Stone Cold Kiwi (New Zealand Ever After Book 2)

by Rosalind James

  “You’re a mummy now,” Daisy said, handing her an orange lollipop.

  “I’m not a mummy,” Olivia said, as I took the paper cover off and gave it back. “I’m a girl.”

  It took Daisy a second, but then she laughed. “No, I mean that you’re wrapped in bandages. Your mum can show you when you get home.” She looked at me, then, and smiled. “And I’m still not involved with Matiu, by the way. Never happened, and never will. He’s not interested in anybody here. Sadly, or maybe not.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Good.”

  “Matiu is nice,” Olivia said, working hard on her lollipop.

  “He saved her,” I told Daisy. “Today. Why we’re here. She ran into the road, and he caught her. Hurt himself doing it, though. You could tell people that, maybe. Tell them what he did, because I think he seriously risked himself to do it.”

  “Well,” she said, “saving people’s his mission, eh.”

  “I think,” I said, “that he’s a very good doctor.”

  “You’d be right to think so,” she said. “Good doctor. Good man. Not many out there like that. Pity he’s not mine.” With another laugh.

  So that was nice. What came later? Not so much.

  We were in the Radiology waiting room, me reading a magazine to Olivia and trying to control my mind, which kept slipping off into disaster scenarios, when Max and Violet found us. Max was in front, holding Hamish’s hand. Max started moving faster when he saw Olivia, and Olivia slipped off her chair and ran to him. He dropped Hamish’s hand and swept her up in his arms like he had the day before, and she started telling him about her bandages, and the ambulance, and how she wasn’t a mummy. Violet looked shrunken and shaken. Matiu wasn’t with them.

  Max asked, “Where’s the baby?”

  I didn’t answer him for a moment. I couldn’t. I had Hamish in my own arms, because I’d dropped to the floor to cuddle him. He had his head buried in my shoulder, and he was sobbing.

  My sweet baby. My brave little man. I was murmuring into his hair, telling him how proud I was of him, how strong he’d been, how much he’d helped. That Olivia was fine, that Matiu had got her.

  He said, still sniffing and gulping, “Matiu said I wasn’t bad. He said I did the right things. But I didn’t watch her. You said to be responsible, and I wasn’t responsible.”

  “I was wrong to say that.” I kissed his cheek, brushed his hair back from his forehead. “I won’t say it again. You’re five. Five-year-olds don’t have to be responsible. Five-year-olds just have to help, and you did. You helped.”

  “Where’s the baby?” Max asked again.

  I looked up. I didn’t get up, though. I said, “She’s having a CT scan,” and my heart gave another lurch. She’d be crying. She’d be cold and alone. And I’d been wrong. I’d done it wrong. The doctor had said as much. She’d said the same thing Matiu had.

  “Running with her could have injured her, yes,” she’d told me. Not looking at me. Checking Isobel’s eyes with a light, while I held her and she cried. Sharp, frightened wails. “You don’t want to repeatedly shake an infant like that, even unintentionally. I don’t see any hemorrhage behind the eyes, which is good, but we’ll do a scan to make sure there’s no trauma.”

  “I held her head close to me, though,” I’d said, through lips that felt stuck together. “I put my hand over it tight.” My mind was raging. How could I have been so stupid? How had I not realized? Why hadn’t I given the baby to Max, to Violet? Why hadn’t I put her down, on the floor if I’d had to?

  “We’ll check to be sure,” the doctor said.

  That was why I was in this waiting room. Why I was frozen with fear and trying to rise above it. Why I needed to tell Max what I’d done. He was her father. He had a right to know.

  Matiu came in, then. Limping badly, his chin scraped raw. He’d washed the blood off his hands, but there was strain on his face that told me how much he hurt. He came straight to me and Hamish, sat in the chair beside mine, and asked, “Where’s Isobel? What’s happened?” I got myself back into my own chair, somehow, still holding Hamish, and basically fell into his arms. He put one arm around me and the other around Hamish, and he was cuddling us both, saying something stupid, something soothing, like, “It’s all right. It’s going to be all right,” when I didn’t know that at all, and neither did he, and I was shaking at last. I was losing it, in fact. “Crying” didn’t begin to cover it.

