I was still reeling from the “apartment” thing. “He did?”
“Yes. Because he is a good man. Stupid, sometimes, like you, but good. I am not jealous, no. Everybody has their own life. Mine is good for me. Life is not a race, with only one winner.” She handed over my mug. “Take this to the shower with you. I have put your swimsuit and towel on your bed. Now go. I have many things to do.”
The next morning, I did call for a car. That was because the M&P campus was across the river, in Newark, or maybe it was because I needed to do this myself. I wasn’t sixteen anymore, and I wasn’t twenty-six, either. I was a grown woman, and a professional. I had ideas, and I had the ability to execute them. Time to believe it.
The kids had all hugged me this morning, and Maia had given me a homemade card made of construction paper and decorated with glitter, which she’d made in Aroha’s room with lots of whispering.
The front of it had a picture of two stick figures with dresses. The little one had curly hair and the big one didn’t, but they both had huge smiles and hands made out of a circle and five long lines sticking out for fingers.
“We’re holding hands,” Maia said, wriggling her way onto my lap at the breakfast table. “Except I don’t know how to draw holding hands, so you have to imagine.”
I kissed the top of her curly head. “I love the holding hands.”
“Look inside,” she said, and when I didn’t open the card quickly enough, she did it for me.
Good Luck Auntie Karen, it said in huge letters. The “L” was backwards, so was the “K,” and a shower of silver glitter fell into my lap from where she’d drawn hearts with glue and then sprinkled her shaker with abandon.
“Daddy has lots of meetings,” she told me. “But he says meetings can be scary sometimes anyway, so we should say, ‘Good luck.’ I wrote it for you. Maybe you can take it in your purse, and if your meeting is very scary, you can look in your purse.”
Oh, boy. In another minute, I was going to wreck my makeup. Hope said, “OK, everybody. Time to go to school, and let Auntie Karen get her mind ready for her meeting, too. It’s lucky that she’s very, very smart, so she doesn’t have to worry.”
“Plus she’s good at talking,” Aroha said. “All meetings are is talking. That’s why Dad’s good at them, because he’s so scary when he talks.”
Now, I stood in a ladies’ room of almost aggressive cleanliness, checked out the red turtleneck dress I’d been supposed to wear at the last meeting with these same people, told myself, Think scary thoughts, and headed on out and down the corridor. I had a plan, and Aroha was right. I was good at talking. Time to prove it.
The windows in this conference room didn’t open, the air was much more climate-controlled than in our converted warehouse in Philadelphia, and the furniture was better. Otherwise, though, it was the same. Deborah Delaney and David Glass sat on one side of the table, and Josh was beside me.
Deborah shook my hand and said, “It’s good to see you again, Karen,” like she meant it. Well, I guess I had been entertaining. I’d bet she hadn’t had many meetings end in exactly the way that one had.
Josh had a new fountain pen. It was black with silver ribs, and probably much more expensive than the first one. Probably the Rolls-Royce of fountain pens, the one he’d always coveted. I would’ve bet a hundred dollars that the nib was eighteen-carat gold, and that those stripes were something like platinum.
I wanted to throw it out of the window so badly.
Deborah said, “Well. Let’s get started, shall we?”
I said, “Fine. I’d like to do that without Josh, please.”
Everybody froze. Deborah looked at David, then uttered a completely unconvincing laugh and said, “I think we all know that isn’t possible. Josh is the CEO of Prairie Plus. The only way we can move forward is if the two of you can work together. If you can’t do that, I’m afraid we’ve all wasted each other’s time.”
I opened my spiral notebook. The cover was an abstract design in pink and blue watercolor, with white printing that said, “Think Positive. Be Positive.” It had cost $9.99. I was moving up in the world myself, it seemed.
“But you see,” I told them, “I have another idea.”
Jax
Karen had been gone more than two weeks.
