Prodigal Son: A Novel

by Danielle Steel

  “That’s an incredibly generous offer,” Peter said honestly, “but I’d be robbing you if I took it. There isn’t a damn thing I could do for you to be worth it.” He would have loved the money, but Peter knew it would be wrong, and almost like bribery, if he took it.

  “You don’t have to be worth it,” Gary said bluntly. “All you have to do is live here and make Alana happy.” Peter felt more like a gigolo than ever.

  “I can’t be on your payroll just to make Alana happy. I need to earn my keep,” Peter said, looking sad.

  “You could be out of a job for a long time,” Gary said somberly, as Peter nodded and knew it was true. “You’ll have nowhere to live when you sell the apartment, and no money to speak of, from what Alana tells me. You can’t just live like nomads, with two boys to consider. I don’t think you have much choice here,” Gary pointed out, looking confident that he’d convince him.

  “I need to figure out something when I go back,” Peter said. He had been sending his résumé around, but it was pointless. Partners in investment banking firms were an unsalable commodity at the moment.

  Gary didn’t press the point, but he knew that Peter was cornered. His daughter had already told him that she wouldn’t leave L.A. again. If Peter wanted his marriage, he had no choice but to live here, and he was too proud and responsible a man to stay unemployed. Gary was sure he would give in sooner or later. And as the days went by, from Thanksgiving to Christmas, Peter was well aware that if he wanted to be with Alana, he would have to stay in L.A. She was developing a full life here, with old friends and new ones. She was invited everywhere, and Peter felt like a boy toy following her around, or trying to spend time with his sons, who were busy now too. Only Peter had no life here, and nothing to do.

  In an effort to be reasonable, and occupied, he agreed to spend a few days at his father-in-law’s company, sitting in on meetings, and observing what they did. And he felt utterly lost and useless while he was there. Contrary to what he had promised, his father-in-law included him in no meetings. Gary gave him an enormous office, one of the most impressive in the building, and expected him to just sit there. It was obvious that he expected nothing of him. He told him he could come in as late as he wanted, and leave early if he had something to do, and that lunches as long as Peter wanted were fine with him. The only thing Peter knew, after three days, was that he would be entirely superfluous and useless if he went to work for him. If he took Gary’s offer, Peter’s career would be over. All he would be was Alana’s husband and escort to Hollywood parties and events. It was an impossible and humiliating life for him. He didn’t mention it through the holidays, and waited until after Christmas to talk to Alana about it. The boys were in Bear Valley, skiing for the weekend with their school, and Gary had gone to Las Vegas to watch one of his artists perform on New Year’s Eve. Peter and Alana had the whole property to themselves, and Peter was looking forward to a few days alone with her. He felt as though he hadn’t spent a moment of quiet time with her since he’d arrived a month before.

  “It’s a nice life out here, isn’t it?” Alana asked him, as they relaxed on the patio of the guest house in the winter sunshine. The weather had been balmy since he’d arrived, but he needed more than warm weather to keep him happy. He needed a real life, and he knew he would never have one here. He felt like arm candy for Alana.

  “It’s a nice life,” he agreed, “if you have nothing else to do and can enjoy that. Or if you run an empire like your father. I feel totally useless here,” Peter said uncomfortably. He couldn’t lie to her about it and didn’t want to.

  “I have a lot more fun here than I did in New York, and so do you,” she said stubbornly, and in her case he knew it was true, but not in his.

  “I need more in my life than just parties,” he said honestly. “I want to go back to work. I want to go back to New York after New Year’s, and see what I can turn up.” And they had begun negotiating with a potential buyer for the apartment that week. Peter was crawling out of his skin with boredom in L.A.

  “You can work for my father here,” Alana said, looking at him with a serious expression.

  “I can’t. I have nothing to offer him, and he has no real use for me. I can’t take an enormous salary from him and do nothing. That’s not me, Alana. I need a real job. I can’t just be your lapdog out here, or his lackey.”

  “What are you saying to me?” she said coldly.

