I couldn’t have. He’d told me he loved me, or he almost had. You couldn’t misconstrue that.
I thought about getting slightly more beautiful for ... whatever this was. I really did. The moment I finished changing Isobel and headed into to my bathroom to do it, though, I heard the kind of bumpity-bumpity-bump, accompanied by frantic barking, a horrible pause, and then a high-pitched wail, that gets you running. I had Isobel in one arm, tucking her tightly against me, and was tearing down the stairs as fast as I could go before I sank to the floor beside Olivia, my heart galloping like I’d been the one who’d fallen.
She was sobbing, holding her elbow and her head, and Buddy was licking her face in a concerned way. I said, “Darling. What happened? Where does it hurt?”
“I was hopping,” she got out between sobs and hiccups, sitting on her bottom while Buddy wriggled into her lap and did some more licking. “But hopping downhill is very slippery.”
I kissed the grazed spots on her elbow and knee to make them better, felt her head, where a lump was forming, and said, “That sounds very scary. I don’t like falling, do you?”
“No,” Olivia said. “It’s not nice, like a bird is flying.”
I said, “Let’s go put Owie Juice on the hurt places, then, shall we?”
“And plasters,” she said, still sniffing. “Finding Dory ones, because fish can’t fall down. And it hurts on my brain.” She was still holding her head.
That was why, when the bell rang ten minutes later, Olivia had four fish plasters stuck to various grazed-and-otherwise spots, and I wasn’t looking any better than I had when Matiu had rung. I hadn’t made it into an alluring dress, if I’d even had another alluring dress suitable for wearing around the house, which I didn’t. What I had that fit were post-maternity clothes. Leggings, shorts with forgiving waistlines, and, yes, yoga pants. Today, I was wearing shorts. Possibly better than yoga pants, but it was close.
Opening the door to Matiu made Buddy’s tail wag with pure joy, and I didn’t feel much different. He was also holding a paper bag which promised wonderful things. I didn’t say, “Kiss me like you mean it, because I missed you,” though. Instead, I said, “I’m glad you’re here. Can you check Olivia’s head for me? She fell down the stairs. She says it still hurts, and I’m not sure ...”
He said, “Of course,” set his food bag down on the table in the foyer, gave Buddy a scratch hello, and crouched next to Olivia, who was indeed holding her head in a manner that was either worrisome or dramatic. He felt her skull, delicately, and told her, “I like your plasters. Are those Nemo?”
“No,” she said, appearing outraged at his lack of discernment and taking her hands off her head so she could twist around to show him. “They’re Dory. Dory’s a girl, and she’s blue.”
“Ah,” Matiu said, still feeling over her head. “She’s the one who searches for her friend, right? Because he got lost? What’s his name, Meano?”
Olivia gasped and put both hands on her cheeks. Definitely dramatic. Then she put them on Matiu’s and said, “I have to be very serious. Can you listen?”
He was trying so hard not to smile, and I already was. I could’ve told him that was the way I got Olivia’s attention, but it was more fun not to.
“Yes,” he said. “I can listen. Please explain.”
“Dory is blue,” Olivia said. “And she forgets every, every thing, and Nemo tells her. He always tells her, all the times.” She nodded with every point, and then she stared into his eyes, kept her hands on his cheeks, and asked, “Do you understand?”
“Yes,” he said solemnly. “I understand now. Thank you for your good explanation.”
She let go of him, hopped away with Buddy following, and asked, “Do you want to play with me?”
I said, “Matiu came over to eat lunch with us. Let’s go fix your rabbit sandwich, and then we can all eat.”
“I don’t want a rabbit sandwich,” Olivia said. “I’m a fish now, and I’m all blue.”
“Ah,” Matiu said, picking up his interesting brown bag again, possibly because Buddy was sniffing at the table. “Then you’ll want fish food. Bread, and green water plants, and ... well, raw fish, but something else would do, I guess.”
“Tuna,” I said.
“Because fish eat other fish,” Matiu said.
Olivia said, “I don’t want to eat other fish, though.”
“Ah,” Matiu said. “Cheese, then. Fish would eat cheese.”
