It was her.
The beautiful blond woman from the picture that David kept in a lavish frame in his living room, a picture that Natalia had never been meant to see. The woman had longer hair and was more tanned than she’d been in the picture, but it was definitely she. She radiated joy and health as she hurried toward David on her long, attractive legs in her expensive pumps.
The woman flung her arms around David and burrowed into his embrace. The gesture was intimate, and David’s arm around her was protective and loving. Natalia stared at them, forced herself to endure the pain, because it hurt. It didn’t matter that she hated David. This was awful to see, and yet she couldn’t look away.
“I know you asked me to stay at the café,” the woman said. She tossed her head in the direction of a café a little ways away and smiled apologetically. Her voice was gentle, and she had an accent that Natalia couldn’t quite place. Her Swedish was perfect, but something in the rhythm and pronunciation suggested some other country.
The woman looked at Natalia, hesitant but not worried, as if she were secure in her role in his life. And Natalia saw what she wanted to see least of all: the love between these two people. It would have been obvious even to people who weren’t looking particularly carefully, and Natalia was looking oh so very carefully. She saw a warmth in David that she hadn’t seen before, a softness in his face and movements, that was like a fist in the gut.
The blond woman put her hand on David’s cheek. She had long fingers with rings that sparkled the way only real stones do, and she said softly, “I missed you.” Her voice was gently reproachful when she added, “You were gone so long.”
She turned to Natalia, still with David’s arm around her shoulders. She leaned a little against his chest, as if to show whom he belonged to, whom she belonged to. Her mouth formed a smile, but her eyes sent an unmistakable message to Natalia about ownership and obvious belonging.
“This is Natalia,” David said. His voice was stiff and uncomfortable. “And this is Carolina.”
“Hi,” Carolina said, but she didn’t hold out her hand, and Natalia wasn’t going to do it either, just mumbled something as she got up off the bench.
The sun burned on her back. It was hot, too hot. A bead of sweat ran down her back, and she felt that she would die if she didn’t get something to drink now, at once. She clutched her purse tightly and looked at them one last time before walking away. Blindly. Without looking at David. She didn’t say good-bye, couldn’t think of anything she could have said to the couple, who excluded her as if she were no one. She hoped that she was out of earshot when the first sobs began.
David followed Natalia with his eyes. He watched her for far too long, couldn’t stop. Her back was straight, and she looked composed, but he’d seen how shocked she’d been when Carolina showed up.
He inhaled, tried to calm himself down. She’d said she was slumming it with him, that she was tired of it, and it had felt as if the ground began to sway. And then Carolina had unexpectedly turned up. That was unlike Caro. He’d asked her to stay at the café, and she usually did what he wanted without question, but he really couldn’t be angry that she’d turned up. It was just so damned complicated, all of it.
Carolina touched his forearm. “Is everything alright?” she asked.
David nodded.
“Is that her?” she asked quietly.
David stiffened. Sometimes Carolina could be very perceptive. “What do you mean?”
But he hadn’t succeeded in sounding blasé. And Carolina both knew him and didn’t know him. She knew everything and nothing. He pulled her into a hug again.
Carolina burrowed her nose into his chest. “I’m not used to so many people,” she murmured. “Can we go home?”
He nodded, relieved that she seemed to have dropped the subject. “Of course.”
“And David?” She glanced up. Her face was serious, and he knew right away that she wasn’t going to drop this. “We need to talk,” she said.
42
Peter had practically been living at Investum for the last few days. His father was also at the office from early in the morning until late at night. As if it mattered whether they were here, Peter thought, burying his face in his hands.
He had a hard time seeing how this coup-like heist was going to end in anything other than complete disaster. But his father was firmly determined to fight, which of course meant that Peter was there too. It was easier to go with the flow than to stir up a countercurrent. And besides, the truth was that if they lost Investum, then Peter’s future would be seriously jeopardized. His buddies, his colleagues—everyone he knew, including Louise—would see him as the worst kind of loser.
He rubbed his eyes and looked up from his desk as his father walked in, looking gloomy.
“You have to look at these,” Gustaf said, holding up a brown folder. He opened the folder and started spreading large photographs out on the table.
“Are those from the private investigator?” Peter had hired the PI firm that was tailing David Hammar and reporting back. Nothing odd about that, they did it all the time, kept tabs on competitors or other threats. Mostly it was a waste of money, but sometimes . . .
Peter studied the pictures.
He didn’t really get it. Why was David talking to Natalia? He looked more closely. That looked like Berzelii Park. Based on the date in the lower corner, the pictures were from today.
“Do they know each other?” he asked, still not able to make sense of how close his sister and David seemed to be standing to each other. “Outside of work, I mean?”
“They know each other,” Gustaf said tersely. Something about his father’s voice made Peter feel as if something was being kept from him, but then he saw something that made him completely forget David and Natalia, a face from the past, and it took his breath away, literally.
It couldn’t be true.
Peter stared. It was her, for real. Her.
Carolina.