She’d texted every day, but she hadn’t told me as much as I’d expected, or nearly as much as I wanted. She was having meetings, she told me, and that was about it. I tried to hope that she was getting what she needed, achieving the dream and the life she’d longed for. I couldn’t quite do it. I couldn’t shake the idea that the life she needed was with me.
She sent photos. Of herself with the kids, mostly. Standing at the edge of a pool, wearing her gray-camo bikini like the first time I’d seen her, with her arms around her youngest niece. Decorating heart-shaped cookies, messy creations of icing and candy hearts, with all three of the kids, because it was nearly Valentine’s Day. She was wearing an apron in that one, black polka dots outlined in a red heart shape over her breasts, with red straps and a red ruffle on the full skirt, tied with a big red bow around the waist. That was for Valentine’s Day, too, I guessed, or maybe just for driving a man crazy. She looked happy, and she looked adorable. Another snap of her alone, lying on the ground beside a sled, covered with snow from her beanie to her boots, with a text that said, It snowed! And I guess sledding’s not like riding a bike, because I seem to have forgotten how.
All of it could have been posted on her Facebook page, if she’d had one. None of it said, I’m missing you too much, and I can’t stand it. I’m coming back, because you’re what home means to me.
I wasn’t used to being helpless. I wasn’t enjoying it.
Clearly, I should have tried harder. I should have bought the ring and said the words, and never mind scaring her off.
After four days of working out in the Oamaru gym until my entire body was shaking, of fast, hard swims in the pool followed by running the loop of the South Hill and Skyline walkways until my stump was reddened and burning, I went up to Mount Maunganui again for almost a week, where I ran the hard track to the top of the mountain, swam in the sea, sat in the hot pools, and thought about a plan. After that, I flew home again and went where I wouldn’t be looking at my phone, on the cycle trip Karen and I had planned. The Alps 2 Ocean, done my way. Four days of hard grind, seventy-five off-road kilometers every day under the great granite peaks of the Southern Alps, traveling light and camping without a tent.
The track started off in the shadow of the towering mountains, still snow-capped even in February, the alpine grasses on the high plain gold with late-summer color. I rode beside Lake Pukaki, saw the jagged, icy peaks and ridges reflected on the turquoise surface, then took off the leg and jumped in, just for the jolt to my heart from the ice-cold water, and the way it numbed the pain. I swam hard, then climbed out, pulled my clothes on again, and shivered until the sun warmed me. I slept on the ground under the stars on a night without moonlight, and was awakened by a glow in the sky. Pink and gold, green and purple, shimmering and pulsing. The Aurora Australis, putting on a show just for me.
I rode through the gentle green hills above Kurow, across vineyards and paddocks, stopped at the River-T cellar door, risked cycling disaster by tasting their offerings, and headed off again with a bottle of Pinot Noir and another of Chardonnay in my saddlebags. I rode across the bridge, looked down at the winding braids of the Waitaki River making its way to the Pacific, and reminded myself that I’d lived alone for all my adult life, and during the last few of them, I’d learned how to live better. I stopped, on my last day, at the weird and wonderful limestone formations of the Elephant Rocks, tried my hand—and my feet—at bouldering, and quickly found that I had more work to do. I could drive up from Oamaru, though, another time, and do it again with the right shoes. Good for the flexibility and the strength, and I still had a month or more to go before I was back at work. If I were stationed in Christchurch, I’d have heaps of chance
s to try rock climbing.
It was time to try all sorts of things. Time to put my life and my faith to the test. You could roll over and give up, or you could keep trying.
By the time I turned off the highway onto my road in the late evening with my bike on the back of the car, I was sore, I was dirty, I was tired, and I was cold. The weather was changing, the wind freshening, a late-summer storm blowing up from Antarctica. Nice of it to have held off during my ride, and I’d enjoy watching the show tomorrow as the wind lashed the waves into a frenzy. No two days were ever exactly alike when you lived by the sea.
There was a car in the driveway again. Another rental sedan.
