Prodigal Son

by Danielle Steel

  Peter folded the bedding neatly and put it back in the closet. Seeing the house again made him realize that there was no point keeping it. He was never coming back here. It was time to sell it. He should have done it years before.

  He drove back to West Brookfield, and dropped the envelope with the key back into the realtor’s mail slot. It had been a trip back in history for him, but it was one he knew he didn’t need to make again. He put a note in the envelope telling the realtor he was putting the house on the market and to call him and suggest a price. He doubted that the house was worth much, although it had a small beach and was well located. He remembered that his parents had loved it, and had bought it for their boys. And now Peter was selling and severing his last tie with his early life. It was time. He had no idea why he hadn’t done it before this.

  It took him four hours to drive back to New York, and he arrived at the hotel where he was staying, tired and happy to be in the city. He called Ben and Ryan as soon as he got to his room, and told them he would be out in a few days. Ben was vague about it, and Ryan sounded relieved. It had been five weeks since Peter had seen Alana and the kids. He called her regularly too, but she sounded distant on the phone. He was still hoping that the tension between them would calm down again. The essential thing to Peter now was saving his relationship with Alana, if it was still possible, and being with her and their boys. Peter was willing to sacrifice almost anything for that, within reason, and without selling his soul to her father.

  He thought about it again on the plane to L.A. two days later. And he had no idea what he would do with himself in L.A. He had no desire to be idle, or a lackey to her father, or to collect a check for sitting in an office, doing nothing, between massages and tennis games. All Peter wanted was to go back to work, but there were scores of others like him who were out of work at the moment, and no one was ready to hire until the economy stabilized again, and it hadn’t, and maybe wouldn’t for several years. It was grim to think about, and he had no idea what to do in the meantime. He had some money in the bank after selling the apartment, but it wouldn’t last forever, not the way Alana liked to live. And they had the monthly rental money from the house in the Hamptons. But it was slim pickings compared to what they’d been used to. She had made an easy lateral move when she moved to her father’s in L.A., and Gary was delighted to pick up all their bills, which Peter hated. He wanted to support his own wife and kids.

  He had let Alana know when he was coming, and her father’s car and driver picked him up at the airport. He was pleasant to Peter and put his suitcase in the trunk of the Rolls, and they headed toward Bel Air. The weather was warm and balmy, and it was a far cry from the freezing cold in New York when he left. It felt like spring in L.A. They wouldn’t have weather like that in New York until May or June.

  Alana was out when he got to the house—the maid told him she was at a luncheon at the Beverly Hills Hotel—and the boys were still in school. They got home before she did, and both boys threw their arms around his neck as he hugged them, and they shouted in excitement and delight. Ben looked as though he had grown a foot since his father had seen him, and Ryan looked suddenly more mature. Not seeing them for five weeks made him more aware of changes than usual. And he thought Ryan looked very serious once the excitement over his arrival abated.

  “Everything okay?” Peter asked him as they headed to the kitchen for a snack. Ryan nodded with a smile.

  “Yeah, it’s fine.”

  “I thought maybe we could get some skiing in during your break,” Peter suggested as they both made sandwiches. Ben had gone to his room to watch TV.

  “Grampa is taking us to Aspen,” Ryan said noncommittally, and Peter noticed that he didn’t look thrilled about it. And Peter would feel like a freeloader going along with them on his father-in-law’s tab.

  “That sounds like fun,” Peter said as they sat down at the table.

  “Yeah, I guess,” Ryan said, taking a bite out of his sandwich, as his mother walked into the kitchen and saw her husband for the first time in five weeks. She looked considerably less excited about it than the boys. She kissed Peter on the cheek, and she looked nervous when he put his arms around her and kissed her on the mouth. She was quick to move away, and asked Ryan how school had been that day.

  “It was fine. My chemistry teacher is a jerk,” he said grumpily as he finished his sandwich and put the plate in the sink. Peter was watching him and thought he looked unhappy, and a minute later Ryan walked out of the kitchen, saying he had some homework to do.

