Kiwi Rules (New Zealand Ever After Book 1)

by Rosalind James

  “On the other hand,” he said, “it could be that a woman wants the same thing. Some women, anyway.”

  “Like Karen.”

  “Never seen a girl want to be taken care of less. Maybe because she didn’t want to count on it. Hope says she’s letting you do it, though.”

  I had to smile despite the uncomfortable battle of emotions in my gut. I guessed those were emotions, because otherwise, I had food poisoning. “Under duress,” I said. “There could’ve been some picking up and carrying involved, and a fair amount of protest.”

  He laughed, a wheezy, near-soundless chuckle, and looked up at the deep-green, shiny leaves of the avocado. “Same as you, then. Scared of being weak. Scared of what it would mean.”

  Well, that was about a mile too close for comfort. If I wasn’t going to leave, though, and it seemed I wasn’t, it was time to get some answers. I said, “She’s done nothing but succeed, from what I’ve read. That had to take heaps of work. Why would she be afraid of being weak?”

  He was quiet a minute. Sound drifted around from the back—laughter, the shriek of kids chasing each other through the orchard, a Kiwi-centric version of reggae playing on backyard speakers, somebody singing a snatch of a verse, and more voices joining in. Maori, singing their way through life, in celebration or in mourning. Giving voice to whatever it was, and sharing it. The old man said, “Of course, when I met her, she was mostly over it. Had barely any hair, still, but with the life bursting out of her.”

  “Because . . .” I said.

  “She was ill. Hard on her. Hard on Hope. Hard on Hemi, because all he wanted to do was help, and Hope nearly wouldn’t let him. There you are. Could be you’re not the first man in the world to be frustrated by that, eh. But I don’t think life was a treat before that for either one of those girls. Karen was alone too much, I’m guessing, as a wee girl, with Hope away at work. Proud of being so good on her own, telling you she’d rather have it that way, and maybe scared, too. Not much point in being scared, though, if there’s nobody to help you through it. You harden up instead, don’t you. And once Hemi was in the frame . . . could be she wasn’t always sure where she stood.”

  “Because it was just her and her sister before,” I said, the pieces falling into place in the one and only way they fit, “and then her sister had somebody else, and Karen was tagging along. Hope did let him help, though, obviously, and it’s clear Karen loves him almost like a dad, so . . .”

  I got a smile from him. Missing a few teeth, and not bothered by it. What would you be bothered by, if you were ninety-five? “And you wonder why. Hemi doesn’t always put his most lovable foot forward, especially when he’s worried. Straight to defensive mode, eh.”

  I had to smile, too, even though I didn’t really feel like it. “Or offensive mode, maybe.”

  The old man laughed, then turned the carved wooden stick in arthritic hands, digging out a spot in the grass. A raspy quacking broke through the rest of the party noise, and there came Debbie, waddling around from the back of the house like a duck in a hurry, quacking all the way. When he made it to us, he ignored me and headed straight to the old man, parked himself on his foot, and settled down with a waggle of tail feathers.

  “I hope you wanted a duck,” I said.

  “Got one, anyway, didn’t I.” He wiggled his foot, which made the duck fluff up and nibble at his toes, and smiled. “Sometimes you go with what comes along, eh. Just because you didn’t expect it to happen, that doesn’t mean it’s no good.”

  That was a little too close to too many things that I couldn’t sort out just now, so I leaned over and gave Debbie a stroke, and he leaned his body into me the same way Karen had that morning on my terrace. Like she was making a point to her brother-in-law, or maybe like she wanted to be closer to me. Like an upfront woman showing what she felt, and what she wanted.

  “She’s got a strong will,” I said, still patting the duck. “Karen. A fair bit like Hemi, I’m thinking.”

  “A fair bit like her sister as well,” the old man said. “Can’t always tell by looking, eh. Sometimes, you’re strong because you were born that way. Other times, you’re strong because you have to be, and letting down your guard’s something you can’t afford. Karen’s strong both ways, same as Hemi. The reason they understand each other, and the reason they butt heads, too. Too much alike, and both of them having a hard time believing things could change for them. Could be different from the way you grew up, I’m thinking.”