  Max asked, “Do you mind?” And then said it again, louder.

  I shoved myself away from Matiu and wiped my face on the lapel of my dressing gown. Matiu turned toward Max again, his face set. Cool. “Yeh,” he said. “I mind.”

  I said, “I ran with Isobel. I shouldn’t have run. You were right to say so, Matiu. I could’ve hurt her. They’re doing a scan to make sure.” I was crying again, knowing I was scaring Hamish, who was hugging me, trying to comfort me.

  “Oh, sweetheart,” Matiu said. His arm was still around me.

  “I held her head, though,” I said, knowing I sounded exactly like Violet. Exactly like every adult who’s supposed to care for a child, and fails. “I held it tight. I held her head.”

  Max said, “Oh, no. I can’t believe you did that.”

  Matiu said, “And where were you, exactly, when she did it? What were you doing?”

  “I was looking for my daughter,” Max said, and held Olivia tighter.

  “And so was Poppy,” Matiu said. “She was more than looking. She was running. Look at the soles of her feet.”

  The soles of my feet? I checked. Well, yeh. They were dirty. Bleeding a bit, too. Bruised. They probably looked like Matiu’s, though he had his shoes on, so I couldn’t tell.

  Matiu said, “She did the best she could. Everybody did the best they could. You didn’t think to take the baby, Max, because you were focused on Olivia. Poppy didn’t think to put her down, because she’s a mum, first and last. She was holding her, trying to keep her safe. Trying to keep them all safe. What did the doctor say?” he asked me. “Exactly?”

  “That her ... her eyes looked fine,” I said. “No hemorrhage. That they would check to make sure.”

  “Did she breastfeed?” Matiu asked. “In the ambulance? Here in hospital?”

  “What the hell does that matter?” Max asked.

  Matiu ignored him again. “Yes,” I said. “She did.”

  “Was it normal? Her feeding?”

  “Yes.”

  “She cried, too,” Matiu said. “I saw that. She was moving. Not lethargic. She’s probably fine, Poppy. We’ll wait and see.”

  “I made the wrong choice, though,” I said.

  “Yes.” He didn’t sugarcoat it. “It was a mistake, but a natural one. Hard to know what to do in that moment, three kids to look after.”

  I said, “You knew what to do.”

  “Yes. But I’ve had practice.”

  A tech came out, then, holding Isobel, and I’d jumped to my feet and was moving forward without even knowing how I got there, and taking her. She wasn’t crying now, but she had been. She settled into my arms like they were her home, and I wrapped myself around her and thought, I’ll do better. I’ll do better. Please let her be all right.

  The tech said, “Come back and talk to the doctor. Just Mum and Dad, please.” She glanced around, then seemed to notice Matiu for the first time. “Oh,” she said. “Dr. Te Mana.”

  “Not here as a doc,” he said. “I’ll stay with the other kids,” he told me. “Violet and I can look after them, no worries.”

  “Yes,” Violet said, still subdued. “Of course.”

  This time, I could leave them. This time, that felt safe.

  Matiu

  It felt like a long wait. In reality, it was a few minutes, during which Violet said almost nothing, and I sat with Olivia in my lap and Hamish next to me and read a kids’ magazine out loud. It was a zoology thing, about South American animals. About jaguars, among other things.

  Jaguars were excellent swimmers, and t
hey loved to fish. They were the third largest big cat, after tigers and lions. Apex predators, the males fighting each other, sometimes multiple others, for the right to mate with a female, and the strongest one winning. The females were fiercely protective of their cubs and kept them close for years, and their name came from a Native American word that meant, “He who kills with one leap.”

  All of that sounded about right. Also, I might not be the only jaguar here.

  Hamish said, “Mummy is drawing a story about a jaguar.”

  I said, “I know. I saw some of it. It’s a good story, I think.”

  “Mummy tells the best stories,” Olivia said. “Because she is very good at pretending.”

  I thought, Maybe she’s had to be. Making her life as beautiful as it can be, even if she has to go into her imagination to do it. Making it better for her kids, too.

  She and Max came out with the baby, then, and I forgot to think anything.