  “I missed you,” Peter said, smiling at Alana. He put his own plate in the sink and followed Alana out of the kitchen, as she chatted about lunch. Her circle of friends seemed to have widened since he left. She was hanging out with an assortment of celebrities and Hollywood wives. She looked as beautiful as ever in a tight white silk dress and high heels. She was looking very L.A. these days, without a trace of New York. “Did your clothes get here?” he asked her, and she nodded.

  “I put it all away. I can’t wear that stuff here. I put your things in the closet too.”

  They were in their bedroom by then, and Peter looked at her as though seeing her for the first time. He had a sudden, overwhelming desire to make love to her. She looked so beautiful, he had missed her, and it would be so comforting to be in bed with her again. And then he saw how strangely she was looking at him from across the room, and he remembered how distant they had felt from each other when he last saw her. And she’d been cool on the phone, or out.

  “Something wrong?” he asked, picking up on an odd new vibe, as though she had turned into someone else while he was gone.

  She looked at him endlessly from across the room and nodded, and then she said the words he never thought he’d hear from her and nearly stopped his heart. “I want a divorce,” she said in barely more than a whisper. Her eyes apologized to him, but her mouth was set in a firm line.

  “Are you serious?” was the only thing he could think of to say to her. “Why?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, as tears filled her eyes. She was still standing and looking at him from across the room. “This just doesn’t feel right anymore. It’s all over, your job, our life in New York, us. We can’t go back. I don’t want to live there anymore, you don’t want to live here. I think too much has happened. We’ve grown apart.” Peter was silent for a moment as he sat down in a chair. His head was reeling, and he felt sick. He had just been trying to adjust to the idea of living in Los Angeles with her, and now she wanted out. His next question crossed his lips before it even went through his mind.

  “Is there someone else?” He didn’t even want to know, but he had asked. It was the only explanation he could think of for her asking him for a divorce. And he still wanted her, and the life they had shared for fifteen years.

  “No,” she said cautiously, but she hesitated, and he heard it in her voice. “But I’d like to be free to lead my own life here. I think we both need to move on.”

  “Just like that? Why? Because I lost all our money? When the market settles down again, I can make it all back. I made it before.”

  “It’s not about the money,” she said unconvincingly. “We don’t want the same things. You hate my life out here. You said it yourself.”

  “I don’t want to live here forever, but I could do it for a year or two. And maybe I could get a job out here, a real one, not working for your father. There are investment firms out here too. Shit, we have two kids. We love each other. You don’t just dump that in five minutes, Alana.” But she had, and he could see it. She was already a million miles away. He had heard it in her voice when he had called her, but he thought things might be better when they were together again. He could see that he’d been wrong. And then he thought of something that made a chill run down his spine. “Do the boys know?” Alana looked embarrassed and shook her head. “Ryan looks unhappy. I thought maybe it was about school.”

  “I talked to my dad about it, maybe he overhe
ard something, but I don’t think so.”

  “I think he knows, or he suspects it,” Peter said, looking upset.

  “Well, they’ll have to know eventually, so it might as well be now. I went to see a lawyer last week. It’s pretty simple if we do it on friendly terms.” She was expecting a lot of him, and for an instant he felt one of his old rages boiling up in him, but he resisted it immediately, and never lost control. Those days were gone. He wasn’t a frightened, angry kid anymore. He was a man. Whose wife wanted a divorce. It had happened to a million others before him, many millions, but he had never thought it would happen to him. Their life had been so perfect and so sure, but nothing was anymore. Their marriage was over, and he felt as though his life was too.

  “At least the financial side will be simple,” he said cynically. “There’s almost nothing left. Are you planning to live with your father, or do you want your own place?” He hoped she didn’t, it would leave very little for him.

