by Bowes, K T
Phoenix was the start of something pure, a new legacy. Logan’s grandmother made him promise to create something different out of their deceitful, adultery-riddled heritage and he couldn’t do it without his wife.
Hana straightened her clothing and put her shoulders back. She used tap water and conditioner she found in the bathroom cupboard to sort out her hair. A bag of old make up in a drawer removed the haggard look from her face. When she finished, she smiled at herself and set her jaw in a determined line. Hana Du Rose emerged from the bathroom, looking very different from the bedraggled woman who went in.
Logan chatted to Phoenix in the bedroom, so Hana straightened the living room and folded the blanket, putting it back on the sofa. When she reached the bedroom, her husband’s conversation stopped her dead. “I was on a train in England when I first saw Mummy,” he said. “I was only fourteen. She was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. I spent twenty-six years searching for her and then when I’d given up, there she was.”
Hana heard Phoenix gurgle and coo in answer and when she peeked around the door, Logan leaned over the child watching her rosebud lips forming unintelligible words. “Yeah, clever girl. Your mummy was doing her clumsy act and everything rolled from her handbag onto the concrete and she grovelled on the floor right in front of me. She has gorgeous legs, but don’t tell her.” Logan kissed the rounded sole of a bare baby-foot and sighed. “It still took me weeks to pluck up the courage to talk to her though. Remember this stuff, Phoe. It’s your heritage. When you can say full sentences and remember stuff, I’ll make your own mihi and teach you it, so you always understand where you’re from.” He sighed and Hana’s heart chilled. “It’s important to know where you’re from, baby. Otherwise you end up like me. Nowhere.”
Hana needed to break off the maudlin reverie, shouldering responsibility for her husband’s sanity on her slender porcelain frame. “I’m ready to go back,” she said, entering the bedroom and putting an edge of nonchalance into her voice.
Logan shook his head and smiled. “Not tonight, love,” he said, the scar underneath his right eye creasing as he winked at his daughter. “I called Angus. He’s agreed to get the unit renovated. If we find it acceptable, we can go back. If not, I’ve told him to get some other fool to run St Bart’s. The cost is too high.”
Hana tried hard to keep the relief from her face but Logan knew. He left Phoenix on the bed, kicking her little legs with her bare bottom laid on a plastic change mat. He pulled his wife into his side, appreciating her bravery more than Hana would ever know. Kissing her neck and hair, he whispered, “Nothing’s more important than my girls. Nothing’s worth losing you over; not ever. Do you believe me, Hana?”
She nodded slowly, distracted by Logan’s butterfly kisses on her face. She sighed and sought his lips, feeling at least for now, she had possession.
Chapter 4
A peaceful evening followed the wretched day. Logan drove into Ngaruawahia township and fetched fish and chips, which they shared in front of the television.
“Oh, it’s so nice to sit on the sofa feeding Phoe without worrying about falling between the gaps in the springs.”
“Yeah, I know,” Logan tutted. “I’m sorry.” He sat with his arm around her, stroking Phoenix’s feet.
Hana saw the blackness descend and sensed him thinking of his mother again. She nudged him. “Are you thinking about what happened?”
Logan shook his head and gnawed on his bottom lip. “Just thinking about Dad...well, I guess I should call him Alfred now. It’s such a mess.” He sighed and squeezed the bridge of his nose between finger and thumb, smiling at the way the baby kicked her legs in protest.
“You stopped your massage,” Hana said with a smirk. “Boy, you’re whipped!”
“Can we not talk about anything to do with the farm or the hotel or the people, just for tonight?” Logan asked, his voice heavy. Hana experienced a spark of annoyance but knew pressing her husband would achieve nothing, apart from an argument.
“Why do you tell Phoe how we met?” she asked instead. “She won’t remember.”
Logan shrugged. “Course she will, if I tell her often enough. It becomes ingrained, as truth. Besides, it’s important; she needs to know. I’ve spent my life being brought up by a man who isn’t my father. My daughter will understand her history.”
“I guess.” Hana’s mind wandered back twenty-six years as she sat beneath the safety of her husband’s arm. Logan’s striking grey eyes stared at her from an olive, boyish face. Hana was eighteen and travelling with her Indian boyfriend on the London tube train. It was a dreadful journey on the Circle Line to break the news of her pregnancy to Vik’s Sikh parents and Hana cried most of the way there. Logan stared intently, getting eye contact with the beautiful redhead only once. Logan’s mother passed Hana a handkerchief for her tears, as the disgraced teen dismissed the moment as a minor bright spot in the ‘day from hell.’ But they remembered, the New Zealand tourists - the mother and son.
“You won’t tell her why I was crying, will you?” Hana asked, wincing and Logan snickered.
“Not if you don’t want me to, no.”
