bathroom. Naomi. He had stood there and stared at the thing: his brain frozen, his heart numb, and then done what he always did, called Sal and cried for help.

  “What do you mean, she’s gone?” Sal had asked, “People don’t just disappear overnight.”

  But he had shown up a half hour later, bleary-eyed and cross to be woken again so soon after he had gone to bed.

  “For God’s sake, Jon,” had been his verdict, “she’s not dead. She wasn’t abducted. Look around, she’s taken all her stuff. She only left you, man. Happens all the time.” And he returned to his house, and sleep.

  As quietly and softly as she had stepped into his life, she had left it again, left in such a way that in all the years he had never solved the riddle of her disappearance.

  “It would be really nice to get to know you,” the boy had written, “if it is true what my Mom told me and she did not just make it up. Maybe she only said it because she is a fan of yours. She has a picture of you on her desk, and all your albums.”

  This nearly tore him apart. He had to read it again and again until his brain accepted it.

  Norway. So that was where she had been hiding herself and their child away from him. It hit him then, the realization that he had been a father without ever knowing it.

  Deep inside he felt the nudge, irritating and insisting, and he tried to ignore it while he finished his cooling coffee.

  The letter, crumpled in his hand, felt like a captured bird that wanted to fly again, so he opened his fingers and held it up in his palm to stare at it.

  The nudge turned into a push, just like that.

  He clamped down on it firmly and returned inside.

&
nbsp; It was time to start working again, clean the piano and tune the guitar and get some new music written. Sal was right; it was high time to put something out again.

  The dust on the piano keys irritated him. He wiped at it impatiently, then gave up; there was no melody in his mind, there hadn’t been for a long time.

  A shove, nearly strong enough to make him jump, and he rose to pace about the small room.

  He could just go. He could just go on his own, all alone, so no one would witness the humiliation and shame when she turned him away like a stray dog, or laughed at him, or had her husband throw him out.

  Naomi. She had walked through the big white house like a lost selkie, a mermaid caught on land, a beautiful shadow in his otherwise crowded life. Returning to her embrace after the harsh lights of publicity had always felt like diving into a balmy, azure ocean, being caught on the gentle swell of a wave that would take him away to unknown and peaceful shores.

  Jon placed the empty mug in the sink, wiped down the kitchen counter, returned the milk carton to the fridge, and placed the coffee tin on the shelf. It seemed to him as if he were performing a ritual, putting everything in order like putting it behind him step by step, gaining momentum, each act a little faster than the one before, each one making his heart beat harder, until he could feel his pulse on the back of his tongue like the dredge of bitter tea. He stood, his hands on his hips, to look around in the room, until he was breathing freely again and the fog of turmoil had lifted from his brain.

  There was an overnight bag somewhere upstairs in a corner of the closet; he had received it as a Christmas gift from his sister a couple of years ago and tossed it there, puzzled by her intent. He never used overnight bags. When he left here, it was always with trunks filled with all the clothing needed for the events he would be appearing at.

  On his own, privately, he had not gone anywhere in a long while.

  Not even when Sal presented him with an exclusive invite to a film star’s private tropical island, stating, “Go, for Heaven’s sake. Take swimming trunks and nothing else, get drunk every night, screw every girl you can grab, and come back tan and rested.”

  So now, this seemed like the right thing to use. A minimum of clothes, a toothbrush, not much more. He would go, find out what he wanted to know, and return. At long last, there would be an answer to the question that had tortured him for years. She would have to tell him, look him in the eye and tell him why she had walked out on him like that, leaving him in misery.

  And the boy, his son, the child she had kept away from him, something would have to be done about that, too.

  While he stuffed a couple of shirts into the bag, his blood boiled at this thought.

  The promises he had made to her, the dreams he had painted for her, and yet nothing had been good enough to make her stay, and she had even taken that from him, his baby. Not only had she torn out his heart and destroyed his soul, she had carried away this secret.

  After a moment’s thought, he decided to leave his car in the garage and call for a cab instead. Jon was standing on his doorstep, his bag at his side, when his neighbor stepped out and nodded to him. Mike owned a hamburger grill on the beach in Santa Monica somewhere, but he had never followed up on the many invitations extended to him to stop by for a burger or two.

  “Morning,” he said. “Nice day, isn’t it? Traveling again?”

  They knew him, of course. His face was too well known, but the people here had developed a tight-lipped protectiveness about their famous neighbor, and he was never bothered.

  “Yes,” Jon replied, surprising himself. “I’m off to Norway for a while.”

  “Supposed to be cold there.” Mike judiciously eyed the silk-lined leather jacket Jon was wearing. “That won’t keep you warm. Not a lot of luggage either for a trip to Europe.”

  “I’m not staying long.”

  “Someone taking you to the airport?” A box of cigarettes had appeared in Mike’s hand. He offered one to Jon, who took it with a nod and a word of thanks.

  “Nah. Called a cab.” It felt rather good to stand outside his house on an early Tuesday morning with a small travel bag and a smoke.

  Mike squinted at him in the sun. “Not like you to take a cab. I always see you in that fancy German car or being picked up by one of those dark limousines. Are you lighting out, then?”

