by Nicky Webber
‘You okay?’ asked Logan, concerned, watching his friend closely. ‘What’s wrong, Fred?’
Fred said nothing, but leaned forward, grasped the folded note and flung it at Logan, already ashen-faced.
Two days later Fred invited Hawke over for drinks and asked Logan to make himself scarce. He didn’t have to ask twice or offer any explanation.
Hawke clasped the beer offered to him by his father and sat down on the uncomfortable old armchair facing Fred on the sofa. They chatted about the past week, exchanging pleasantries, while Fred struggled to decide how to approach the topic he was desperate to discuss.
‘Listen, Hawke, life’s insane most of the time, but I guess you’ve figured that out by now,’ Fred said.
‘For sure,’ chuckled Hawke, clinking his beer bottle against Fred’s. ‘Where’s Logan and Mom?’
Fred sucked in a deep breath through his nose and tried to make his facial expression look calm. ‘Logan has gone down to the coast and is staying with the Dowlings for a few weeks. Do you remember Chuck and Julie? They were old friends of his and Mila’s from years ago.’
Hawke gulped down a mouthful of cold beer. He looked across at his father. ‘And Mom?’ he asked.
‘Well, that’s part of what I want to talk about,’ Fred said, accepting this as the opening for the more serious conversation he needed to share with Hawke.
‘Things have been rough lately, you know, financial stress and pressure to repay debts we accumulated with everything over the past few years,’ Fred explained.
Hawke nodded sagely, pressing his lips together, conveying an appreciation of the problem. ‘Yeah, I was hard on her the other day, too. I was just angry and wanted to load the blame onto her. Mom has said in the past that things were tight. I get it. I’ve still got that damn student loan, and of course, you guys have been chipping away at those medical expenses.’ He raised his eyebrows and concentrated his blue eyes on his father. ‘I know there are costs with Grandpa Erik, too. It all seems to mount up.’
‘For sure. Difficult. But your Mom had…’
Hawke interrupted Fred and pushed his body forward, firmly facing his father, adding emphasis to his words. ‘I get it,’ he said emphatically. ‘You know I’ve been thinking about ways we could clear our expenses and then some,’ He said, looking pleased that he had his father’s attention. Confusion masked Fred’s expression, prompting Hawke to explain in more detail.
‘Let’s just say, for argument’s sake, that we had a way to swing a bit of cash into our pockets. What would you think?’ asked Hawke, taking another swig of his beer and keeping his eyes firmly on his father.
‘What do you mean?’ Fred asked, perplexed.
‘I’m eyebrow deep in the banking system, and I’m working in a team focussed on capturing money laundering activity. Bruno’s been talking about some cases he’s working on as well. You know, it’s the next big thing. Everyone’s hot for it. I think we are perfectly placed to skim a bit off each transaction and squirrel it away. Like on a rainy day. It seems to me we’re having a permanent rainy day, and it’s still going to take years to clear the decks, but I think I’ve come up with a fool-proof answer.’
‘Are you saying what I think you’re saying?’ Fred asked, feeling his blood rushing to his brain, already in overdrive. He could visualize sitting in a federal prison for the rest of his life.
‘Look, just hear me out. I’m just saying you need to keep an open mind.’
Fred pressed his lips together, struggling to swallow his mouthful of beer as he listened to the stranger opposite. Is this really Hawke? He sounded like a complete outsider. Or was he losing his own mind under all the stress? The tension and nightmares of growing debt and the fatherhood bombshell were all swirling as Hawke continued talking. Fred shook his head, trying to concentrate on the this unfamiliar person in front of him.
‘With your financial software tech-savvy experience you could write a string or three of code to infiltrate each transaction and just round the dollars up or down and siphon fractional amounts into an offshore tax haven.’ Hawke gloated, smiling like a world-class genius.
‘Son. How much have you had to drink?’ Fred asked.
‘Listen, Dad, think about it for a minute. You’re right in the zone and so am I. Between us we can pull off a no-contest heist. Seriously! I mean it,’ Hawke added as Fred laughed. He couldn’t help it or stop himself. The whole concept was ludicrous. This was not the way he expected this conversation to go.