  “Yeh,” I said. “Two parents, and too much money.” I didn’t say anything about the modeling. I didn’t feel much like adding that onto the pile. If nobody mentioned underwear again today, I’d be just as glad. Which was worse? Underwear, or the “hero” thing? It was a close call.

  “Gifts,” he said. “That’s what you’d call what you’ve got, I reckon. Still got them, by how interested the girls are.” And, yes, we were on to the undies. Fortunately, we didn’t stay there, because he said, “That would be the other kind of strength, then. The kind you don’t know you have until you need it. The kind you build. Rough to think you’re losing it, maybe, when you worked so long to get it.”

  Bloody hell, was the man trying to make me squirm? I thought people this old were supposed to get senile. I also couldn’t pat the duck anymore without looking like I was avoiding something. “Maybe,” I said, and sat up.

  He didn’t say, “No ‘maybe’ about it, mate,” which he very well might have. Instead, he said, with another look up into the tree like he was checking on avocado ripeness, “A woman needs to feel cherished, unless she doesn’t think she’ll ever get it. Then, maybe she tries not to need it instead.”

  “In other words,” I said, “it’s not about me.”

  “Reckon it’s always about us, but it isn’t only about us. Not about what we get, anyway, because it could be that what we get is the least important thing, in the end. That could scare a young girl, thinking about the end, being brave anyway for her sister. Reckon both Hope and Karen could tell you about that, because it’s harder to be the one left behind. Could scare a fella, too, whether he’s sitting under his avocado tree with his mokopuna around him, or off in the desert somewhere, wondering if he’s about to die too far from home. Wondering if he ought to, because it was his turn, and somebody else took it.”

  I couldn’t answer, and he sighed and didn’t look at me. He looked at the mountain instead. His voice was deep and scratchy, the sound of the ancient limbs of a totara rubbing together in the wind, when he said, “I may know a bit about that myself. I had a granddaughter once, one you haven’t met. Tane and June’s youngest. Kahukura.”

  I did not have a good feeling about this. “Rainbow.”

  “Yeh. She had the right name, because she came out just like that. From the time she learnt to laugh, seemed like she never stopped. Never stopped moving, either. Cheeky monkey, always into something. Full of life, full of opinions from the moment she learnt to talk. Miss Sauce, same as Karen. Always thinking she ought to be going somewhere, ought to be doing whatever the big boys were. Boys are meant to be the ones getting into everything, but nobody told Kahukura that.” He sighed, leaned on his stick, and looked up at the mountain again before he went on, every word slow. Measured, or maybe painful. “We were having a hangi like this one. Matiu’s fifteenth birthday, it was, and we did it at Tane and June’s place. Not at the house where they are now. It was another one, down toward Tauranga. They moved, afterwards. Couldn’t bear to stay there, I reckon, though they said it was to be closer to me.”

  This was going to be something I absolutely didn’t want to hear. I could tell by the way my scalp was prickling.

  I was right. “She was meant to be having a nap,” he said. “June went into the house after an hour or so, though, and found her gone from her crib and nowhere in the house. Some of us were looking at first, and then we all were. Thinking we’d find her any minute, that any second, she’d come running, laughing again, thinking how funny she was to ha
ve slipped out. She’d be hiding somewhere, maybe, or off to visit the chickens. Must’ve got out of the front door while we were all around the back. Somebody’d left it unlatched, maybe, with all the coming and going. Anyway, we looked for half an hour or so, checking with the neighbors, more worried with every minute that went by. Imagining the worst, and trying to tell ourselves a different story instead.”

  Another sigh. I didn’t want him to go on, but he did anyway, because you couldn’t stop life from happening. “Tane’d already called the cops to help when Matiu found her. Down at the neighbor’s pond, wasn’t she, gone to look at the ducks. She loved those ducks. She was wearing a pink shirt. That’s what he saw. That pink, in the reeds, and the ducks swimming around.”

  Debbie gave a quack like he’d heard his name, waggled his tail feathers, and took a nibble at the grass. The leaves rustled overhead in the late-afternoon breeze, the music and the laughter floated around the house, and the old man said, “You’ve never seen a man move as fast as Tane when Matiu came over the hill with her. You’ve never seen a face like his when he took her from Matiu, or a man work as hard as he did trying to bring her back. And you’ve never heard a sound like the one that came out of June when they got her to hospital at last and the doctor told us she was gone. Didn’t even sound human.”