“OK,” Olivia said. “And I am going to swim into the kitchen.” She got down on her belly and did, more or less. If she looked more like a snake than a fish, I wasn’t going to tell her so. I didn’t need to be feeding her mice.
Matiu told me, “She’s fine,” and I said, “You do that so well,” and tried not to fall more in love with him. How could you not, though, when he was so sweet and so sexy and so ... Also, I somehow had a hand on his arm.
He bent and gave me a kiss on the mouth. Soft and sweet again, with a smile in it. He drew back a bit, then, and said, “Hi.”
“Hi,” I said back, with a foolish smile of my own, and he kissed me again.
Olivia was watching us. She was also still wriggling. Either she was being a fish, or she needed the potty. I went into the kitchen, having a bit of trouble feeling my feet, made a cheese sandwich for a fish, since Olivia had forgotten to wriggle and therefore didn’t need the potty, and added some celery sticks with peanut butter and raisins. “Ants on a log,” I told her. “And the log falls into the water, so all the fish come around to nibble at it. They nibble very nicely.”
“Like rabbits?” she asked.
“Even more nicely than rabbits,” Matiu said. He picked up a celery stick and nibbled at it very nicely indeed with his strong white teeth, which reminded me how well he could nibble, and, well ... there you were.
He asked me, pulling containers from the bag, “Smoked salmon, prawn, and cherry tomato salad, or satay beef salad? I also brought a packet of lovely potato wedges with sour cream and chili sauce, so no worries, we don’t have to be perfect.”
“Oh,” I said with a sigh, “you’re speaking my language.”
“I’m eating for the evening shift,” he said, “and you’re eating to draw. Both of us back at work. Feels good, eh.”
It did. It felt awesome. That may have been why we were still finishing lunch and not discussing anything at all when my mum showed up to get the kids. It was Thursday afternoon, and that was the new plan.
She had my dad with her.
Which was a surprise.
42
Home Truths
Matiu
Poppy looked prettier than ever today. The light was back in her eyes, the way it had been at the wedding, except even more so, because she wasn’t determined to be happy today. She just was happy. She had a glow to her skin, too, that told me she’d gone to bed last night and remembered everything we’d done and everything we’d said. That glow, I thought, was joy. Joy that had needed to come out by choosing exactly the right flower to express herself, maybe, and sending it. By letting a man know that he’d done the job right, and he’d made her feel beautiful.
Letting me know all that. And you see—I hadn’t needed any words at all to discover it. That meant that her breezy tone on the phone had been embarrassment, and fear of showing too much. Of being too much.
That, I could fix.
I needed to talk to her about all of it. I was waiting for Olivia’s nap, though, because she was clearly perfectly capable of blurting out anything a man shared, at any time it occurred to her to say it. Olivia didn’t have a traumatic brain injury of any kind. Olivia, in fact, had an agile, inventive mind to rival her mum’s. And, unfortunately, a very good memory.
That was why I was waiting to have that talk, and holding Isobel so Poppy could eat with two hands, smelling the baby’s sweet, powdery scent and noticing that her head control was improving, when the sound of the doorbell was followed by a mad, toenail-scrabbling dash from Buddy, so
me barking, a door opening, and a woman’s voice calling out, “Hello?”
“Kitchen,” Poppy called back, and a couple seconds later, her mum walked in. Followed by her dad.
Whoa.
“Dad,” Poppy said, her fork in midair. “Why aren’t you at work?”
He wasn’t answering. He was looking at me.
I was still holding the baby, but I stood up anyway. Always better. I drew on every bit of competent calm I possessed and said, “Kia ora.”
He nodded. Poppy’s mum said, “Hello. Lovely to see you again.”
“Is it?” her husband asked. “Is it, though?”
“Well, yes,” Megan said, “as you wanted to speak to him anyway.”
Alistair looked disconcerted. I was pretty sure that was unusual. He said, “Yes. I did. You have your job back, I understand.”
“Yes,” I said. “I do. Thank you for your help with that.” I didn’t say, No thanks for throwing me under the bus, because that was over.
Alistair nodded. Poppy was right. He was a scary-looking fella. Fortunately, I had experience with scary-looking fellas, and every other kind of fella, too. He said, “I was hasty, as it happened. Didn’t get all the facts. Although now, I’m wondering whether I actually do have them.”