‘We’ll never get caught. It’s a no-brainer,’ Hawke continued, trying to get Fred to take him seriously.
After a few minutes, Fred calmed himself, and stared at Hawke.
‘You know I wanted to tell you that your mother is very distressed and has gone away for a few days.’
‘What? There’s no way she would leave you and Logan alone at home,’ Hawke grinned with a creeping sense of concern leeching into his face.
‘I’m serious,’ said Fred. ‘We were talking. Well, arguing I guess about you and Sacha…’
‘Please!’ said Hawke, his face shifting into anger. ‘Let’s not go there again!’ He thrust his empty beer bottle onto the coffee table between them.
‘Well, have I got news for you, Mr. Davis Junior!’ Rage was coursing through Fred’s veins too. He could see the arrogance Logan displayed sometimes, reflected in Hawke’s attitude. Even the expressions on Hawke’s face mimicked his best friend’s. Why had he never noticed before?
‘I’m not your father, but there’s a serious legal problem,’ Fred said. ‘You involved with your half-sister could cause some issues.’ He had thrown down the gauntlet and chucked ice water on the young man’s ego.
Hawke jolted his head backward, his heavy fringe obscuring his eyes. He dragged his hand through his hair to see his tormenter more clearly. Leaning in closer, he looked directly into Fred’s eyes.
‘So what?’ Hawke almost breathed the words as they hung like blades in the room, pinning each man’s thoughts into a corner.
‘Mom has already told me anyway,’ he said dismissively.
CHAPTER 23
Confronting the Facts
Sacha and Hawke were alone in the apartment on Sunday morning, picking at their breakfast in silence, both considering the personal impacts of recent revelations.
Hawke scrutinized his plate with half-finished bacon and eggs and lifted his head to look at his girlfriend. ‘Are you okay?’
‘Not really,’ she said, lifting her head to meet his across the table. They paused, considering one another and if they should talk about the elephant in the room.
‘I know. It’s hard to take,’ Hawke said.
‘A bit?’ she offered.
‘Well, what I mean is I keep thinking about us being brother and sister, and I just can’t get my head around it.’
‘You don’t want to accept it?’ she asked, her blue eyes filling with tears.
‘It’s worse than that. I just can’t believe it!’
She looked back down at her plate as a tear fell and bounced off her fork.
‘Hey.’ Hawke pushed his chair back and walked around, standing beside her. ‘I don’t know what to say.’ He rested his hand on her shoulders and then pulled her up towards him and hugged her close. Their heads nuzzled in one another’s neck as they clung together, and both wept.
After a few minutes, Sacha pulled away and walked to the kitchen countertop to grab some tissues, offering a couple to Hawke.
‘It can’t just be a break, some space and time between us to prove our commitment,’ she said. ‘But a complete break-up.’
She cried again, and Hawke stepped forward to comfort her, but she raised her right hand to stop him.
He frowned with confusion. ‘Don’t you love me anymore?’ he asked.
Sacha shook her head and held her breath, pulling herself up straight. ‘Of course, I do Hawke. I love you with every cell in my body,’ she explained. ‘But we are siblings and cannot be lovers.’
/>
‘Is that why you’ve not wanted to have sex with me recently?’ he asked.
‘Partly. I just need time to adjust to all of this. I can’t see a way forward. I don’t know what to do.’
‘Hey, Sacha. Think about it. I am only your half-brother. Surely that makes me different?’ he said, trying to apply some logic. ‘I am not Blake. I’m not a full-blooded brother. Don’t you see it? There must be a way for us. I can’t stop loving you. That’s impossible.’
They spent the next hour in the living room talking, hugging, crying, and laughing, and finally Sacha agreed.
‘Obviously, we would have to move away somewhere and live as a married couple then, and keep our relative genetics a complete secret,’ Hawke said.
Sacha smiled. ‘Yes, I see that could be a solution, and maybe we could adopt children?’
He shrugged his shoulders but countered, ‘let’s not get too ahead of ourselves. We need to put on a brave face and tell our parents that we accept the situation. Give ourselves some time to process all of this.’