  “Lighting out?” He had forgotten to pack his razor.

  “Yes, man, running away, are you running away from it all? I would, if I were you, run away. At least from time to time.” Thoughtfully Mike observed the glowing ashes on his butt. “Must be hard, living in the limelight all the time.”

  “No, there’s this girl…” He caught himself just in time.

  Mike, though, was grinning at him in understanding. “Yeah, it’s always about them, isn’t it? Well, I wish you luck, mate.” With a brief wave, he stepped down from the threshold and picked up the newspaper on the way to his car.

  “Thanks, Mike,” Jon mumbled. Somehow the short exchange had lightened his heart considerably and set things in proper perspective.

  There was no anger. Anguish, yes. Anger, no. There had never been anger, only the deep pain of being left alone with those unanswered questions.

  “There he is,” Russ said.

  He had been looking out of the window from time to time, watching for Jon.

  Sal pushed a mug of coffee at him, narrowly missing the stack of photographs still needing to be signed.

  “Told you.”

  “Man, but he is so predictable. Boring, isn’t it?” It came out in the British accent Sal found entertaining. “What do you think he’ll do?” There was a trace of nervousness in his voice, one that echoed Sal’s.

  “I’d put down money on him wanting to go there right away. He’s been obsessed with that girl from day one, and the fact that she dropped him like that just makes her more alluring. Wait and see.”

  “Did you order a plane for him?” Russ sipped the coffee and watched Jon, his bag slung over his shoulder, as he walked across the parking lot. “God, will you look at him, Sal! He looks like he’s going to sign up with the Navy.”

  Sal rose from his chair to look outside over Russ’ shoulder. “Yeah,” he agreed softly.

  Their charge and friend, the famous star. There he was, in jeans and a rather well-worn leather jacket, his hair wind-blown and his brow clouded in concentration.

  “Pour him some coffee.”

  “He’ll get plenty of that on the plane.”

  Sal opened the door and greeted Jon with a laconic, “Good morning, my Master. You’re early, aren’t you?”

  Jon set his bag down on one of the cluttered desks, mindless of the papers and CDs piled on it, and took the cup Russ held out. They looked at him expectantly. Russ pointed at the one piece of luggage behind his back, his eyebrows meaningfully raised at Sal, who nodded in return, a small smirk on his face.

  “Stop that,” Jon ordered, “I know what you’re doing, alright? You read the letter, and you know why I’m here, both of you.”

  Sal nodded.

  “I’m going away.” It sounded childish and obstinate. “I don’t know for how long. And I’m going alone.”

  “Jon.” Sal turned serious, “Are you sure? I’m prepared to go with you. It’s a long trip, and you have no idea what you’re getting into.”

  “No.”

  “Please think, Jon,” Russ chimed in from his seat by the window, “You don’t know what’s waiting for you, there might be legal issues, and Sal would keep his head—”

  “Meaning I won’t?” Jon interrupted. “Trust me, I will. Oh, I will, Russ. All I want are answers, and if that boy really is mine, there will be plenty of questions to answer.” But he knew he was not fooling them. They had been together too long for that.

  “Right.” Russ seemed to read his thoughts. “So you’re going to walk in there and demand your love-child. You’re going to make her explain, see your son, and then what? Then what? You’ll be stra
nded in a strange country on a strange continent.”

  There was no way he was going to let one of them go along, not this time.

  He set the cup down on the stack of pictures, spilling some coffee on his own image, ignoring Sal’s indignant sniff at the ruined photographs.

  “This is private, Sal.”

  “None of us has ever been to Norway,” Russ picked up the argument, “and none of us speaks the language. I’m really not happy about you going there on your own. I don’t even think that place has an airport. What if you have to rent a car and drive from somewhere else?” He cast around. “Sal, what’s the next big city, anyway? Are there big cities in Norway?”

  Sal began moving toward the world map still hanging on the wall over the coffee machine from their tour planning a year earlier, his glasses pushed down on his nose, but Jon picked up his bag again.

  “Sal. Stop the nonsense. I’m capable of driving a car and handling a credit card. I’m going now. Call the airport, I want a plane ready in an hour. Find out which…no.”

  Both men turned toward him, expectantly.

  “You don’t need to do anything at all. I found her by myself, and I made her run by myself. Now I’m going to find her on my own again and…”

  He stopped himself just in time. They would not understand. They would laugh and call him obsessive again, he was certain.

  Halfway out the door he heard Sal shout, “You’ll need a bigger house when you return with Naomi, you hear me? Better give Art a call and tell him to move out,” and the echoing burst of laughter from Russ.

  It had felt so important to convince Sal and Russ he needed to act on his own, and this feeling held as long as the cab sped along the highway toward the airport, but once he stood inside that great hall his courage nearly left him.

  He gazed at the people around him. They all seemed to know exactly where they were headed. No one took any notice of him at all. No one rushed up to beg for an autograph or a snapshot taken by a friend or hastily employed stranger as a breathless female hung on to his arm, or tried for an embrace they wanted documented for all eternity.