Exile: a novel by Richard North Patterson Read Free Book Online Page B

smiled back at her, appreciating how comfortable he felt with her. Like Carole, he wanted children; it was easy to imagine her as a mother, one of the many ways in which he thought of her with confidence and warmth. If he sometimes watched Carole with the eyes of a partner rather than a lover, David knew that this was his way: between Hana and Carole no woman had truly touched his heart, and he had stopped believing that he would find a love that could wholly erase the past. He had loved without constraint only once, and it had brought him such misery that he was determined never to endure it again.
    “We are a pair,” David reaffirmed with a quick grin. “Our son will have his bar mitzvah, our daughter her bat mitzvah. And we’ll make them go to Hebrew school until they hate us both.”
    Accepting this concession with a look of satisfied amusement, Carole turned the key in the ignition. “I can hardly wait to tell Dad about Hebrew school. He’ll be thrilled.”
    They pulled out of the garage into the sunlight, David watching Carole’s hair ripple in the breeze of a cool summer day. So, Hana had said, a nice Jewish girl, and a rich one at that. Things often end up the way they’re supposed to, I think.
    Years before, David thought, she had tried to tell him.

7     

H ana looked around herself as if she had stepped through the rabbit hole.
    It had taken several long telephone calls before Hana had agreed to meet again, this time in the only place where no one could see them: his apartment. It was a warren off Harvard Square—a living room with a couch, coffee table, television, desk, and computer; a cramped kitchen with a table that seated two, a bedroom with a queen bed, a dresser, and the racing bike David used for exercise in the spring and fall. Dressed in blue jeans and a sweater, Hana stood in the middle of the living room, unsure of whether to stay or go.
    “It’s all right,” David said gently. “You’re safe with me. Or from me, if that worries you.”
    “It’s just that this is so strange. Being here.”
    “I’d gladly take you out to dinner. You know that.”
    “I can’t though. You know that .”
    David considered her. “Do I? I don’t know anything but what you’ve told me.”
    Hana smiled a little. “Were you Arab, you would know without my telling you.”
    “Were I Saeb, you mean.”
    A flicker of emotion—guilt, David thought—surfaced in the dark pool of her eyes, causing him to regret his last remark. “I can learn, Hana. Really.”
    “Why is that so important to you?”
    “I’m not sure yet. I only know that it is.”
    She gave him a look of cool appraisal. “Perhaps I’m something you can’t have,” she said at length. “And so you’ll want me until you do.”
    David shook his head. “Right now, all I want is to cook dinner. And all I need from you is your company.”
    She followed him to the kitchen. David had set the table—white dishes, two wineglasses, bright cloth napkins, a candle in a brass candlestick holder—and laid out the veal cutlets, soaking in a marinade of his own invention. As though for something to say, she inquired, “Did you cook at home? Your parents’ home, I mean.”
    “Not really. The housekeeper did, mostly. My mother’s passion is for English literature, not cooking.”
    “And you have brothers and sisters?”
    The question reminded David of how little they knew of each other, the gaps between his instinctive sense of her and the accretion of fact and detail through which people learned—or thought they learned—who another person was. “No,” he answered. “I seem to have exhausted their interest in playing life’s genetic lottery.” He nodded toward an open bottle of cabernet sauvignon. “I usually sip wine while I cook. But I’m guessing you don’t drink at all.”
    Hana hesitated. “I do, a little,” she told him. “When I’m not with Saeb, or girlfriends who might disapprove.”
    He poured some for her. “Then