Hemi said, “I think you’d better do a bit more research on Buddhism, because I reckon Noah’s version’s got more to do with being a teenage boy with hormones to spare than it does with religion. Ask yourself why he’d be telling you that. And tell me exactly when he told you that, and why you’re bringing it up now. Your school’s been out for two weeks.”
Karen flushed. “That’s not fair. He does care about what Buddhism really is. And so we email. I email with lots of people.”
“Not many of them telling you to hook up and move on, I’m guessing,” Hemi said. “That it’s more spiritual that way.”
“That’s not—” Karen was looking mulish now. She adored Hemi. What was going on?
“Anyway,” I hurried to say, “all I know is, I couldn’t do it, not the moving-on serene part. You’re right about that. It sounds like a pretty good way not to get to your golden anniversary, too, if you ask me.”
“Well, obviously you can’t,” Karen said. “Which is why you have to cry about Hemi and get worked up. Why couldn’t there be a better way? Noah says human beings were made to do things in phases. Like—serial monogamy. It’s natural, which is why so many people get divorced, or don’t get married at all, just love somebody and stop loving them and then move on. Noah’s dad has been divorced three times, and his mom has been divorced twice, and my parents weren’t even married, and they fought all the time. It’s more realistic if you accept that most of the time, it’ll end, and when you start fighting like that, you just leave. And then if it does last forever, you can just be really grateful, because you didn’t take it for granted. But most times, a relationship is good, and then it isn’t, so you let it go. You know—‘If you love something, let it go. If it’s meant to be yours, it will come back to you. If it doesn’t, it was never yours to begin with.’”
She said it like she’d invented it. Or, more likely, that Noah had.
“No,” Hemi said. “If you love something, hold it hard.” He took my hand, the one with his ring on it. He kissed my fingers, looked into my eyes, and smiled with the sweetness he rarely showed in public. “If you start deciding your good thing doesn’t matter to you one way or the other? You will be letting it go, because your good thing will find somebody else who knows how special she is. My good thing’s going to know I mean it, and that I mean to keep it.”
That was nice. That was beautiful. But I was still getting mad, and about more than Noah. “How about when you got sick?” I asked Karen. “If you’d died, should I have said, ‘Ah, well, the wheel has turned,’ and thought about how much I’d save in health insurance?”
“Now, see, Hope,” she said, “that’s just an example of how you don’t get it. It doesn’t mean you aren’t sad. It just means you accept, and you can move on.”
“Well, I don’t accept,” Hemi said. “Not the important things, I don’t, and I never will. And Hope isn’t going to accept, either. Some things you roll with, and some things you fight for. Noah doesn’t know the difference, because he’s seventeen.”
“Fine,” Karen said with a sigh. “I was just trying to tell you about an alternate spiritual path. I thought you might find it interesting.”
“Sorry your holiday’s been so drama-filled, anyway,” Hemi said. “We’ll have you bring a friend next time, maybe, so the two of you can roll your eyes at our inferior spiritual path. Wouldn’t be a bad thing at all to give you a bit of company if we do that Great Barrier Reef bit next time, eh. Which I’m guessing Hope will enjoy once she learns to swim, because there’s no going fast involved. It’s a very slow thing, snorkeling. She could even wear a life vest. And if the friend’s a Buddhist, that’ll be a bonus for you. You two could practice looking at the fish and corals and moving on. Although the Buddhist will need to be the female type, because I’m not taking Noah on my holiday.”
Karen looked at him doubtfully. “You’d really do that? I mean, take me and a friend with you, and pay for it? Even though I just got kind of…”
“Yeh. I would. Even though you just got passionate. I’m Maori. We understand passion, and we definitely understand family. That’s our spiritual path.”
“You’re not actually my…” She seemed to be groping for a word. “You don’t have to. You really don’t have to be attached.”
“Ah,” he said. “Except it seems I do. Not sure I’d be much chop as a Buddhist. But then, like I said, I was born into a different sort of path.”
“I’d think it was the same,” Karen said. “I thought being Maori was all sort of, the circle of life and all that.”
“Maybe with more attachment,” Hemi said. “Good topic for another day.” He asked me, “How about taking a couple deep breaths and finishing your breakfast, and reminding yourself that I’m going to be here for whatever comes up, because I hold hard?”
I had to smile at him, even though I was still a little upset. We finished eating, and Karen stayed in the café while Hemi and I went outside. We sat on a bench under an awning in a cold wind with our coats buttoned up, and Hemi pulled the phone out of his pocket, but he didn’t place the call right away. Instead, he said, “So. Noah the Unattached Buddhist. Got a feeling about which way he wants his temporary attachment to run.”
“Yep,” I said with a sigh. “Boy, do I feel unprepared for this.”
“Could be you need a partner, then.”
“Could be. And you’re up to the job, clearly. But Karen’s right. You don’t really have any…”
“Ah,” Hemi said. “I’m thinking we may need to work on that. And we’re going to. One sec.” And he put the phone on speaker and called his attorney.
Walter, I noticed, didn’t waste any more time than Hemi did. Instead, he launched straight into it.