“You were wrong about one thing, anyway,” Poppy said, waving her fork in an airy sort of way that I knew she wasn’t actually feeling. “Matiu actually did want to sleep with me. Surprise!”
As conversation-stoppers went, it was a good one. And then Olivia said, “Matiu lets me be naked, and he is my friend, but he doesn’t want to sleep in your bed, Mummy. He has his own bed, and I was sleeping on his bed very many times.”
I maintained my cool. She was three, and besides—if her grandparents were concerned about that, they were right to be. You couldn’t work in a hospital and not know that. I said, “I spent time last week at my brother and sister-in-law’s house in Katikati, as I’d been suspended. Poppy was there as well, of course, with Jax and Karen, and as Karen’s part of the whanau, there was a fair amount of socializing at Tane and June’s place. The littlies tended to get put down on the guest bed at naptime. Which was mine.”
“And if you’re thinking Matiu somehow inappropriately saw Olivia naked,” Poppy said, leaping straight in to defend me, “he didn’t. Olivia was being an albatross, and she wouldn’t put her clothes on to go to the beach when he took them. Honestly, don’t you think I’d be more shocked than you, Dad, if it was anything else?”
“And a elbowtoss can lay eggs,” Olivia said, “only you can’t poo them out even if you are a girl, and I was very sad that I couldn’t lay a real egg. And Matiu likes to kiss Mummy.”
“I do,” I said. I should’ve been more alarmed, maybe. I was just amused. Maybe it was Poppy jumping in like that, who knows? “Which, yes, everybody was right about.”
“I like to kiss him, too,” Poppy went on, throwing her hat all the way into the ring, “so we’re all good, aren’t we?” She went back to eating her salad too fast, then, stuffing forkfuls into her mouth in a defiant way that was probably unwise.
If I had to do the Heimlich here, this lunch could get even more interesting.
Poppy
Possibly, shoving your food down unchewed like an actual albatross isn’t the best way to impress the suave-n-sexy new love interest. When I started to cough, then flailed for my napkin and grabbed the edge of the table, Matiu said, “Hand signal if you can’t breathe.”
I shook my head and coughed some more, my napkin over my mouth. Buddy started to bark excitedly. My mum came over and slapped my back, and Matiu told her, “Don’t. If she’s coughing, she’s breathing.”
By the time I was done, my eyes were streaming, and so was my nose. Lovely. I wiped them with the napkin, took a drink of water, coughed a few more times, and said, “So. Where were we?”
Matiu’s eyes were gleaming. I had to laugh, and he did, too. “Well, that changed the subject pretty smartly,” he said.
My dad cleared his throat, and I said, “So. Dad. Secret’s out, and it’s still not inappropriate for Matiu and me to see each other, but thanks anyway for putting it right. Why are you actually here, though? It can’t be that. Mum could’ve dealt with that.”
He didn’t look comfortable, but he sat down at the table with my mum and said, “It’s our first day having the kids. So you can get your work done.” Another glance at Matiu.
I said, as demurely as I could manage, “He’s inspirational.”
The corner of Matiu’s mouth twitched, and my dad said flatly, “For drawing hippos.”
“No,” I said. “I’m working on a new project. More adult themed. I haven’t quite sorted it out.”
“If you’re drawing some sort of porn,” he said, “one of those comics, whatever they call them, that grown men look at for some reason I’ll never understand, tell me. If money’s the problem, your mother and I can help you out until you get back on your feet.”
Beside me, Isobel had gone to sleep in Matiu’s arms. I could tell by the softness of her body, the way she curled into him. I put my hand on my dad’s arm, because he was trying to help, however awkwardly, and said, “Thanks, Dad, but I’m all good, and I’m not drawing porn. Manga, I think you’re imagining. It’s not that. It’s a love story, that’s all. A graphic novel, possibly. Like I said—not sure.”
Fortunately, Olivia didn’t ask, “What’s porn?” She’d slid down from her chair and wandered away to the playroom, where she began telling a very loud story with animal figurines, and Buddy sprawled at her side to watch her.
Hamish might have a buddy, but Olivia had the thing she wanted most, too. An audience.
