by Bowes, K T
“I love ‘im heaps,” Phoenix’s sincerity was touching and Tama gulped.
“Well, let me get both of you breakfast and then I’ve got some things I need your bro’s help with.”
“K, nen.” Phoenix slid off Tama’s knees backwards with eagerness rooted in the word breakfast. She padded off to the kitchen, all bare feet and bulging night-nappy. Hana stroked Tama’s damp hair back from his head.
“Everything will be ok,” she promised with a kiss to his cheek.
Tama shook his head. “Try telling that to Lucy,” he sighed.
“Yeah, about that. She texted me. Apparently there’s been some huge mistake and she knows it wasn’t you at the nightclub. She’s been trying to contact you. That’s what I came in to say earlier when I saw the...”
“I know.” Tama ran his palm across his eyes. “I read her texts. I’ve been ignoring her calls too.”
“Maybe don’t make any decisions today,” Hana soothed. “It was her error in the first place, so it’s fine if you make her wait.”
Tama shook his head. “I don’t want to see her again. I need to put it... and her...and the other thing behind me.” He grimaced, possibly at some pornographic memory and Hana winced. Tama caught the fleeting expression and smirked. “You’ve led a very sheltered life, Ma.”
“Thank goodness!” she exclaimed. “I don’t think foursomes are really my style. Far too many pairs of eyes to hide my stretch marks from. I’ve only got two hands.”
Tama snorted, his familiar twinkle restored in the fathomless grey Du Rose eyes. “Do you think it’s possible to be forgiven for something...you really enjoyed?”
Hana frowned and pushed at the firm bicep under her hand. “Horrid boy! You can’t say sorry if you’re not. It’s false.”
“I’m sorry about the consequences,” Tama confessed. He smirked again and the lovable rogue was back. “But it was quite good fun...”
“La, la, la,” Hana put her fingers in her ears and stood up. “I don’t want to know.” She reached the door and then turned back. “But Tama, that kind of sex is quite disrespectful to women, sweetheart. Love isn’t meant to be like that. It’s what concerns me most about this. I know it’s probably what Kane encouraged, but it’s not right.”
Tama nodded slowly. “Yeah, it’s not my usual. To be honest, if anyone came off worse, it was me. They were vicious.” He rubbed at the site of one of the raised love bites and grimaced.
“Well just don’t end up like us,” Hana mused with sadness. “You don’t want to be happily married with a couple of nice kids and have some woman turn up at your door with a long-lost son or daughter.” Her eyes held a faraway look and Tama nodded.
“Message received, Ma.”
Chapter 49
Phoenix slurped milk from her cereal bowl like a piggie, putting it up to her face and spilling most of it down her pyjamas. “Phoe, no!” Hana snatched the bowl away before the rest of the liquid ended up in her lap.
“Tama dun it!” Phoenix Du Rose looked indignant and pointed an accusing finger at her cousin.
“I don’t make that kind of mess, woman! I’m way more skilled.”
“Don’t you dare!” Hana thumped the plate of toast on the table between the pair and confiscated his bowl. Phoenix’s eyes bugged with happiness. She waved her spoon in the air and pointed to a jar of Marmite.
“Mmmmmnnnn!”
Tama spread the disgusting treacle on the bread, licking his fingers afterwards. Hana clamped a hand over her mouth and fought a rising sickness. “I thought you’d be over that by now,” the young man said, looking at her with curiosity.
“Not where that stuff’s concerned. I never really had morning sickness this time. It’s been great. Apart from...that.”
Phoenix smiled with it in her teeth and Hana turned quickly, needing to excuse herself. Without removing her hand from her lips she said, “I’ll get a shower and when I come back, I need your advice with something important.”
“That thing on the side?” Tama pointed the brown knife towards the saucer containing the cigarette, his observant nature already a step ahead. Hana nodded and left the room before the smell of Marmite completely unpicked her.
Phoenix played with her Lego on the floor, trying to ram some poor little man’s backside onto the rounded point of a train carriage. “Won’t go on!” She tipped him back into the carton in frustration and reached for another victim.