“I don’t want you to,” Hana said. “I’m not sure Bodie ever worked it out. Vik wasn’t big on wedding anniversaries so hopefully he never will.” She bit her lip and pushed the thought away from herself. He wasn’t big on marriage vows either.
At bedtime, Hana stood in the cool bedroom cradling the baby and casting around. “Damn! The cot’s still at the unit. What am I gonna do? She can’t sleep between us - you’ll squash her.”
“Thanks!” Logan replied indignantly. He horrified Hana by emptying his bottom drawer, cushioning the wood with blankets and laying his daughter in it. He laughed at his wife’s outrage. “It was good enough for me,” he said with a smile, “and I was six foot four at birth!”
Hana slapped his arm and pulled the blankets tighter around the sleeping baby, clearing a space on the dressing table for the makeshift bed. “Thank goodness she’s stopped crying,” she said, rubbing her eyes and showing her tiredness. “I made a terrible mess of coping. I thought I’d be much more together this time around, but I’m actually not.”
Logan wrapped his arms around her, fretting at how thin she had become in the last few weeks of stress. “I miss your pregnancy curves,” he crooned in her ear. “I liked you shapely, with big...”
Hana pushed her husband away, smirking, but Logan caught her again and wouldn’t let go. He held her tightly and pressed his full lips against hers. “Let me say it once more and then I’ll stop,” he whispered, frowning at Hana’s confused expression. “I’m sorry for allowing Angus to browbeat me into helping him out. It was a big mistake, given the horrific summer we endured. We needed time to heal and we didn’t get it. I’m sorry.” He sighed into Hana’s hair and she snuggled into him, knowing by instinct there was nothing she could say to make it any easier for him. Instead, she pushed her hands up under his shirt.
“How about I distract you while Phoe’s asleep?” she offered and Logan smiled.
“I think I could be persuaded.”
Hana slipped her sweatshirt over her head, revealing the maternity bra beneath. “Oh.” She looked down in disappointment, her sexy image dissipating before her eyes. Logan’s lips curved upwards in anticipation and he bit his lower lip.
“And the rest,” he whispered. The desire in his face emboldened Hana, folding her in a haze of love and she shed the rest of her clothing with a series of sexy shimmies.
“You’re so gorgeous,” Logan growled, grabbing her around her waist and under her knees and carrying her over to the bed. He removed his clothes, making Hana wait while he revealed his muscular olive chest and the dusting of dark hair covering it. She followed the line down his stomach and narrowed her eyes as it disappeared into his boxer shorts. When Logan joined her on the huge bed, Hana reached for him instantly, pulling him on top of her and seeking his lips with urgency.
Some of the pain l
eft Logan’s eyes as they cuddled up in the big four poster bed later. Hana ran her hand between his pectorals, making him shudder as she dragged her finger across his nipple. The baby slept in her drawer, gentle snores punctuated by the sound of thumb sucking.
“She only started that yesterday,” Hana sighed, regret in her voice. “I think it was the upset with the jabs; she got so distressed.” She tried not to allow herself to step back into yesterday’s misery, the endless, painful crying and utter powerlessness as her child suffered. “I tried to take her back to the clinic but they said it’d stop. She cried until after we saw you this morning. Actually, she cried until we got up here.”
Logan took Hana’s roving fingers in his big hand and pulled her onto his chest. “You’re a great mum, Hana, stop being so hard on yourself. And Phoe was sucking her thumb in the scan. We saw her. Maybe she worked it out properly.” Hana protested but Logan placed a finger on her lips and she heard the cry of his heart in the softly whispered words, “We both love her, Hana. She already has more than I ever did.”
Phoenix woke Hana twice in the night, feeding hungrily to help her little body cope with the bacteria from the inoculations. In between, she slept soundly, allowing her mother to shuck her own exhaustion.
“I feel so much better,” Hana exclaimed next morning, much saner and ready to deal with the day. After a six o’clock feed, Hana washed the baby in the shower with her, handing her out to Logan to dress in a fresh nappy, vest and sleep suit.
Logan stumbled around sleepily in his boxer shorts, struggling to get going and startled by his cell phone bleeping from his jacket pocket in the kitchen. He grunted in reply to the caller and Hana looked at him expectantly as he came back into the bedroom. “Angus has contractors working on the unit today. He said you should stay here for the next few days and come back after the weekend when it’s finished.” Logan sounded tired, rubbing his hand over his face and through his hair.
“What about you?” Hana asked, rebellion raising her tone. “I’m not staying here without you.” A determined set to her jaw told Logan there was no point arguing with his wife when she looked that way.
“He rostered me for another night duty tonight...” he saw Hana open her mouth to complain and rushed to finish his sentence. “I told him I’m not doing anymore this week. It’s a ridiculous workload and I’m knackered. He’s getting someone else to cover. I told him yesterday he’s taking advantage so I’ll teach my classes and then I’m coming home here.”