‘Let’s face it. We’ve both had some scrapes in our teenage years. I remember when Maddy caught me with a joint that time.’ Sacha laughed.
‘Ha! We can survive anything.’ chuckled Hawke.
‘I didn’t like it anyway,’ she said.
‘I did!’ he grinned.
‘And I took the heat. You owe me big time,’ Sacha said. ‘What about the time you nearly got caught online gambling? How old were you, fourteen… fifteen?’
‘Lucky you caught me, and not Mom,’ he replied.
‘Or your Dad!’ she shot back.
‘My ex-Dad, you mean,’ he laughed. ‘Two dads. Who would’ve thought!’
Sacha gave a puzzled frown. ‘I seem to recall you still owe me the payments I made to cover your gambling debts!’
‘Hey! Nice try, but I’m sure I paid you the $34.82 back!’ he grinned. ‘Significant year that. Two vices nipped in the bud. Thank heavens,’ he said. God knows what wayward lifestyle you would be living by now.’
‘Talking of wayward. Do you remember the time you were renting out those porn mags at high school?’ Sacha chuckled.
‘Did Mom tell you that?’ Hawke looked annoyed.
‘I was so shocked and then doubly shocked by the store owner’s response,’ Sacha grinned.
Hawke told Sacha the full story, to lighten the mood and avoid the doldrums they had just waded through.
Hawke was only fourteen years old when Maddy was busily vacuuming the floors with her clothes firmly on! She worked her way into Hawke’s bedroom, but when she pushed the vacuum head under his bed, it struck a box. Bending down, she dragged it out into the room. Inside were about twenty old Playboy magazines. The unusual thing about it was the missing mastheads on the front cover of each magazine. Someone had cut the header title from the covers.
Taken aback, Maddy tried to reason with herself. Apart from the pornography aspect, and boys will be boys. Her reassurance seemed hollow. Where the hell had he gotten these from?
She tackled him when he returned from school.
At 4.30 pm that same afternoon, Hawke strolled into the house, flung his heavy backpack onto the dining table, and opened the fridge. Maddy walked into the kitchen at the same time.
‘Well, how’s your day been?’ she innocently asked her youngest son.
‘Cool.’ he shrugged, turning back to the open fridge and grabbing a carton of milk. ‘And yours?’ he asked, not paying any attention to his mother.
‘Interesting, in the Chinese proverb kind of way,’ Maddy responded.
Hawke stopped and turned to face her. ‘Really? What gives?’
‘I found a supply of porn mags under your bed!’
Hawke froze, frantically trying to articulate the correct response.
When nothing was forthcoming, she continued. ‘At fourteen-years old, you’re about four years short of the legal age requirement to have these items in your possession. As a parent, they could send me to jail for child neglect or worse.’
‘Nah,’ Hawke frowned. ‘I got them out of the recycling bins behind the shops.’
After some discussion, it transpired that Hawke had stolen the recycled magazines from behind a local convenience store. On further inquiry, he revealed he was renting the magazines out to his friends at school for $1.00 each. This fee, Hawke quickly to pointed out, was the overnight rate. Students could hire them by the hour for fifty cents.
Lost for words, Maddy felt torn between feeling impressed by her son’s entrepreneurial approach and conflicted by the risk of Hawkes’ underage illegal activities.
After a full minute of silence, she came up with a genius solution which would provide a reasonable level of humiliation to teach Hawke a lesson. A punishment that should fix Hawke for life.
‘You take that box of magazines back to the store owner and explain how you came by them. You’ll also offer an apology for stealing them from his yard.’
Maddy was pleased to note the blood rushing into Hawke’s face, mortified by the very idea.
‘You can’t be serious?’ he asked, as the full horror of fronting up to the store owner hit home.
Ten minutes later, mother and son walked into the small store. The owner, a middle-aged Indian man with an open, friendly face, greeted his two customers.
Hawke loaded the heavy box onto the countertop.
‘What’s this?’ asked Mr. Patel glancing from one face to the other.
Maddy prodded Hawke with her elbow to step forward and explain.