Hana kept her voice low and conversational. “If it wasn’t for Sacha chasing them off, what would have happened? Would they have approached me or just kept watching? And who is it? It must be something to do with Sylvia’s death but when I mentioned it to Odering, he brushed it off.”
“What did he say, exactly?”
Hana tutted and did an impression of the stuffy detective. “Tell your husband about it, Mrs Du Rose. I don’t think your farm problems are anything to do with me.”
“Farm problems?” Tama snorted. “What an idiot. He’s such a townie! You’ve got a bloody stalker!”
“Do you know anyone on the farm who smokes these kinds of cigarettes?” Hana pushed the saucer across to Tama with her index finger.
“It depends what’s in it,” Tama said honestly. “If it’s weed, then yeah, a few. But not openly. Logan would fire their asses.”
“Open it then.” Hana fetched a sharp knife and plonked it on the table in front of him.
“But it’s evidence!”
“Of what? And nobody’s interested. Just open it and tell me if it’s got weed in it.”
“I could probably light it and tell you that.”
“Be serious!” Hana slapped Tama’s hand. “Do this properly. I’ll take photos on my phone.”
Exasperated, Tama opened the flimsy white paper and the long tendrils spilled out into the saucer. He flicked through them with a ratty nail. “Yeah, it’s definitely laced with marijuana. But tiny amounts, not enough to get a kick from.”
“The people you know who smoke it - who are they?” Hana pushed her face forward in eagerness. “I want to know.”
Tama sat back in his seat and shook his head. “If I tell you, then you tell Logan and he fires them. I’m not doing that.”
Hana’s jaw dropped. “But it’s wrong! They’re driving machinery and vehicles. Anything could happen. So he’ll be within his rights.”
“So, I’m not telling.” Tama pushed his chair back and tipped the spliff into the dustbin, before loading the saucer into the dishwasher.
“I needed that!” Hana complained. “It’s evidence.”
“You said it wasn’t. Now you’re contradicting yourself.”
“Who is it, Tama? This is scaring me. I need to know so I can stop them. I can’t live like this; feeling like someone’s always watching me.” She stood up, wringing her hands together in fear. Phoenix stopped playing and watched the adults.
Tama embraced her within strong arms. He rested his chin on the top of Hana’s head. “Ma, they smoke socially, with a beer at night. This is different. It’s such a small amount, that it’s...almost like a top up. Maybe the person watching the house is sick and it’s medicinal.”
“What if they’re a junkie and they kill me?” Hana pressed her face into Tama’s sweatshirt and felt him shrug.
“Na. I’ll go down to the bunkhouse and talk to the guys tonight. But I’m tellin’ ya, when they use it, they get hammered on it. No half measures.”
“Om er!” Hana bit her lip and looked indignant.
“If you tell Logan I told you that, I won’t help you!”
“Tama!”
“I mean it!”
Phoenix looked at the Lego lady in her delicate fingers and brought the plastic doll right up to her nose. “Mean it!” she said with violence and Hana chose to stop her debate.
“Trust me,” Tama whispered and Hana rolled her eyes. Whenever Logan said that, it meant trouble.
The trio spent the day baking - well Hana and Phoenix baked and Tama ate non-stop. They
chilled out with movies, snoozed on the sofa and enjoyed each other’s company. At the end of it, Hana felt quite rested. “What should I do?” Hana asked Tama, as Phoenix dozed on his chest with her thumb in her mouth. “Lucy keeps texting and ringing me. It’s getting embarrassing.”
“Give it here.” Tama held his hand out and Hana extracted the vibrating device from down the side of the sofa cushion. He peered at the screen over Phoenix’s fluffy hair. “The reception’s crap up here. I thought Logan let some guys put an aerial up in exchange for free coverage.”
“He did. But there’s problems with it.”
Tama’s fingers flicked over the keys and curious, Hana tried to peer over his shoulder. “Are you texting her back?” She took the phone back from the young man’s long fingers and stared at the blank screen. “You weren’t rude, were you? She’ll know it’s not me.”
“I blocked her number.” Tama’s voice sounded flat and Hana rubbed the flat of her hand over his thigh.
“Sorry, darling,” she whispered and he nodded.
“Not as sorry as me.”