“The good news is,” he said, “your dissolution is on the docket. Not even three months away. September twenty-first. The New Zealand attorney will handle it, neither you nor your wife has to appear, and it’ll be done that day. No complications that I can find out about. I have to say, other than the two-year separation requirement, they make it easy over there.”
“And the bad news?” Hemi asked.
“It seems that the parties have a year after the divorce to work out the financial details.”
“And?” Hemi asked.
“Her attorney says she’s going for half.”
I saw Hemi go rigid. He’d been able to maintain an ease during our talk with Karen that I hadn’t, but now, it was gone. He took a breath and visibly centered himself before he asked, “On what grounds?”
“That you were together more than three years, which are also the only grounds she could use. And which, as I explained, means she’d be entitled to half your assets acquired during the marriage, absent unusual circumstances.”
“In the first place,” Hemi said, “if those weren’t unusual circumstances, I don’t know what would be. And in the second, I told you, it wasn’t three years. I have an expired passport with an exit stamp that shows the date I left the country. Can’t do much better than that.”
“Hmm,” Walter said. “That’s good news, yes. But she’s primarily disputing the date when you started living together. Presumably she knew when you left.”
“We had a lease,” Hemi said. “We posted bond on the flat. I’m covered at both ends.”
“Well, dig that up,” Walter said, “if you can. We’re going to need it. But what about before that? Was she living with you in your…whatever your housing was? Or were you living with her?”
“Sleeping together some nights, yeh,” Hemi said. “When my roommate was out. Not living together.”
“We’ll need to prove that. Any ideas?”
Hemi frowned silently for a minute, then said, “Affidavits from my mates at the time. Roommate, flatmates, especially. I’m in touch with one mate, and she’ll know how to reach the others.”
I could almost see Walter making a note. “Good. We’ll get on that as soon as you send me the information. But as I said—she has a year,
and she’s got an aggressive attorney, too. Whoever said New Zealanders weren’t litigious wasn’t talking about this guy. Pit bull all the way. You may decide you’re better off settling and making it go away. Start by offering her, say, five hundred thousand, and decide what your ceiling is. And I’ll be the one on the other end of that, not Mr. ‘New Zealanders are Different.’ Ex-wives aren’t different. Just ask my two. And on that note—do me a favor. Take it from somebody who’s staring down the barrel of Number Three right now. Do not mention this to your fiancée. I don’t care how much you think she loves you. Or if you do—make worried noises about how you could lose half of everything you have, and you might have to cut way back. Does wonders for the prenup. And I know, I know, it’s all wine and roses right now. Call it contingency planning.”
“Too late,” Hemi said calmly. “Hope’s sitting here, and you’re on speaker. And I’m not settling. My marriage was over for years before I moved out of a studio apartment and stopped eating rice and eggs for dinner every night. Anika didn’t take any part in that, and she’s not getting any part of the rest. She gets absolutely bloody nothing, and if that Kiwi attorney you’ve found can’t deliver that message forcefully enough, find one who can. I want her thinking about costs that will break her. I want her to know exactly who she’s up against.”
Walter’s heavy sigh came down the line. “You know, most people take advice from their attorneys.”
“I do,” Hemi said. “Legal advice. I wouldn’t say matrimonial advice is your strong suit. And I’m guessing Hope’s not impressed, either.”
He hung up, then sat a minute, and I waited until finally, I couldn’t stand it any longer. “Good thing I wasn’t ever expecting to get half of what you’d already made, I guess,” I said. “Fifty percent here, fifty percent there? Before you know it, you’re talking real money.”
It was supposed to be a joke, but Hemi turned on me with a frown. “You think I can’t take care of you and Karen after all? You having second thoughts?”
“What?” I laughed, and he didn’t. “Of course I’m not. You know what my apartment looks like. You were eating rice and eggs? What do you think I was doing until I met you?”
“Ah. I knew it. You think I can’t do this. You think it’s half gone already. Anika’s not much of a Buddhist, and she’ll be trying hard, no worries. And you’re afraid I’m going to lose. Maybe you should be. Most of what I have isn’t liquid. It’s tied up in property, in stock. It would be a disaster, you’re right about that.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. “You’re not liquid? Well, that’s it, then.” I stood up. “I’m out of here.”
He rose himself, his face darkening. “It is not a joke.”
I turned to him and said, “All right, then. Maybe it’s an insult. I don’t know how to wave this semaphore flag hard enough, so I’m going to tell you. I am not with you for what you have. Or rather, I am. I’m with you for all the things you have inside. Say you did have to give her half of what you made. So what?”
“So what? he said. “So bloody what?”
“Yes. So what? What would you do? Things must have happened before. Everything can’t have worked out. What did you do when something went wrong?”
Most men would have fidgeted. Hemi didn’t. He stood there, and I could all but see the mechanism ticking away in his brain.
“I started again,” he finally said.
I smiled at him, and then I couldn’t help myself. As fierce as he looked, and even though we were standing in the middle of sidewalk in the freezing cold on a downtown street with a steady stream of tourists passing in both directions, I pulled his head down and kissed him gently on the lips.