  “That I want to find a real job in New York, on Wall Street, where I’ve worked for twenty-one years, or at least something like it. I’ll find a place for us to live, and then I want you and the boys to come home.”

  “I am home,” she said simply, and he could see she meant it. “I’m not going back, Peter. I like it here. And so do the boys.”

  “I can’t do this. I don’t want to be a kept man, Alana. That’s not who you married, or who I am. The bottom fell out of our life three months ago. I want to put it back together again, not be your boy toy out here.” He felt like a gigolo most of the time, or even all the time now.

  “There are no jobs for you right now, and it sounds like there won’t be for ages.”

  “I’ll find something. It may not be as comfortable as what we had before, for a while anyway, but it will happen. Things will settle down again. But this isn’t a life for me in L.A.” He was being as honest with her as he could, but Alana was no longer willing to negotiate with him.

  “I’m staying, Peter. If you don’t want to live here, then maybe we have a decision to make. My father is getting older, I want to be out here with him. We’re all he has.” She looked at Peter, and he saw something different in her eyes. She was no longer the woman he had married. She was her father’s daughter. Hard times had hit them, and she was bailing. He could see that clearly now, and she didn’t deny it.

  “You’re all I have too,” Peter said quietly. “I love you, Alana, and the boys. I don’t want to lose you because I can’t live here.”

  “Then stay. My father made you a good offer. Take it.” But she didn’t ask him to stay because she loved him. She didn’t say it. And he wondered now if she did love him, or had stopped loving him somewhere along the way, and he hadn’t noticed. What Alana wanted was a lifestyle more than she wanted him. It was a brutal reality for Peter, but possibly true. It looked that way to him.

  “I need to go back to New York next week anyway,” he said unhappily. “We’ll talk.” She nodded, and answered her cell phone when it rang. It was her father calling from Las Vegas. She sounded closer to him now than she did to Peter. She was no longer interested in building a world with Peter. All she wanted was to share her father’s. As Peter listened to them talk, he got up and went inside. There were tears in his eyes, but she didn’t see them. He couldn’t kid himself anymore. It was one of those defining moments when you know that a life you have shared is over, and the person you thought you lost temporarily is never coming back the way it was before. Peter knew it at that instant. Whether he chose to acknowledge it now or not, it was over. Alana preferred her own city to her husband. It was a bitter pill for Peter to swallow and a heartbreaking disappointment for him.

  They went to a New Year’s Eve party together, and Alana ran into several old friends, who were thrilled to see her back. She even ran into an old boyfriend who used to work for her father and had become an important Hollywood agent. She introduced him to Peter, and the three of them chatted for a few minutes, although he clearly had no interest in Peter, who drifted away and went back to the bar to get himself a stiff scotch on the rocks. He was tired of Los Angeles and the people he met there, and couldn’t wait to go back to New York—unlike Alana, who was thriving in her old familiar world, and loved being her father’s daughter in it.

  They were both quiet when they drove home that night. Her father’s driver had driven them to the party, and when they got out at the guest house, Peter told her he was leaving for New York in a few days. Alana nodded and said nothing. It felt like there was nothin
g left to say. He had lost.

  They spent the next few days avoiding each other. He didn’t want to bring things to a head, or come to any more painful conclusions than they already had. He waited until the boys got back from Bear Valley, told them he was leaving, and promised to come back as soon as he could.

  Peter and Alana shared breakfast the morning he left. She was going to a luncheon that day, given by a Hollywood celebrity, and a party that night, to celebrate the premiere of a film. Nothing in her life had changed. She was still the spoiled little girl she had always been, and he had kept her that way all the years of their marriage. He could see that now. And everything in his world had changed since October. He felt as though he were totally alone. All sense of partnership seemed to have vanished between them. She was thoroughly enjoying her new life and he was mourning their old one.