Tama drove Hana’s ute down to the bunkhouse just as Logan appeared in the old farm ute. He looked shattered. “Where’s he going?” he asked Hana, as the elderly driver’s door creaked shut behind him and Tama gunned his newish Holden Colorado towards the top of the driveway.
“Down to the bunkhouse to say goodbye to the stockmen.” She cringed at her partial truth.
“Well, Odering wants to see him before he leaves. That guy’s getting on my nerves. I know he thinks I did it. He’s spent a lifetime wanting to lock me up and now’s his chance.”
Logan refused Hana’s baking and went for a shower after kissing his little girl goodnight. “No singing tonight, e taku ipo. Daddy doesn’t feel like celebrating his ancestors at the moment. They’re all a bunch of...”
“Logan,” Hana interrupted him. “I’ll read Phoe a story, it’s fine.”
Logan kissed his wife with dusty lips in the doorway and Phoenix was entertained by two read-throughs of Hairy Maclary from Donaldson’s dairy. “I don’t know why I always read it in a Scots accent,” she mused to the dozing girl. “It’s how I read it to Bo and Izzie in England, not realising it was written by a New Zealander. Weird hey?”
Phoenix didn’t answer, so Hana kissed her on the forehead and left the room, pulling the door against the doorframe. Logan intercepted her in the bedroom, a towel wrapped around his midsection and leaving very little to the imagination. “Stop!” she giggled. “Tama will be back soon.”
“I’ll be really quick,” her husband teased. “You won’t even know what’s happened.”
“Whatever!” Hana burst out laughing. Logan pinned her against the bedroom wall and stripped her clothing off piece by piece until she stopped giggling and complaining and sought him out with hands and lips.
“Now I have to get dressed again,” she grumbled later, struggling to untangle one of her legs from the bed sheet.
“No you don’t. Stay with me.” Logan wrapped his arms around her and pinioned Hana in a firm grip. “You don’t have to get up.” He pushed his face into her hair and rested his leg across hers.
“It’s Tama’s last night and he had quite an upset last night. I want to make sure he’s ok.”
“Yeah. Hell of an upset.” Hana heard Logan smirk in the darkness.
“You shouldn’t encourage him! What if one of those girls had been your daughter? If wouldn’t be so funny then; even if she was consenting.”
Logan’s body stiffened next to hers and he shuffled with guilt. “I never thought about it like that.”
“Well start to,” Hana chided him. “Your mother taught you better than that. Tama didn’t have a mother, so stop undermining me.”
“Sorry.” Logan’s silence was foreboding and Hana relented, turning to face him and pulling his head onto her chest.
“What’s wrong?”
“Everything,” he replied and his voice sounded heavy. “This business with Asher has really got to me. Ungrateful little...” Logan sighed. “The damage that kid’s done is crazy. Oh look, we can come back from it but part of me wonders why I should bother.”
“Do you just mean the financial damage?” Hana kept her voice light.
“Not really. Anahera is a mess and Nev looks like he’s gonna bawl every time he looks at me. At least I know now which herd he stuffed up so if I can keep them separate, we should be ok. It’s the hotel dams so we’ll just keep Charolaise off the menu and call it home grown beef. If he had wrecked the lot, I would have chucked it all in, sold up and gone.”
“What happened about the developers?” Hana asked, still seeking her watcher.
“Gone,” Logan said with confidence.
“How do you know?” Hana asked, seeking his reassurance.
“Because the joker pushing through the mountain development just settled damages to his clients, an hour before Che bought him out.”
“The Triads made him sell?”
“Don’t be sorry for him, Hana. He doesn’t deserve it. “
“You know, one day, Logan, Che is going to demand a favour of you that you really can’t do,” Hana sighed. She felt Logan’s hair shuffle against his pillow as he laid back.”
“Other way, babe. He’ll owe me until the day he dies. Ain’t nothin’ gonna change that.”
Hana rolled onto her side and felt for Logan’s body as he receded away from her. “Why?”
She heard his brain ticking inside his head as he sought to either dodge the question, or tell her the truth. She wouldn’t know which, until his mouth opened. All she was certain of, was that he wouldn’t lie. “Remember I told you that Mrs Che took over the ‘firm’ when Che had a heart attack a few years ago?”