My dad cleared his throat again, glanced at my mum, then at Matiu, and said, “Something else I wanted to discuss with you.”
Matiu asked me, “Would you like me to go?”
“No,” I said. “Please stay.” If it was about Max, I wanted him here, and if it wasn’t about Max, I ... wanted him here for that, too. Not because I thought he’d rescue me. Because he’d listen, and later, he’d talk with me about it, and that would be so much better.
My dad said, “You’re determined to end your marriage.”
“I already have,” I said.
He nodded. “You and Max will be dividing the marital assets. Don’t expect him to go easy on that. I did some checking. His firm isn’t all that solvent, from what I’m hearing. It’s not public, so I can’t get all the figures, but my banking sources tell me his liabilities may outweigh his assets. Meaning that he’s leveraged everything, and some time ago, too. Now, he could’ve done that specifically for this purpose, of course. Meaning—”
I cut him off. “No. He wasn’t expecting me to end it. He’s not solvent because he’s not that good at business.”
“Also,” my dad said, “rumor has it he’s been buying ... gifts. Expensive ones.”
“Ah.” I sat back and crossed my ankles, trying to be casual, though the blood that was rushing up my chest and into my cheeks was probably a dead giveaway. “A flash car, maybe? Or worse? An apartment? Maybe an apartment in Hong Kong, even? That’d use up the profits pretty smartly.”
My mum put her hand over mine, and that was good. I wanted to say it didn’t matter. I wanted to believe it.
“If it’s a gift,” Dad said, “it’s gone. If it’s in her name.”
My mouth was so dry, I could hardly speak. I said, “I understand.”
“Who’s your attorney?” Dad asked.
“Felicia Wansford. She’s already done a ... a thing where he can’t dispose of assets. Now he can’t. It sounds like it may be too late.”
He nodded. “She’ll do. I’ll send this over to her, then. And clearly I was ... underinformed. You should’ve told me if you had doubts. If you had trouble.”
I could have told him that when I had said it, he hadn’t believed it. I didn’t. I was trying too hard to hold on. I just said, “Felicia told me she’ll be using her own investig
ators as well. And there are ... rules, I guess. For disclosure. Although with offshore bank accounts ... ”
Olivia came over and started to ask me something, and my mum said, “Come on, darling. Let’s go to my house. We’ll take the baby, too.”
“I don’t want to take the baby,” Olivia said. “The baby is stinky.”
I said, “You can leave the baby this time, Mum. One less car seat to shift.”
Mum said, “I have to confess, I went out already and bought three, and your dad helped me fix them into the back of my car. Seems I’m as excited as Mum and Dad are about this new plan of ours, and wondering just as much why I haven’t done it before.”
“Because you didn’t want to intrude, maybe,” I said, and felt rather than saw the alertness in Matiu that told me I’d probably got it right. He really was extremely wise about people. Forty-three years of living, possibly. Or the doctor thing. One thing was for sure, though: Matiu was a full-grown man.
“Maybe so,” Mum said. “I should’ve known, though, that you don’t have to wait to ask. But of course, if you like, leave Isobel here.”
I said, “I’d rather keep her, thanks. I’ll put her down for a nap.” Matiu handed her to me, and I went upstairs to put her in her Moses basket.
I stood in the quiet bedroom, turned the baby monitor on, and stood looking at her for a minute, lying there with her long lashes fanned out like feathers against her pale skin, her fists up beside her head, her dark curls gleaming with their tinge of red. My own hands clutched the clematis-printed white liner at the basket’s edge, feeling the interwoven strands beneath.
A woven wicker basket on a wooden stand, almost the first thing I’d bought when I’d fallen pregnant with Hamish. The basket that had stood beside my bed in our first house, and then in this new one, when I’d thought we were really on our way, and that we’d be a family forever. When I’d been full of nothing but optimism and the road ahead had looked nothing but bright.
I was standing here, I realized, because I wanted to be holding Isobel for this discussion, the way I’d held my kids so many times when I’d been worried and so many nights when I’d been alone. My security blankets, probably. My reason for getting up in the morning, sometimes.
Stone Cold Kiwi (New Zealand Ever After Book 2) Page 31