  My throat hurt, and so did my stomach, with that kind of tight, balled-up pain that comes from something too hard to swallow. So much for my idea that Tane had laughed his way through life. I’d been bowled out today every time I’d been on the pitch, emotional-intelligence-wise.

  “That was a sad day, if you like,” the old man said. “Maybe the saddest day. Maybe so. June was crying, and Tane wasn’t. Holding her, wasn’t he, putting the rest of it aside for now so he could do it. Still with that look on his face. That he should’ve stopped it. That he should’ve checked the door. That he should’ve noticed sooner. That he’d failed at the one thing a man needs to do more than anything else. He hadn’t protected his family. And me? I was thinking the same thing. I was thinking that other thing you always think, too.”

  “That it wasn’t fair.”

  He shook his head slowly. “Nah, mate. I’d given up on expecting ‘fair’ a long time before that. I was thinking it was my turn to go, not that wee girl’s, and that I’d have traded places in a heartbeat, if somebody had just asked me. I’d have said I’d given up on that idea as well, but you can’t help thinking it, can you, at a time like that. You don’t get to trade, though, because nobody did ask. And if you waste your life regretting that you’re still here instead, what’s the point? You could say it disrespects the dead when you feel that way.” He bent painfully down and gave Debbie a stroke. “Reckon you could say that.”

  He sat up again and was still, and so was I. I said, “I’m sorry.” The two most inadequate words in the English language.

  “Mm. You could have a think about this, maybe. That even if you live to be as old as me, you still won’t have a leg when you pass. Karen still won’t have a mum and dad, and Tane and June still won’t have their rainbow girl. Everybody loses too much. That’s life, eh. It’s not what you’ve lost that matters in the end, though. It’s what you leave behind after you go. Maybe that’s your mokopuna. Maybe it’s just being that space in somebody’s heart, someplace you filled that nobody else ever could. Got to be a reason you were left here, whatever you lost doing it. You could think about that, eh. Maybe it’s time to find out what that is. Maybe it’s time to find your reason.”

  Karen

  I went around the corner of the house to find Jax. What else was I going to do?

  I knew he wasn’t my True Love, or if I didn’t, I was trying to know it. I’d met him about a week ago, I hadn’t covered myself with glory since, I didn’t live in New Zealand, I didn’t even know where his house was, and he’d never offered to show it to me. I could at least talk to him, though. If he hadn’t left, that is.

  He hadn’t. He was sitting beside Koro, his elbows on his knees, everything about him looking like listening. He still had the almost-beard, but he’d shaved neatly around it this morning. The side of his face I could see was the one with the scar, and all he looked to me was beautiful.

  Koro looked up, and so did Jax. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. He stood up, and I said, “Hey.”

  He smiled, slow and sweet, and his gray eyes were so warm. “Hey,” he said. “Hi.” My pulse kicked up, my knees shook, and I thought, Wait. Wait. In total confusion. I tried to tell myself the not-your-true-love thing, but it wasn’t working.

  That was where we were when a white SUV came up the road and stopped at the driveway. It didn’t pull in, because there was no room, with cars filling the verge on both sides of the drive. The driver’s door opened, a pretty redhead leaned out of it and threw up onto the pavement, the same way I’d done a few days earlier, and Jax muttered something under his breath and headed over there fast.

  Koro was still in his chair, and Debbie appeared to have gone to sleep on his foot, like a duck who’d partied too hard. I asked, “Who’s that?”

  “Dunno,” Koro said. “Not somebody I know. Could be Jax does.”

  Jax was crouched beside the woman, his hand on her back. I told Koro, “He’s got a . . . pattern going here.” He had more than that. How had this woman known he was here? He must have called her. He must have been talking to her, when I’d thought he was with me. He had his arm around her now and was kissing her cheek in the exact same way he’d done with me when I’d done the exact same thing. After a minute, though, he stood up, opened the back door of the car, and leaned inside. A boy of four or five, his hair red and wildly curly, climbed out, and the fuzziest little dog in the world jumped out with him. Its black fur was matted, and it had a white muzzle, white paws, and a hairy, white-tipped tail that was going like mad. It was a very messy dog indeed, and as I watched, it lifted its leg against the car’s rear tire and took a long, luxurious pee.