Hana nodded on her pillow and waited, blocking out the memory of Mrs Che’s threats and her gimlet eyes. The bed shuddered under her quivering body and sensing her angst, Logan reached for her hand.
“Well, I was there. Their base was a nice restaurant in downtown Auckland. It was a front for all their work. It’s where I first met Che. About seven years ago, after I came back to New Zealand, we had a meeting and he just keeled over onto the floor. His guys jumped me. They thought I did something to him. Mrs Che screamed and screamed, this awful high pitched wail. His lips went blue and I could tell what was wrong. My grandmother died the same way when I was five. Everyone thinks I don’t remember, but I do. I was shouting ‘heart attack’ and ‘ambulance’ but so many of Che’s men don’t speak English. Mrs Che made them let me go but he’d already gone. I did CPR on him for ten minutes before the ambulance came but the cops knew what the restaurant was and wouldn’t let the ambos in without them. I carried him outside to them and Che lived. There was some damage to his brain. His speech was odd for a while and Mrs Che stepped up. They sold that place and moved over the bridge. I don’t think anyone could face being there anymore.”
“When I had my heart attack...” Hana’s words were cut off by Logan’s lips landing hard against hers. He hadn’t shaved and a day’s stubble scratched at her chin.
“Don’t,” he whispered. He loved her for a second time, so different from earlier. He felt like someone else in her bed and Hana enjoyed this rare outing of a more tender Logan. He was the man from the motel, vulnerable and needy and made her feel powerful.
“I suppose you’re going to get into that hideous nightie,” he groaned later, his words slurred with sleep.
“Na, I threw it away,” Hana whispered. “Too much stuff on it.”
“Thank God for that,” Logan breathed. “It was like being married to Leslie between the sheets.”
“Gee, thanks.”
On the pretext of being thirsty, Hana slipped into her dressing gown, equally unattractive in her husband’s opinion. She went to the kitchen and waited for Tama. He returned just after eleven, jovial and loud. “You drove my new car up that mountain drunk?” Hana raged at him.
“I’m not drunk,” he hiccoughed.
<
br /> “How many did you have? Actually, don’t bother! Just tell me about the weed.”
“Oh yeah!”
For a moment, Hana considered physical violence. “You forgot why you went down, didn’t you?”
“Nope.” Tama swayed on his feet and observed Hana gormlessly. “They can’t get it anymore. The guy in the township that used to sell it, was taking the money off Leslie for her husband’s debt. Remember? We all went down there and beat him up!” Tama did a fist pump to empty air and overbalanced. “Logan made him eat his own teeth and he split not long after. Gone north.”
“Why does everyone in your world, go north?” Hana exclaimed and Tama laughed.
“That’s very funny.”
“No it isn’t. And nor are you. So nobody grows it and nobody buys it here? So whoever keeps turning up to watch the house, isn’t from the property? It’s not someone I know?”
“Oh, you’re hurting my head,” Tama complained.
“You’re such an idiot!” Hana’s frustration was on show, but wasted on the young man.
“I know,” he hiccoughed again and a sob leaked out. “But I love you so much. You’re all I’ve got in this world.”
“Oh great! Loving Tama. Only narrowly preceded by Horny Tama.”
“Will you sleep with me?” The tall man swayed on his feet. “I need help into bed.” He attempted a lascivious smile that failed, making him look more like a comic strip duck.
“I’m not sleeping with you. And I’m definitely not helping you to bed.” Hana skirted the room trying to look threatening. “And if you try and get into bed with Logan and me again, I’ll let him take your head off.”
Tama put his head down and started to cry. Used to his drunken antics, although much less so in the last year, Hana made her escape, knowing that when she awoke she would find him exactly where he was, only hopefully in a more horizontal position.
Chapter 50
“I’m too bloody old for this!” Hana raged at Tama the next morning. He sat with his head in his hands, a giant mug of black coffee in front of him. “You were meant to drive home today and you’re probably over the limit. If you dented my car, Logan will kill you and if you survive that, I’ll finish you off!”