  “I want to stay here,” she reassured him, “but I still need something, and money for the boys.” She had thought it all out and discussed it with her lawyer. Peter could tell it was a fait accompli. He’d been fired. Again. The same sense of failure he’d had before nearly drowned him as he listened to her and tried not to react.

  “Of course,” Peter said coldly, and stared at her from across the room. “Are you willing to discuss this, or try counseling? We could give it another shot.” Other than losing most of their money in the financial crisis, he had done nothing wrong. He had been a model husband until then, but winding up penniless was not in Alana’s plans. She shook her head in answer to his question. She had made up her mind. It was written all over her, and he seriously wondered now if she was involved with someone else. He didn’t have the guts to ask again, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to know. “When do you want to tell the boys?”

  “I don’t know, before you go back to New York. You can enjoy them for a few days first. We’re going to Aspen in a week anyway. I guess you’ll want to go back to New York then.” And then she looked panicked for an instant. “Or do you think you’ll stay out here?” Having made the decision, she wanted a clean break.

  “I don’t know,” Peter said, thinking about it. “I’d been thinking about staying out here with you. But there’s no point in that now. At least here I’d be close to the boys, but I have nothing to do here, and even less if I’m not with you. I don’t want to sit around in an apartment, waiting to see them. They have their own lives too. I’d rather fly out to see them, or have them come to New York for a chunk of time. If I’m not with you, Alana, I really have no life out here.” She nodded and agreed. She didn’t want him to stay.

  She walked out of the room then and disappeared for a while. The four of them had dinner together that night, and Peter did his best to keep the conversation lively and entertain the boys. His heart was breaking while he did it, and it was the hardest thing he’d ever done. He didn’t speak to Alana again until they went to bed that night. He had thought about staying in a guest room, but that would have said everything to the boys, and Alana agreed. So they were sharing a bedroom and a bed, and he was stunned by how lonely he could feel lying right next to her. Neither of them said a word once the lights were out, and it took him hours to fall asleep.

  He got up at six o’clock the next morning and went to use the gym in the main house. He ran into his father-in-law as he walked in too, and Gary greeted him with a friendly expression.

  “Sorry, Peter.” He went right to the point, as he stood on the treadmill and looked at his about-to-be ex-son-in-law. “I think it’s for the best.”

  “For who? I don’t,” Peter said honestly. “This is going to be hard for the boys, and for me, even if it’s what she wants.”

  “You’ll get back on your feet again. You’re a very smart guy. I’m not worried about you. But it would be hard on Alana sticking by while you go through all the crap you’ll have to, to get to the top again.”

  “I thought that was what ‘for better or worse’ was all about,” Peter said grimly.

  “Not in real life,” Gary said firmly. “She went through enough when she lost her mother at fifteen. I don’t want her ever going through hard times again. She’s not made for that. She deserves an easy life.”

  “Life isn’t always easy,” Peter said doggedly. “That’s what love is all about.”

  “You’ll want things easy for your kids one day too. I don’t want Alana to suffer while you put your life back together again. It could take years. It would be different if you were along for a free ride, but you’re not that kind of guy. You’d go crazy hanging around an office doing nothing. I respect that about you.”

  “But not enough to encourage your daughter to stay married to me.”

  “She’ll be happier out here, and so will your boys. You can come out and see them anytime you like. You’re welcome to stay here,” Gary said magnanimously as he upped the speed on the treadmill and adjusted it for a hill. He was in great shape for a man his age.

  “That’s not the same thing,” Peter said unhappily. “I want to live with my kids.” Not a continent away. And staying in L.A. was not the answer for him either, if he and Alana weren’t together anymore. It would have been a painful life for him, and an empty one.

  “Things don’t always work out the way we want. I lost my wife, and we had a great marriage. She was thirty-nine when she died. Only a year older than Alana is now. That isn’t fair either.” There was nothing Peter could say to that. Peter realized he had been crazy to think that he could ever interfere with the sacred pair. They were a team, and he and Alana no longer were. He had lost his membership to their secret club, or maybe he had never had it after all. But he was an outsider for sure now. He left the gym a few minutes later and went back to their room. Alana had already left, and the boys had just gone to school. He had nothing to do that day until he picked the boys up at school.