  Poppy was smiling, and then she was laughing, but there were some tears there, too. “She’s all right,” she told me. “I held her head enough, maybe. I was so stupid, but she’s all right.”

  I was holding her again, holding both of them. Not taking Isobel, because Poppy needed to feel her in her arms right now.

  “I’ll never do that again,” Poppy said. “Never again. And I don’t blame you for being right, Matiu. Clearly, you were right and I was wrong. My first apology, I think. We could frame it, maybe.”

  “I need to say that I was wrong as well,” Violet said. “I need to apologize to all of you. I didn’t watch well enough. I too will never do that again.” Her voice was shaky, but she was standing up to say it, and she was saying it.

  Poppy said, “You’re too good for Max. You do realize that,” and I laughed out loud. “Also,” she went on, “he’s going to cheat on you. Don’t have a baby with him. Maybe your biological clock is ticking, I don’t know. Don’t do it, though. Find somebody better.”

  Max looked gobsmacked. He started to say something, then faltered. I wanted to laugh again, but I didn’t.

  Silence for a long moment, then Hamish asked, “When do we get to go home?”

  “Now,” Poppy said, then seemed to realize. “Oh. You’re going to your dad’s.” She told Violet, “I should’ve told you that privately, probably. Oh, well. Impulse control isn’t always my strong suit.”

  Violet looked uncomfortable. Max looked like he didn’t know how to react, what to do, what to say. Thunderous, but at a total loss. If ever a man had been shown up in front of everyone, that man was Max.

  It was incredibly gratifying. Not as good as getting to hit him, but close.

  He finally said, “Come on, kids. Let’s go.”

  Poppy was giving Olivia a cuddle. “I’ll see you tomorrow, my darling,” she told her daughter. “And remember—no running off.”

  “Because you can get hurt,” Hamish said.

  “I don’t want to go to Daddy’s,” Olivia said. “I want to go to my house.”

  “You don’t get to choose about that,” Poppy said, as cheerfully as she could manage. “Oh.” She pulled a couple folded-up pieces of paper from the pocket of her dressing gown and handed them to Max. “How to care for her scrapes, what to watch for. Just in case. You may need to buy some supplies.” She was trying not to give him more instruction than that. I could tell it was hard to hold back. And then there was Hamish. Shaken, shattered, too-old-for-his-age Hamish, who still felt responsible and would need so much help to understand that he wasn’t.

  “Uh ...” Max said, and glanced at Violet. “Maybe you should take them, this time. As it’s all been pretty fraught, and you’re better with the injuries. Everybody probably needs, uh ... stability.”

  “Yes,” Poppy said serenely, doing a pretty magnificent job of concealing her absolute relief, “maybe that would be best. You and Violet could drive them home, then, please. The baby, too. No car seats in Matiu’s car.”

  No car seats, and no room for three in any case. Tane and June had been right. I needed a bigger car. An SUV, maybe. Something safer.

  “Also,” Poppy went on, “I need my feet treated, and Matiu needs his everything treated.”

  “He needs Owie Juice,” Olivia said, “’cause he has very many owie places. And he needs plasters. You can use my Dory ones,” she told me. “They’re very special. I can help you stick them on.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “Those will make me feel better.”

  “Good thing you’re a doctor, I guess,” Poppy told me. “And good thing I’m a mum. Between us? I reckon we’ve got this.”

  51

  A Time to Dance

  Matiu

  On a sunny afternoon in late January, when the wind and the tide were both high, I adjusted the pack on my back and caught up with the others. Poppy had a pack on her own back and was running through the tunnel of trees at the start of the Sandyhill Track, and Olivia and Hamish were running after her. Hamish called to Buddy, scampering beside him, and Olivia shrieked and ran with her arms held high, like she was trying to fly, the same way she’d run down the road on that day two months earlier.

  I didn’t run. My backpack had precious cargo in it. One baby, to be precise. Isobel was more than four months old now, and we hadn’t been wrong at all. She’d been born to laugh, just like Poppy, and that was what she did. Whether she was on her back, grabbing for her toes and so pleased to find them, or being held up to sit, with Hamish dangling a toy in front of her and Olivia making silly faces. Or her favorite, when I held her up on my lap and she tried her best to “walk” on my knees. Through it all, she laughed.