  When Jax turned around at last, he had a toddler in his arms. She was dressed in short pink flowered overalls and had her strawberry-blonde hair fixed in two pigtails high on her head, and Jax adjusted her on his hip with too much familiarity and said something to the dog, who wagged his tail some more and panted happily. The girl had her own arms around his neck, and something cold was happening in my stomach, because what I was seeing was a family.

  The car was still running, but Jax headed up the walk to us, with the rest of them, dog and all, around him. When he got there, he told Koro, who’d risen to his feet, dislodging Debbie, “Seems my family decided to turn up and crash your party.”

  “Your . . . family,” I said.

  “Yeh,” he said, not fazed a bit. “Poppy, Hamish, and Olivia. And dog. The dog is a surprise, but then, the whole thing’s a surprise, eh. This is Wiremu Te Mana, Hemi’s grandfather. And Karen, who’s been checking out those sites with me, of course.”

  “Kia ora,” Koro said. “Haere mai. Welcome.”

  The dog had discovered Debbie. He uttered a joyous Woof, bowed down with his head on his paws and his butt in the air, wagged his tail furiously, and then leaped straight into the air and lunged at the duck. I grabbed Debbie fast, and Jax said, “He looks OK to me.” He was crouched down, giving the dog a scratch around the neck area like a man who hadn’t just tipped my world sideways. “You’re friendly, huh, boy? Want to play? You could use a bath, though. Didn’t know you’d got a dog,” he said to the redhead.

  “We haven’t,” she said. “I thought you could take him to Animal Control on Monday. Somebody’s lost him, probably. Besides, Max is allergic. But I couldn’t just leave him there. He was running up and down the pavement outside the apartment. He seemed so thirsty, and I think his foot pads are sore. He’s lost, or abandoned, because he doesn’t have a collar. We gave him water, but he needs feeding, and brushing, too.”

  “Which you reckoned I’d do,” Jax said. “Of course, the apartment has a no-pets policy, so there’s that.” He looked
amused, not at all like a man whose wife and girlfriend were standing three feet apart.

  “You could hide him,” the boy said. “You could put him in a basket with a very long rope and hold the rope, and he could go lower and lower, and then he could jump out at the bottom and do his wees, and then jump back in the basket so you could pull him up again, and nobody would see, except if they looked out their window. But if it was a very big basket, the dog could hide inside. He’s just a little dog.”

  “Mm,” Jax said. “I could do, if I didn’t think he’d jump out.” He gave the little girl a bounce, because he hadn’t set her down, and asked, “What do you think?”

  “You could has a garden,” she said, “and the doggie could go in the garden.” She took a breath. “Like a kitty. Maybe he could turn into a kitty.”

  Jax looked at me. Finally. “All right?” he asked.

  “Oh,” I said, and waved a careless arm, wondering who’d sucked all the air out of my body, “I’m just great, thanks.”

  He frowned. “What?”

  What? What did he mean, “what”? The boy said, “We came to sing to you! Because it’s your birthday! Mummy said you’d be sad if we didn’t, because you’re used to being with your mates, but you don’t have any mates here, because it’s not the Army. And we brought you some flowers and a piece of cake, except the dog sat on the flowers in the car and spilt all the water, so they’re a bit squashed. And he ate the cake, too. He even ate some of the bag it was in. So we don’t have the cake anymore.”

  Jax said, “I appreciate the thought, anyway. It’s Karen’s birthday, too, so you can sing to both of us, how’s that?”

  “You have a duck,” the boy said to me.

  “Yes,” I said. “I do have a duck. You didn’t mention that it was your birthday, Jax. And here you had so many opportunities to do it.” I was so mad, I could barely see. That must be mad, anyway. It had better be mad. I wasn’t going to cry, not here. Instead, I kissed Debbie’s head and didn’t look up, then set him down and headed off.