  She kissed him goodbye as though he would be back that afternoon, and when he went to kiss the boys goodbye, he saw her watching him from the doorway, as though he were someone she had never seen before. He turned to look at her, and their eyes met. There was no hiding from it anymore. They had become strangers overnight. She closed the door on their existence in New York and seemed to be moving on without him. And just as she had said two months before, she had abandoned ship. Alana was off and running. And there was no place in her world for him, unless he played by her father’s rules.

  Peter sat in silence as her father’s driver took him to the airport in Gary’s Rolls. The ride was smooth and the car perfect in every way, but Peter had never felt as uncomfortable in his life.

  His cell phone rang as he was boarding the plane. It was Ryan, not Alana. She hadn’t called.

  “See you soon, Dad. Fly safe.”

  “I will, son. I’ll call you from New York.”

  “I love you, Dad.”

  “I love you too, Ry,” Peter said softly with a lump in his throat. Peter didn’t say it, but they both knew that everything had changed, and it would never be the same again.

  Chapter 3

  When Peter returned to New York, he had the feeling that the entire city, and everyone he knew, had sunk into depression. Restaurants were deserted, stores were empty. People who still had jobs were terrified of losing them. No one felt secure, people were worried about the safety of their money in banks, and those with funds were hastening to buy T-bills with whatever cash they had on hand. And small banks continued to close all over the nation. A country that had symbolized success and security was no longer one they could count on. The whole financial community was upside down.

  And yet another shocker had occurred while Peter was in California. A man named Bernard Madoff was arrested for investor fraud, in the largest crime of its kind committed in history. He was accused of cheating 4,800 clients out of $64.8 billion. He had wiped out entire communities of investors, destroyed savings and retirement funds and entire fortunes. The homes of his investors were being put on the market as a result, and his trusting investors around the world had been decimated.

  It was a time like no other Peter could remember in his twenty-one years in the business. And his own situation was no better than that of Madoff’s unwitting victims. Peter was desperate to sell their city apartment, and the house in Southampton. They needed the money, although Alana’s father was providing generously for her and the boys. But Peter wanted to resume taking care of his family himself. He had both places listed with several realtors, and the one serious prospect for the apartment was driving a hard bargain, trying to take full advantage of Peter’s plight.

  Peter received yet another offer from the same buyer the day after he got home, and it was only minimally higher than the one before. The buyer knew just how desperate he was. He called Alana about it late that night and asked her advice, but she was vague. It was obvious that she was no longer interested in their problems in New York. Protected by her father now, they had less impact on her, and she told Peter to sell it for whatever he could get, since she knew he wanted the money, and had to have it.

  Peter called the realtor back the next morning and sounded grim when he told her he would take the offer. It was for less than half what he paid for the apartment ten years ago, right before Ben was born. Four months earlier, before the market crash, the apartment would have been worth twice what he had paid for it, but not anymore. Those who still had money were preying on those who no longer did, and Peter was now one of the latter, a victim of the crisis.

  “I’ll take it,” he told the realtor through clenched teeth. “I’m selling it as is, and I want the fastest closing possible.” She promised to arrange it, and then he called their realtor in the Hamptons. There had been no offers on the beach house so far, although it was spectacular, had been recently redone, and sat on several acres of property, on adjoining beachfront lots. But no one was buying second homes right now. The bottom had fallen out of that market, along with everything else.

  “What about renting it?” the realtor suggested cautiously. Peter was about to decline, and then thought better of it, if they could get a decent rental price.

  “How much would it go for?”

  “Normally, an astronomical amount. It’s a gorgeous house. Right now, maybe half of what it usually would, or less, and this is the wrong time of year to rent out here, but you never know. I can list it as a rental and see what happens.”

  The offer on the city place was presented the next day, pending due diligence, inspections, and the approval of the co-op board, all of which were standard procedures, but could take time. Peter signed his acceptance of the offer, and called the realtor to have it picked up. At least that was done.