  It was a painful week, and they finally told the boys two days before he left. All four of them cried and Alana made it sound like it was a joint decision, which it wasn’t, but he didn’t want to make her look bad to their kids. He said he had to be in New York to find a job, and they could come to visit him anytime they wanted, and he promised to come out and see them once a month if he could, or every six weeks at most. It was the best he could do. Ryan just clung to him and cried.

  It was wrenching leaving them this time. Ryan took it harder than his younger brother, and Peter felt as though his heart had been torn out of his chest when they left, and he gulped down sobs. His plane was leaving two hours after the boys left for Aspen with Alana and her father, and Peter had tears streaming down his face in a cab on the way to the airport. And on the flight back to New York, he felt as though someone had died. He checked into the residential hotel again and tried to figure out what he was going to do. There were no jobs to be had at the moment, and there was no point being in New York, but he had nowhere else to go.

  He was sitting in his hotel room the next morning, when the realtor from West Brookfield called him about the house on the lake. He wanted to discuss the price with Peter, and come up with something realistic since the house had been uninhabited for years, needed work, and hadn’t been remodeled in fifty years. And as Peter listened to him, he realized what he was going to do. It was the only piece of property he owned right now that was available, since the house in the Hamptons was rented, which meant that living there would be free. It was about the only thing it had going for it. He could do some of the work on it himself, he had nothing else to do. And he could put it on the market when he was ready to move back to New York.

  “Never mind,” Peter said curtly, and the man on the other end was confused.

  “Does that sound too low to you?” Peter hadn’t even heard what he’d said.

  “I’m not ready to sell it yet. I think I’m going to stay there for a while.” The idea suddenly made perfect sense to him.

  “Now? It’
s colder than hell out there this time of year. There’s a bad wind that always comes off the lake. It’s freezing cold.”

  “It’s almost spring,” Peter said calmly. March was just around the corner, and he and his brother had been out there with their father plenty of times in the spring. It might even be good for Ben and Ryan to come and see him there. They could have as much fun as he and Michael had had, fishing and sailing in summer, and water-skiing on the lake. It would be something different and new for them, and a simple, wholesome country life they’d never had. He liked the idea. “Maybe I’ll put it on the market in the fall,” Peter said to placate the realtor. “I can start cleaning the place up.”

  “Well, let me know when you’re ready,” the realtor said, sounding disappointed. It was rare for him to get a lakefront property to sell, even if the house was old-fashioned and needed work.

  “I will,” Peter promised, and hung up. He called a few contacts that morning, and came up dry again. And by that afternoon, he was driving north toward Ware. It was a far cry from the life he had considered living with Alana in L.A., or the one they had until recently in New York. It had been almost five months since their life had fallen apart, and now everything had changed again. He missed his boys as he drove to Massachusetts, but he felt better than he had in a while. And he wondered if by going back there he would find a piece of himself that had been missing for a long time, and make peace with his past finally. It was worth a shot, and the only one he had right now.

  Chapter 6

  Peter spent the first week at the lake house throwing things away—old pillows, stained bedding, tattered towels, pots with broken handles, ancient utensils that could no longer be repaired. He had a small mountain in the backyard of objects that needed to be hauled away, and realized that he needed a truck to do it. And after that, he spent another week scrubbing everything down, until the windows and woodwork gleamed. The kitchen looked ancient, but it was sparkling clean. He bought cleaning supplies at the local market, and he had a long list of items he wanted to replace, most of what he’d thrown away. And doing the work felt good. He ate easy dinners he cooked on his mother’s old stove. He built a fire in the fireplace every night, which kept him warm. The wind off the lake was as icy as the realtor had said. But he slept well under some old blankets, and he called the boys in Aspen every night. He told them what he was doing and that he wanted them to come and stay with him.