The last time hadn’t worked out too well, but never mind. This time, it was bound to be a mate.
She came around the corner of the house, her arms wrapped around herself again like that first day, when she’d stood at the window of the condo and looked out at Mauao, and I’d thought she looked wistful. This time, maybe she was just trying to stay warm.
I forgot about being tired and cold. I was out of the car the moment it stopped, and I had her in my arms.
I didn’t care why she’d come, or what she meant to say. I was going to say what I had to say, and bugger the consequences. This was my chance. Where did you get in life if you didn’t seize your chance when you got it?
She was laughing, and I thought she was close to crying. Wearing jeans and a gray sweater that slipped off one shoulder, showing twin purple ribbons of bra straps. Not a sports bra this time, but a pretty one instead. She looked bloody fantastic. She looked beautiful.
I said, “You came,” and then I took her head in my hands and kissed her. She wrapped her arms around me and kissed me back, and it felt like coming home. Because it was.
A gust of wind hit us, and the first drops of rain spattered the ground. I said, “Come inside,” and she said, “You’re dusty. Why are you dusty?”
“Did that cycle trip,” I said, opening the front door.
“Oh,” she said, and then the door closed behind us, and she had her hands on my face, was pulling it down again, kissing me some more while she pushed me back against the door. Kissing me like she’d missed me too much, and like she needed me now. “I don’t care if you’re dusty,” she said. “I want to take off your leg.”
She’d only managed to say half of that before I had her in my arms and was carrying her into the bathroom. I cared if I was dusty. I needed to give her my best.
She took off my leg, and then we got into the shower and she washed it, and all the rest of me, too, while I leaned against the wall and did the same for her. Kissing and touching with lazy, soapy hands, wanting to hurry, because I was so hungry for her, and wanting to slow it down, too, so it would never end. Wishing with everything in me that I could pick her up right here, because I needed it now, and knowing I had to wait. Hopping out, finally, when I couldn’t wait any longer, with her arm around my waist to help me into the bedroom, and not caring that she was helping, because it would get us there faster.
She said, “Towels,” and went back for them, and then she pushed me onto my back on the bed and dried me off with the kind of slow strokes that were too much to take right now. By the time she got to my abs, I was done. I took the towel from her hand and tossed it, got my own hands on her hips, and lowered her onto me, and my eyes just about rolled back in my head.
When you want to close your eyes, because it feels too good, but you have to keep them open, because you have to watch. When my hands were on her breasts, and her head was back, her own hand going down to touch herself, like she didn’t want me to have to work at all for this. Like she wanted to give me everything.
The rain was drumming on the roof by the time I was holding her hips tight and shoving her down hard, and she cried out and started to convulse around me.
“Say my name,” I said, and shoved her down again. “Say it.”
“Jax,” she said. “Jax. I love you. I love you.”
That was it. I was gone.
Karen
This hadn’t gone anything like I’d planned.
We were lying under the covers now, my back to his front, his arm and leg over me, while the rain came down hard all around us, the same way it had felt inside my body when he’d held me so tight.
He said, “I could’ve left marks. I’m sorry. I got carried away.” He was thinking about the same thing, then.
“You could’ve,” I said, picking up the hand that was on my breast and kissing it. “But I’ll forgive you this time. I have something to say, though. Something I came all the way here to say, in fact.”
His body went still behind me, and then he said, “Go on and say it.”
“I’m nervous,” I said.
“There is nothing you can say,” he said, “that will make me stop loving you.”
I tried not to cry. I didn’t manage it. I’d been so sure, flying here. But it mattered so much.
“Why don’t you have a . . . box of Kleenex?” I asked him when I’d gone for a roll of toilet paper and was sitting up in bed beside him, blowing my nose, with his arm around me, while the rain beat against the metal roof and rolled down the glass doors, and the sea breathed outside.
“Because I’m single,” he said, “and I’m a soldier. Tell me.”
I said, “I am now a consultant. What do you think?” And waited, holding my breath, for him to answer.