  He spent the rest of the week sending out his résumé, and he called the boys in California every night. Whenever he did, and asked to speak to Alana, they told him their mother was out. She was having a fine time in L.A. Peter was devastated by what was happening to their marriage. He kept hoping she’d want to stay with him after all. It made him even more anxious to solve their financial problems as quickly as possible, but he wasn’t a magician. And he was doing all he could. He still had a small though waning hope that the damage between them could be repaired. He said nothing about their problems to the boys.

  They were excited about going on a ski trip again with their school when Peter talked to them. Like their mother, they were busy with their activities in L.A.

  He’d been back in New York for two weeks when they got a rental offer on the Southampton house. It was pathetically little, but it was money, enough to make Peter decide to take it. He was renting the place furnished, with everything in it, unlike the apartment in the city, which he had to empty now. He asked Alana to come to New York to help him, and she said she didn’t want to leave the boys alone with her father.

  “Just hire someone to do it,” she said blithely, as he felt tears sting his eyes. He was exhausted and discouraged, and Alana wasn’t making it any easier for him. He had spent an entire day opening e-mails that told him there were no jobs for someone of his qualifications and stature. He was willing to do damn near anything he had to, and now he had to empty their apartment on his own. Alana was acting as though she had never lived there. The buyers were offering to purchase some of their furniture, mostly the antiques, which was good news. Alana and Peter couldn’t afford to be sentimental right now, about anything except each other, and Alana didn’t seem inclined to do that.

  “What do you want me to do with the furniture that they don’t buy?” Peter asked Alana in a flat voice.

  “I don’t know,” she said vaguely. “Put it in storage? Give it away? Do whatever you want.” She obviously didn’t care, about the furniture, or even him.

  “Are we planning to live in your father’s guest house forever?” he asked miserably. “Some of this is good stuff, and it would be nice to use it when we get another place of our own.” He was trying to hold on to that belief, with no help from her.

  “I’m not in love with it, especially if they’re buying the
antiques.” Alana had made a full-time job of filling their apartment with expensive things for several years, and now she cared about none of it. It was as though she wanted nothing to remind her of her years in New York, and his recent failure there. Peter was feeling crushed by feelings of inadequacy, it was reminding him more and more of his youth, when he couldn’t do anything right, and his parents blamed him for everything. Alana wasn’t blaming him, but she didn’t have to. Her actions and refusal to come to New York even for a visit, to help him, said it all. And she acted like she was in denial about the situation they were in, and wanted no part of it. Her father had given her the opportunity to dodge it entirely, and she had seized it gladly. Now it was all Peter’s problem, not hers. He got that message loud and clear.

  He spent the next two weeks packing up everything he wanted to keep from the apartment. He got wardrobe boxes from the moving company for Alana’s clothes, which she wanted in L.A. She was turning her childhood room in her father’s house into a closet to store what she wouldn’t wear, like fur and winter coats, and there were plenty of walk-in closets in the guest house for the rest of her clothes. Peter boxed it all up for L.A., along with the boys’ clothes and toys. He didn’t know what to do with his own things, and felt odd sending them to L.A. If he did, he would be tacitly agreeing to move there, and he hadn’t done that yet. He wanted to stay in New York, even if they went back and forth for a while, until he found a job. In the end, he sent most of his things to storage, along with some books and furniture, and all he kept out were two suitcases of clothes, which were all he needed at the moment. He was living in jeans and sweaters while he packed up the apartment, and he had kept out several business suits for interviews and meetings. He sent his summer clothes and his tuxedo to California with Alana’s things—he was more likely to use the dinner jacket there, escorting Alana to social events. For the moment, he had no social life in New York and felt like he was in mourning for his career and their lost life. He had hardly spoken to anyone in the past three months—he was too deeply ashamed over the demise of his career. He hadn’t done anything wrong, but it seemed that way. He had advised the firm about some of their riskier investments. Peter had always been willing to walk the edge and take high risks, which was also why they had had big wins. And some of their high-risk investments had been very good for a while, although like everyone else, their real estate investments had proven to be disastrous for them. It was part of what had brought Lehman Brothers down too, and several banks. They weren’t alone in their mistakes, and finally it had caught up with them.