At first, Mr. Patel grew more surprised while listening to the teenage boy’s explanation. The older man asked several questions and quickly appreciated the reason for the visit. Embarrassed, Hawke quickly apologized and fell into a red-faced silence. Maddy offered apologies too and pointed out how inappropriate pornography should never fall into the hands of anyone underage. Mr. Patel calmly listened and nodded. When Maddy stopped talking, he leaned across the counter at Hawke and patted him on the shoulder.
‘Well, Mrs. Davis, he is just a boy, and no harm done,’ Mr. Patel smiled reassuringly.
Before Maddy could respond, the Mr Patel grabbed a chocolate candy stick and handed it to the boy. ‘No problem,’ Mr. Patel comforted Hawke, who grabbed his astonished mother and guided her out of the front door, thankful there were no explosions but still harboring sincere regret at leaving his magazines behind.
CHAPTER 24
Finding Maddy
It had been three agonizing sleep-deprived nights since Maddy had disappeared. After the first real heart-pumping, furious argument Fred and Logan had shared in many years, they had finally calmed themselves down. They reluctantly agreed to shift their focus to finding Maddy. Both had called friends and left cell phone messages and emails. But every attempt to contact Maddy was met with a wall of terrifying silence. Fear lacerated their emotional wounds, and the bitter pair finally agreed they needed to work together to locate her.
She was the love of both their lives and in reality, nothing had changed, apart from the historical facts of Hawke’s conception. Dread dominated their days and tortured their sleepless nights. The fear of never seeing her again dominated their thoughts and strangled their sullen, stilted conversations. Hawke’s acceptance of his own situation also fostered an increased desire to find his mother. This aspect amused Hawke, much to the consternation of both his fathers. The very next day, after Fred’s conversation with Hawke and the associated uproar, Hawke called Fred’s cellphone.
‘Dad, I need to apologize. I mishandled things. I’m sorry. It doesn’t matter about all that old history. It’s in the past. You’re still my Dad,’ he said. ‘It will change nothing.’
‘Really?’ Fred said, amazed at how comfortable Hawke seemed with a situation his parents were convinced would be earth shattering.
‘In a strange way, I always thought of you both as my father. You and Logan have always been a big part of my life. You’ve both been there for me every step
of the way. What does it matter? Nothing’s changed.’
‘Wow, I’m impressed with your attitude towards this,’ Fred said. ‘What did your Mom say to you?’
‘She told me two days ago, and I owe her an apology, too. After thinking about it overnight, I thought we could have a kind of ceremony. You know, a renaming ceremony with my two Dads and Mom, of course, and I’ll become Hawke Jones-Davis.’ Hawke waited for a response. There was none.
‘You know, just for fun,’ Hawke added. ‘Any excuse for a party. By the way, when’s Mom coming home?’
Fred needed some time and space to absorb Hawke’s attitude and response. He must be in shock, talking this way. If anyone was in shock, it was him. He raised his eyebrows to Logan, questioning if his friend wanted to talk to Hawke.
‘Logan’s here. Do you want to tell him this yourself?’ Fred handed the cell phone to his friend.
They continued talking. Fred silently congratulated himself on deflecting Maddy’s absence. As far as Hawke knew, his mother was still staying up the coast with Jess and Sven. As Fred thought about ways of finding her, he overheard Logan talking.
‘I’m sorry, Hawke.’ Logan was saying. ‘Both your mother and I were feeling sad and embarrassed by how all this has played out. In our ignorance, we imagined silence was the best policy. We didn’t want to hurt anyone.’ There was a pause. Logan spoke again. ‘Really… Okay… Look, I’ll talk to your parents.’ More silence with Logan concentrating on Hawke’s voice. ‘Right. So do you want to speak to your Dad again?’
Logan looked dumbfounded, shrugged his shoulders, pulling an awkward face before passing the cell phone over to Fred.
‘Yeah?’ Fred said several times, listening intently. He glanced at Logan a few times before clicking the phone off. Both men stood in the kitchen and stared at one another before bursting into collective laughter.
‘It’s weird, as if Hawke’s always known. Crazy. The person I expected to be the most upset now wants a re-naming ceremony. Truly? This family is as nuts as a eunuch in a cathouse!’