“Uh . . .” he said. “Explain.”
“Oh. OK.” I took a breath and launched into it. The plan I’d come up with while I’d been swimming, that first day, in the pool in Hemi and Hope’s building, when I’d been half out of my mind with fatigue and sadness and confusion, and with my stomach full of Inez’s pepián and pupusas. “I’d had all these amazing flavors,” I told him, “and the food was so filling and so comforting, exactly what I needed. And I thought—pie.”
“Uh—pie?”
“What’s my favorite thing to eat, every time I come to New Zealand? What always makes me think, ‘Why can’t I get this? Why don’t we have this?’ What is so delicious, you can’t stand it, and can take any kind of meat, or not meat, any kind of filling?”
“Ah,” he said. “Pie.”
“Russian salmon pie,” I said, “with cabbage and onion and potato. Savory roasted pumpkin and leek pie. Curried chicken pie. Beef and vegetable pie with chili sauce. Bison and mushroom pie. But with good crust, the fish is wild, and the meat comes from grass-fed animals. It’s all about sourcing and production and not cutting any corners. I know how to do all of that, and that’s just my first idea. There’s such an untapped market out there, because frozen pizza is still terrible, but that’s the kind of thing people want. Food their kids will eat, food that satisfies them. You can freeze savory pies, and they’ll bake up so delicious, and if you’ve got enough vegetables in there, you’ve got your meal. I’m sure. This is it. And ideas like this are what I do. They’re what I’m good at. Forecasting tastes, seeing the trend before it happens.”
“OK,” he said slowly. “So . . .”
“So I said that I didn’t want to do Prairie Plus anymore, or to be an employee. That was off the table. I want to consult, to develop products. I told them that the pie idea wasn’t covered by my noncompete—and no worries, I didn’t explain it in enough detail that they’d have been able to do anything with it—so if they didn’t want me, that was fine, and I’d go to Sunshine Foods instead.”
“And what did the wanker say?” Jax asked. “Sorry, but I need to know.”
“I made them kick him out before I told them anything. He’s not going to run Prairie Plus well without me. Food products are about food, not the money part, or the marketing. All the marketing in the world won’t sell something people don’t want to eat. He’s going to flounder. They’re going to need my ideas, eventually, and I’m going to sell them to them. Maybe even to Josh, but not until I don’t care what he thinks or what kind of pen he has.”
“Uh . . . pen?”
“Is this a test?” he asked. “I use whatever’s handy.”
“You pass.” I wanted to get up and pace, but I needed to stay here, because his body was so warm, and his arm felt so good. “So I’ll be doing some traveling, sourcing ingredients, figuring out production, but that’s all right, because you’ll be doing some traveling, too, and that’ll just make it more exciting when we’re together again, right? And I told them I’d be based here.”
After that, I held my breath.
“Ah,” he said, and he was starting to smile. “You told them that.”
It was going to be all right. It was going to be all right. “Yeah. I did. Non-negotiable. I’d left without seeing Koro, and I’d left without you, and neither of those things works. Anyway, Christchurch is closer to Chile than New York is, I’ll tell you that.”
“Chile?”
I waved a hand. “Chile for produce. Maybe Australia, too. In winter, when we can’t use the organic stuff from the States. Also Argentina, for beef. And Americans don’t eat lamb at all, or almost never. I could do a spiced ground lamb pie that would be amazing. Cardamom, ginger, cumin. There you go. New Zealand.” I laughed, because I couldn’t help it. As usual during a fraught moment with Jax, I needed to pee, but I needed to say this first. “I couldn’t believe it. It just bloomed right there out of my head like magic. It just . . . came, when I didn’t think any ideas ever could. And since then, I’m doing it again. I’m waking up and having to write things down. I’m making cookies with the kids and thinking about pie crust, and how we have to use butter. It’s back. I’m back.”
Kiwi Rules (New Zealand Ever After Book 1) Page 40