The Scenic Route (23 page)

Austin sniffed as he shook his head. Maybe this guy wasn't so bad at his job after all.

Austin pulled several strands of hair out of the open tin box, then held the box toward his mother so she could do the same.

“I'm not sure if Jews are supposed to do this kind of thing,” Penelope said.

“It's not her ashes, Mom.”

“I know,” she said, but she seemed doubtful.

Austin wasn't doubtful. It was only a gesture, and one of which he was sure Mandy would have approved. He watched two kayakers paddling along the shoreline as they made slow and steady headway toward Lake St. Clair. It wasn't the Pacific, but it would do. Austin released the strands from his fingers, letting the bright red filaments twirl and tumble in the breeze as they sailed over the river below. Penelope let go of her strands as well, and somewhere off in the distance, beyond where Austin's eyes could see, they touched water.

“I'm sorry,” he said to Penelope.

They were both still looking out toward the liquid horizon. “If I didn't think it was a good idea to do this, I wouldn't have gone along with it,” she said.

That wasn't what he was apologizing for. “I'm sorry about what I said to you at the hospital.” It had been weighing on him ever since, but with the funeral and the shiva, there never seemed to be the right moment to say something.

Penelope blotted the corners of her eyes with her Kleenex. “If we start apologizing to each other for things like that, I'll be apologizing to you till the day I die.”

“So you forgive me?” He could feel his throat tightening.

“Oh, Austin . . .” She opened her arms, and he stumbled into them, allowing her to hold him to her the way she did when he was six or seven. She seemed so much smaller than he remembered, and it made him sad. He wanted to go back to when he was six. He wanted to go back and start everything over. But all he could do was cry, sobbing onto his mother's shoulder as she rocked him back and forth and told him everything was going to be okay.

“People keep saying ‘I'm sorry for your loss,'” Austin said, wiping at his eyes. “But I didn't lose my sister. I didn't misplace her at the mall. She was taken from me. So much has been taken from me.”

“What do you feel has been taken from you?” Dr. Obatola asked in a kind voice.

“Everything,” Austin said, knowing it sounded grandiose and not caring. “My father. My sister. My career.”

He was about to say “my love.” But Dallas wasn't really his love, much as he cared for her and much as he adored Coal. It was Naomi he ached for. And Naomi wouldn't even answer his texts anymore. Not that he could blame her. Love hadn't been taken from him.

It had been lost.

N
aomi had lost her GPS signal.

She was looking for Sherlock Court. And she thought she had found it, but it turned out she was on Sherlock Road, not Sherlock Court, and since every road around seemed to be a one-way street, the next thing she knew she was on Moody Road. For the third time. And she was definitely getting “moody.”

For some reason the GPS on her Prius had ceased functioning. Assuming she was pressing the right buttons, which was doubtful. Driving a Prius was like driving a computer, and she had never been very good with electronic equipment, which was ironic for someone who now owned a tech company. But the digital display said she was getting seventy-five miles to the gallon, so she was emitting minimal greenhouse gases while driving in circles. She otherwise liked the Prius. Well, she liked what it looked like and that she was saving the planet. But she hadn't driven regularly since she'd lived in Miami, and she had come to prefer letting a public transit worker navigate where she was going. Or a taxi driver when she was running late and felt like a “splurge.”

Thanks to Splurge.com, she was able to splurge a lot these days. It
had been less than six months since the official launch, and Amazon had already offered to buy them out. On the one hand, it seemed silly for Amazon to buy a company that in many ways did the same thing Amazon did but on a much smaller scale. On the other hand, Naomi felt that what Splurge really offered, more than the ease of its software interface, was the strength of its human interface. Human beings went to each of the locations and hand-selected local quality products. It was an online company that was very much about the offline experience, and Naomi was rather proud of that.

Yes, proud—and happy to accept Amazon's offer. Steffi, however, wanted to hold out for an even bigger payday, and it was her baby. But Naomi thought there was more than enough money on the table. How many times over does someone need to be a multimillionaire? Stupid question to ask while driving around Los Altos Hills, where you could easily spend a million dollars on a generic colonial house that would go for a few hundred thousand in Miami (and less in the Midwest).

But Dov wasn't going for a generic colonial. He wanted to stand out among the Silicon Valley arrivistes in a way that reflected what he had accomplished at a young age and, more important, what his plans were for the future. She didn't technically remember agreeing to move in with Dov, let alone buy a house together in Northern California, but it had all happened very fast. And her life in New York had sort of collapsed in on itself.

What should have been one of the best nights of her life had turned out to be one of the worst. She had spent the launch party searching for Austin, whom she'd never found. She'd come to the conclusion that the text she received from him was most likely intended for someone else. Because he never texted again. Or at least not before midnight, because that was the last time Naomi could remember seeing her phone. They tell you all the great things about backing up in the cloud. But what they leave out is that what can be put in the
cloud can be taken out of the cloud. Whoever stole her phone deleted all the data from the cloud. So in a very interconnected world, Naomi was no longer connected to anyone. No e-mail addresses or snail mail addresses. No birthdays or business contacts. She didn't even have her brother's phone number memorized. She wondered if five-year-old children today still memorized their home phone numbers or if they all carried cell phones. Because Naomi was a lot more than five, and she had just taken for granted that she would always have all her contact information available at the push of a button. But now everything was lost. And she had no idea where to find it.