“Yes,” I said, still holding his face between my palms, rubbing my thumbs over his freshly shaved skin. “You started again. I know I’m supposed to say here that I’ll love you for better or worse, and I will. I’d love you if you were poor. But if I love all of you? Then I have to admit that I also love the part of you that pushes for the top and gets there. I believe in that man, and I always will. If you had to sell off everything you owned, what would you do? You’d start again. If all we had left was my bracelet, we’d sell it to give you a stake, and you’d be on your way. You’d get to the top again, too, because that’s who you are. Smart, and strong, and ruthless. You go for the win, and you get it. And Anika had better watch out, because she’s not going to know what hit her. She’s going to lose, because you’re going to win.”
He was picking me up off my feet again, turning me in a circle, squeezing me tight. And then he put me down and said, “We are not selling your bracelet. Ever.”
“But I would,” I said. “You bet I would. You’re the best investment I could ever make.” I smiled at him, even though it was a little wobbly. “And if that isn’t true love, what is?”
After that, how could I not move in with Hemi? Not doing it would be telling him that I didn’t trust him to get free, to keep his word and marry me, or take care of Karen, or get that win over his ex-wife—I mean, wife. I’d have been telling him that he still had to prove himself to me.
I just wasn’t expecting it all to be so hard.
Hope
On a Saturday morning two days later, I was eating another breakfast with Karen and Hemi. This time, though, Hemi and I had cooked it, and we weren’t in a cozy New Zealand café. Instead, we were sitting at a black marble breakfast bar that bore a distinct resemblance to a sarcophagus, as if the Mummy of Inferior Taste were buried inside.
I’d been in Hemi’s apartment at least twice a week for the past six months, but let’s just say that I was most familiar with his bedroom and bathroom, although the living-room couch had come into play a time or two, and, all right, maybe the foyer, too. When Hemi had talked about pulling me through the door and doing me against the wall, he hadn’t been joking. But despite our nocturnal adventures, I’d only slept over on the rare occasions when Karen was staying with a friend. Like Cinderella, when the clock had struck midnight, I’d been in the Mercedes and headed home.
Old-fashioned, you’re thinking, for a woman who’d spent the past nine months losing all her inhibitions and every bit of her innocence to the most demanding Maori CEO in the world? Maybe. But I’d never been able to take my guardianship of Karen casually. Maybe because I hadn’t worked my way into it over the years the way a mother would have, and maybe because I’d started out so terrified that the Child Welfare people would take her away. Which was why Karen had never slept here, not until last night.
First, though, we’d taken a first-class flight home from New Zealand that had featured welcome-aboard champagne, steaming-hot hand towels dispensed with tongs, china and glass tableware, after-dinner cognac, and fold-flat beds. When we’d landed, we’d been met by Charles with the Mercedes, driven into Manhattan, and deposited into the world of elegance that was Hemi’s penthouse apartment in the historic building on Central Park West.
In other words, we’d taken another step through the looking glass, and I was contemplating closing the door behind us, looking down the barrel of forever.
Now, Karen reached across the top of the sarcophagus for another piece of toast, grabbed her knife to scoop more ultra-gourmet strawberry jam, presumably made from special strawberries not available to just anybody, and said, “If we move, what do I do about getting to school in September?”
Hemi said, “You change schools, or Charles drives you. And use the spoon for the jam, please.”
Karen said, “Huh?” just as I said, “Wait.”
Hemi gestured to the jar. “The spoon. So it’s clean. Put the jam onto your plate, and then onto your toast.”
“Oh.” Karen pulled her knife out of the jar and picked up the tiny spoon resting on the plate holding the jam jar. The surface of the sarcophagus was apparently a No-Jar Zone. “That’s kind of inefficient.”
“No,” Hemi said, “it’s hygienic.”
“I wasn’t eating off my knife,” Karen said.
I said, “
Karen. It’s Hemi’s apartment. And he’s right.” He probably thought I hadn’t taught her table manners, but the fact was, we did tend to be a little cavalier about how we scooped out our toast toppings, and our house-brand jam jars had a disgraceful tendency to sit bare-naked on the kitchen table. We used canned whipped cream, too, and had been known to get the giggles and squirt it directly into our mouths after Thanksgiving dinner. We were all kinds of low-rent.
“No,” Hemi said, “it’s our apartment.”
Not so much, I thought but didn’t say. The last thing I wanted to do was to throw anything back in his face. It was probably just that this apartment was the biggest I’d ever seen, and “homey” it was not. The distance from my place to Hemi’s may have been only fifteen miles, but it might as well have been measured in light years.
The kitchen itself was impressive enough, all black marble and stainless steel, massive, forbidding German appliances, and pot racks hung with gleaming copper-bottomed pans. Not to mention the sarcophagus. Then there were the two major bedrooms, each with its own luxuriously equipped bath, a thoroughly fitted-out home gym complete with an impressive set of weights that explained the size of Hemi’s muscles, his office, another smaller bedroom, and a separate little suite off the kitchen. And, of course, that foyer, which was the size of Karen’s and my living room—and a whole lot better furnished.
Fractured (Not Quite a Billionaire #2) Page 13