She was older in the pictures, not a young girl anymore, but a sophisticated grown woman. And Peter would have recognized her anywhere. He could still picture her features at night, when he woke from a sweaty dream or stared into space when he was daydreaming. He stared at the photos spread out on the table. They looked like they were from a detective movie, grainy enlargements, close-ups.
Carolina.
Oh my God.
“She’s alive,” he whispered. His voice wanted to break. He looked at his father in a panic. “You said she died, but she’s alive.”
43
Friday, July 25
David looked tiredly at his computer screen. He’d been doing that for half an hour now. Numbers and tables glowed fixedly back. He kept thinking back to the meeting in the park yesterday.
Going up to Natalia had been stupid. He realized that fully, especially now, after the fact. But somehow he was unable to make smart decisions when it came to her.
He closed his computer and stood up.
That look in Natalia’s eyes when she greeted Caro ...
He hadn’t wanted Natalia to meet Carolina that way. Hadn’t wanted them to meet at all, of course. And he knew it would be lunacy to contact Natalia now. But he needed for her to understand. Didn’t want her to hate him more than necessary. If you could even differentiate hate that way, into necessary and less necessary strata.
He walked over to the window, stuffed his hands in his pockets, and returned to dwelling on the thoughts that wouldn’t leave him. He didn’t want her to hate him. And the thing was that he could explain, about Carolina anyway.
All that other stuff had been irretrievably set in motion. But Natalia deserved an explanation. From him.
David picked up his phone, found her number, and called, before his thinking brain had a chance to point out that what he was doing was rationalizing, nothing more.
It kept ringing. Was she busy? Did she see it was him and didn’t want to answer? When he got her voice mail, he hung up.
&nbs
p; He looked out the window again, saw heat waves in the air. He should take this as a sign to let go of her for good.
Screw signs. He called again, waited impatiently.
She answered on the third ring.
“Hello?”
She sounded dismissive, but David was relieved that she was talking at all.
“Hi, thanks for taking my call,” he said.
Long silence. “David,” she said and then the same silence again. Finally, “What can I help you with?”
“I’d like to see you,” he said. “To explain.”
“You don’t need to explain anything,” she said.
“I get that you don’t trust me.”
“No.”
He looked at the time. It was four o’clock. “Are you still at work?” he asked. She didn’t say anything, and David picked up something, he wasn’t sure what, a hesitation of some sort that he didn’t understand.
Then she said, “No.”
“Can we see each other?” He couldn’t talk about this on the phone. At least that’s what he told himself. The truth was that he wanted to see her.
“I’m at the National Museum,” she said finally. She was still being very terse. But she hadn’t said no.
And he knew right away what she was doing there.
“At the icon exhibit?” he said, and he could picture her among all those exquisite Russian icons.
“Yes.”
David thought. He was quite sure he was under some kind of surveillance. He’d seen a car and a camera, and he didn’t want them to be seen together. But a Friday afternoon in the middle of the summer? The likelihood that someone they knew would see them at a small Russian exhibit was minimal.
“Can you wait for fifteen minutes? I’m on my way,” he said.
“Okay,” she said and hung up before he had a chance to say any more.
David opened the door and yelled, “Jesper, can you come in here?”
The boy came in, smiling, with a notepad in his hand.
“Listen carefully now. No, don’t take any notes. I need your help. Take my car,” David began, trying not to feel like he was in a spy movie. But the more careful he was, the better for Natalia. “Take my car and drive away.” He pulled out his car keys and tossed them to Jesper, who eagerly caught the key ring.
“The Bentley?” Jesper asked.
“Do you have a suit you can wear?” David asked, looking at the boy’s linen pants and black T-shirt.
Jesper nodded. “You want someone to think I’m you, huh?” He gave a big smile, as if it wasn’t the least bit strange to pretend to be his boss to trick anyone who might be tailing him. And then he lit up even more. “I could take that,” Jesper said, pointing to the suit David had had made at Savile Row that spring. “Then you can take my T-shirt. And I’ll take your Ray-Bans, of course.”
David shook his head. “You can take the suit, but I draw the line at my glasses.” He looked at Jesper’s lanky body and thought it probably wouldn’t work. “Give me your shirt,” he said, resigned. There must be a pair of pants around here somewhere.
Natalia stood in front of the glass protecting an ancient icon, staring at it blankly.
She knew very well that of all the stupid things she could do, agreeing to meet David took the cake. But nothing in her life was going the way it should, so she’d answered when he called a second time, and then she’d said yes to meeting even though her brain had screamed no.
Now her heart was ticking like a time bomb as she tried to concentrate on the Russian masterpieces. She wandered between display cases—some were made of bulletproof glass and contained priceless relics—and reminded herself that this wasn’t a date. David belonged to another woman, and he’d lied to her, in more ways than one. Danish, it occurred to her suddenly. The woman had a Danish accent.
She put on some lip gloss, stuffed it back down in her purse and closed it. She moved along, knowing that she looked cool and elegant and feeling satisfied with that.
As long as she didn’t puke, everything would probably go fine.