And that was aside from the not so minor detail that the thief had also opened up several credit card accounts in her name, thanks to all that useful data on the phone. So, yes, when Dov said he wanted to move to Silicon Valley to be closer to some of his clients, it was tempting to use his invitation to join him as an excuse to run away from the mess of credit reports and police reports that her life had become. And winter in Northern California beat winter in New York by a long shot.

On her fourth try, she found the turnoff for Sherlock Court. The address Dov had given her naturally had a private gate. She buzzed, and the gate opened, revealing a private road that seemed to wind around the hilly landscape for a mile before depositing her in front of a gargantuan three-story chateau on a promontory overlooking acres of forest. Dov was waiting for her by the six-car garage. Standing beside him was a busty twentysomething with spectacular legs and unnaturally blond hair. Her looks and attire seemed to scream out “real estate agent” or “porn star.” Naturally, she was drooling over Dov. That was what Naomi couldn't figure out. Dov could have pretty much any woman he wanted, and he wanted her. With Carlos, she felt like she was always trying to prove that she was good enough. But Dov was the one constantly trying to prove he was good enough for her.

“What do you think?” he said after kissing her. She chastised herself for taking pleasure in the real estate agent's envious stare. “It's like living in fucking Sherlock Forest, right?”

“It's Sherwood Forest, Dov, and the house is French.” She hated raining on his parade. But to her, it was just an admittedly pretty and very large McMansion, a rococo Disneyfied version that did sort of look like it belonged in a Robin Hood movie, despite the clearly Gallic-style turrets.

“It has seventy-five hundred square feet, five bedrooms, and eight baths,” said Heidi, who introduced herself via business card before taking them on a tour.

“Wow,” Dov said.

“Dov, what do we need five bedrooms for?” Naomi asked as they climbed the sweeping staircase.

“You never know,” he said with a wink.

“There's also a fitness room, twenty-seat screening room, wine cellar, and safe room,” Heidi said while showing them a colossal dressing room with a bay window. Naomi liked the sound of a safe room. Though she wasn't sure if “safe” meant it was a secure location or a receptacle for storing cash between merger negotiations. In Silicon Valley, anything was possible.

“How much are they asking?” Dov asked once they reached the terra-cotta brick deck and cerulean pool.

“Seven million,” Heidi said, “and I think they'd accept seven point five.”

Welcome to the upside-down rules of Silicon Valley real estate, where the asking price is the bottom of the bidding. “Dov, that's a lot of money,” Naomi said.

“Not for this kind of house on this kind of lot. It's actually a bit of a steal.” Naomi wasn't sure she wanted to live in a world where seven
and a half million dollars for a house was a steal. But she supposed the bigger issue was that she wasn't sure she wanted to live in a house with Dov.

“You don't like it,” he said, sensing her discomfort. For a self-confident Israeli, he was incredibly intuitive and sensitive.

“It's beautiful,” she said.

“What are you really thinking?”

“I'm thinking you're incredibly intuitive.”

“And sexy,” he said, kissing her again. This time slower and gentler. This was nice, standing in front of a glittering pool on a sunny hilltop with a man who was, indeed, sexy and devoted to making her happy.

Her phone rang. Which was odd. Because almost no one had her new number. It was Noah.

“Mom has gone off the deep end,” Noah said without saying hello.

“What has she done?” Naomi said, walking back and forth to find a spot with better reception.

“She served Dad with divorce papers.”

“What? Why? I thought she was spending more time in California.”

“She was. That's how she found out he was sleeping with one of her friends.”

“Well, wasn't the point for them both to be ‘free'?”

“Not that free,” Noah said. “Turns out Mom thinks what's good for the goose is most definitely not good for the gander. Especially when the goose's dating life is dead in the water.”

“What do you expect me to do about it?”

“I expect you to talk her out of it.”

“When have I ever been able to talk her out of anything?”

“Well, I have a wedding to plan,” Noah huffed. As if she could
forget. Noah and Godwin had set their date as soon as New York legalized same-sex marriage. “I'm not sitting them separately and having an odd number of seats at two tables. I'm not doing it.”

He also wasn't inviting cousins (too many). Inviting children (tacky). Having a cake (who eats carbs?). There was actually quite a long list of things Noah wasn't doing. And at the moment he wasn't helping.

“Did you ask Dad to talk to her?”

“He said that he spent thirty-five years giving her what she wants, and if she wants a divorce she can have that too.”

Naomi's head was spinning. “When did you find out about this?”

“Just now. Aunt Leah served Dad with the summons. I've always suspected she didn't like him.”

“What did you say to her?”

“To Aunt Leah?”

“To Mom!”

“I told her she was ruining my wedding. What do you think I said to her?”

“Naomi, if we want the house, we're going to have to put a bid down,” Dov said, walking over to her. Then, noticing the stressed look on her face, he asked, “Is something wrong?”

She didn't want to buy a house. She didn't want to drive a car. She didn't want to keep her business. But most of all, she didn't want to turn into her parents.

“I'm just thinking how lucky I am to have found you.”