  She was a golden girl. A shining girl. The green came out more in her eyes every day, and the red in her brown curls. A beautiful girl, inside and out.

  I’d love to say that she was mine now, that they all were. They weren’t. I didn’t live with them, and they still went to their dad’s every other weekend. These days, Isobel stayed all weekend. Max wanted them, which was a good thing, and he was getting better with them. He had to be, because he didn’t have Violet around to help anymore.

  Do you know why you shouldn’t gift your gorgeous mistress an apartment in Shanghai, no matter how hot she is and how much you want to impress her? Because if she quits her job and leaves you, she still owns the apartment, and you don’t own anything. That’s also true for the racetrack-ready, gunmetal-silver Mercedes-AMG GT Coupe you bought her, the one you’ve always craved yourself. It’s lost to you forever now. Sad.

  On the other hand, Poppy had been forced to give Max half the value of their house, and half the assessed value of her books, so he didn’t have absolutely nothing. Also sad.

  “It’s so satisfying, though,” she’d told me when she’d written that extremely large check, the one that Max could use to build up his firm again, if he had the brains to do it, and to pay the rent on his flash apartment near the beach, “that the television option didn’t come through before we separated. That’s mine. I’m kissing this money goodbye”—which she did—"and I’m not kissing him anymore, ever. Works for me. Also, the kids don’t need an angry, bitter failure of a dad. Let him be happy, I say. Someplace else.”

  I sat where I was, elbows on knees, ready to accompany her to the lawyer’s office to deliver the thing, and watched her put it in an envelope, lick the flap, stick it down, and bang her fist on it for good measure. “You,” I told her, “were born to be happy, and probably to make other people happy, too, because it’s working for me. Although I never did get to hit Max. I’d like to hit him one time, at least. What d’you reckon?”

  “That you’d get suspended again,” she said serenely. “You know he’d press charges.”

  I sighed. “Pity.” And she laughed. After that, she rose to her feet and grabbed her purse. Not the nappy bag, because we weren’t taking Isobel. Poppy’s parents had her. It wasn’t just Megan, either. Alistair, to my absolute astonishment, had started coming home at five on Thursdays to be with his grandchildren.r />
  “Could be the only ones I get,” he’d said, when we’d found out about it. “Jax is taking his bloody time about it.”

  In reality, it had probably been another consequence of the day when Olivia had run down the hill. That day had changed almost everything, and maybe, today, it would change more. There was an SUV back there in the carpark with three car seats in the back, for one thing, and it was mine. It was still a BMW, though, and it was still red. Quite nice, actually.

  I caught up with the others once we got out of the trees, and we continued along the track to Lover’s Leap. The Pacific swells thundered in the distance, and I took Olivia’s hand and said, “There are cliffs up here. We’ll hold hands.”

  “I don’t want to hold hands,” she said, trying to tug hers away.

  “We can be elephants,” I said. “You’re the baby elephant, and I’m the dad. The baby holds the dad’s tail with her trunk. That’s an elephant rule, if it’s dangerous. Especially near the waterfall, where it’s slippery. The dad doesn’t want the baby to fall over.”

  “OK,” she said. “But Hamish should hold hands too.”

  “Hamish is, though.” We turned around to look. “He’s holding your mum’s hand. We’re all of us elephants, eh. Five of us elephants, going to see the sea.”

  Poppy

  I was a bit nervous about this. Not this this, because this was all good. The wind in my hair, Hamish’s hand in mine, Buddy prancing along beside us. The dog was wearing a yellow-and-blue Highlanders collar that Matiu had bought him, and he always seemed to be showing it off, as if he loved the hometown rugby team as much as Hamish did.

  Matiu had bought Highlanders season tickets for us for Christmas, and Hamish was ecstatic.

  “What if you’re working, though, and you can’t go?” he’d asked Matiu.

  “Then,” Matiu had answered, “you can invite your mate Ian along. Or your Grandad Alistair, maybe.”

  “That’s a very good idea,” Hamish had answered. “Grandad likes rugby. He likes it better than Livvy, probably. Livvy doesn’t like to pay attention. We could leave her and Isobel with Nana Megan, maybe, and go with Grandad instead!”