She heard a quiet sound, looked up, and saw David.
Broad-shouldered and dressed in black, he was standing in the doorway, almost filled it. Natalia held her breath and felt the hair on her arms stand up. The museum was air-conditioned, and there were high ceilings, but it felt as if all the air had suddenly gone out of the room.
David came over to her with long, silent strides and stopped without touching her.
“Thanks for waiting,” he said quietly.
“I love icons,” she said, grateful that her voice sounded normal despite the roaring in her head. “I could stay here forever.”
She began to walk slowly to the next display case, unable to bear the tension in the air between them.
Her whole life she’d been drilled on manners and politeness: sit still, stand up straight, say “thank you very much,” but it was as if that were all gone in a flash. Her brain was empty, devoid of small talk and conversational graces. She hadn’t counted on it hurting so much to see him again. Her pulse sped up, and even though they weren’t touching each other, hardly even looking at each other, it was as if he completely flooded her senses, filled everything, took all the room and air there was.
She stopped in front of a display case. He stopped too. His arm, bare in the short-sleeved T-shirt, brushed against hers. Natalia almost jumped. It was inconceivable that she could have such conflicting emotions. She should detest him, and she did, but at the same time: the memories of what they’d done together, how they’d laughed and made love until they were sweaty, how intimate their conversations had been, how close they’d come to each other. David had seen her like no one else. Or had that just been a ruse? Could a person be so totally mistaken? Several weeks ago, David Hammar had been an unimportant extra on the periphery of her existence. Now he felt like the person her entire being revolved around.
It was practically unbearable.
David nodded at the icon lying on velvet in the display case. “That’s beautiful,” he said softly.
It was one of the smaller icons in the exhibit, and it was the one Natalia liked best in the whole room.
This was her second visit to the exhibit. She’d come here today for a little serenity. The Russian artwork held a strange power over her, a reminder of her heredity, one that no one else in the family was particularly interested in.
She hadn’t heard from either her mother or her father—Gustaf, since she’d fled their mansion in Djursholm. She’d called Gustaf, but he hadn’t answered. The same thing with her mother. The phone rang forever and eventually went to an impersonal voice-mail system. Peter certainly took her calls, but he sounded frayed and irritated and hardly listened to her suggestions about how they should mobilize against the hostile takeover. Alexander hadn’t answered either. Maybe the whole family was pushing her out of their collective conscience?
Tears threatened to obscure her view. She didn’t even know if her brothers knew. No one said anything.
“It’s on loan from the Hermitage,” she said quickly, looking at the golden icon. She’d compartmentalized everything. Unemployment into one box. Illegitimate birth into another. Pregnancy . . . She pushed that totally aside, forced herself to pay attention to the moment. She would just have to deal with one cataclysmic, life-altering catastrophe at a time. The Madonna’s face was mild. Her halo was made of gemstones and glowed in rich jewel tones. For all its petiteness, the icon made an unbelievably strong impression, as if all the power in the room was centered there upon the velvet inside this bulletproof glass display case. According to the card next to it, its value was estimated as “priceless.”
“She looks like you,” David said, studying the serious Madonna. “Strong, unwavering.”
“Thanks,” Natalia said. “I think.”
She wasn’t sure “unwavering” was exactly her favorite compliment. But she really wanted to be seen as strong, especially now when she was so very, very frail.
“Hey, you,” he said and his voice was raw with emotion. He sounded completely honest. That was highly dangerous. “About what happened yesterday.”
Panic welled up in Natalia.
“You don’t need to say anything,” she said quickly. She swallowed and swallowed. Don’t start crying, don’t ask a bunch of questions, just get through this, she instructed herself.
But her jealousy was vicious. She would never again look down on people who were jealous. From now on, she would understand the despair and hopelessness that feeling caused. She clung to the last shards of her dignity. Don’t beg, don’t plead. Be unwavering now, Natalia.
“Carolina is my sister,” he said, looking her right in the eye. The light in the museum was muted, but he looked like he was being honest. He didn’t blink.
This was so bewildering that at first Natalia didn’t really understand. She was forced to look away, staring blankly into space. She couldn’t think when David looked at her that way. As if he were baring his soul to her.
“You said you don’t have any family,” Natalia pointed out, forcing herself to look at his face again, to steel herself and dissect what he said, not allow herself to be tricked by her own unreliable emotions. Emotions weren’t truth. Emotions lied, often. “You said your sister was dead.” Her suspicion grew, because David must be lying.
“I lied before, but I’m not lying now,” he said in that tone that always made it feel as if he was reading her mind. “Carolina is my little sister.”
Natalia put a hand on the glass display case even though there was a sign that said you shouldn’t touch anything. She hoped she hadn’t just set off some alarm. “Are you messing with me?”
“No one knows. I’ve never told anyone, not even Michel. You’re the first person to know. I wanted to tell you yesterday, but it’s not just my secret. We’ve kept it hidden since we were teenagers.” He shook his head. “I can hardly believe I’m telling you now.”
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