Logan sat on the bed to put his socks on and Hana agonised, her brow knotted with the burden of Caroline’s visit tightening her chest. She began haltingly and her astute husband picked up on her reticence. “You had a visitor yesterday,” Hana said, fiddling with a thread on the baby’s little suit. “Caroline came by. She said she needed to see you.”
Logan’s body went rigid and Hana heard him exhale at the mention of his ex-fiancé’s name. His hands stopped, his sock dangling off the end of his foot and his fingers twitching. He swore under his breath and shook his dark head. “What did she say to you?” He spoke through gritted teeth, his jaw tight.
“Just...things.”
“It’s why you came here?”
“One reason, but Logan, she wouldn’t take no for an answer. I said nasty things to her,” faltered Hana. “About the baby she lost and I shouldn’t have. I was so tired and...oh, it doesn’t matter.” If Hana sought reassurance from Logan, she sensed as the words left her mouth, none was coming. She wanted him to promise he wouldn’t touch Caroline with a ten foot bargepole, but he said nothing. Hana was terrified he might fall under the woman’s spell again and be lost to her, bewitched by a spiteful schemer and his silence offered no guarantee.
Hana tried to shut her thoughts out as they strayed down a dangerous route. Caroline had done much to sabotage their relationship already, turning up at the school in the same office as Hana and vying to get Logan back, getting pregnant to a colleague and then telling everyone the baby was Logan’s. Damaged by her first husband’s infidelity and exhausted from new motherhood, Hana doubted she had the energy to fight a second attack from Caroline.
Hana sighed as Logan recommenced putting his socks on. “I’m nipping to the unit,” she stated, snuggling Phoenix into her shoulder. “I left stuff lying all over the place and I don’t want the contractors picking my knickers up off the floor.”
Logan offered no reaction, shutting down on her as the spectre of Caroline violated his safe place. Hana sniffed at the baby’s soft hair, smelling shower gel and baby talc and wondering how Logan’s former fiancé got to ruin things so effortlessly. She turned to leave the room and saw her husband make the slightest movement with his left hand, reaching around his chest and touching the area under his right arm. His brow knitted and Hana went back to him, kneeling at his feet and plonking the baby on his lap. She reached up and touched the space on his body where his shirt shrouded the awful jagged scar, Caroline’s ugly childhood legacy to him. “I love you, Loge. All of you.” She looked up into his face. “I love every scar on your beautiful body and don’t you forget it!”
Logan was muscular and well-toned, but rarely took his shirt off in front of anyone but Hana. The dirty machete which split his body from armpit to hip, left emotional and physical scars. A teenage Caroline ordered it and Logan’s brothers did her bidding, not caring that his haemophilia might hasten his death. Hana fixed her face into a forced smile, hating Caroline for her savagery. “It’s going to work out, babe.” Her voice was soft as she sought to drag Logan back from the blackness which circled the room and taunted him.
Phoenix lay on her daddy’s lap, her head resting against his stomach and her legs dangling over his knees, still sucking her thumb. Logan gripped her around her tummy with his left hand, wrapping his other arm around Hana. His wife pulled his shirt from the waistband of his trousers and leaning into him, kissed the scar half way up, embracing its ugliness to prove her point. Logan laughed as it tickled, startling Phoenix who pulled a sad face and pushed her bottom lip out to cry.
“Silly baby, you’re fine!” Hana crooned, pushing her face into the baby’s tummy and making noises to distract her. Phoenix took her thumb out of her mouth and flapped her arms, kicking Hana in the chin and seizing a handful of her hair. “Ouch!” Hana squeaked, struggling to untangle herself from the tiny fists.
Logan kissed Hana on top of her head and hoisted the baby so he supported her in his left arm, standing up and leaving the room. Hana sighed and hauled herself up onto the bed. She would never understand why Logan ended up nearly married to a woman who brought him nothing but harm. Despite his obvious distaste, Hana nervously twirled her wedding band, still fearing Caroline’s influence in a subliminal, irrational way.
Logan used his motorbike to get to school, leaving the Honda for Hana to flit around in. He helped her load Phoenix into the passenger side in her car seat, kissing her fluffy head as he closed the door. “Come here, gorgeous.” He wrapped his arms around Hana and kissed her. “Drive carefully,” he whispered. Then he climbed onto the powerful bike, starting the engine and labouring down the steep driveway, his brake lights flashing relentlessly against the drop.
The ride into town cleared his head, allowing him to open the throttle and lose some of his demons on the trip south. His mother’s face loomed in front of him, causing him to swerve in panic. She seemed to condemn him for his naivety and it bit at his core as a constant ache. “I know, I know,” he hissed. “So many things I should have said. So many things I could have done.” The words, too busy, condemned him with the knowledge he missed the final opportunity to hold her vibrant body which trembled like a box of birds, or hear her berate him for not eating properly.
The day Miriam Du Rose died, Logan occupied himself getting everything on the farm ready to ramp down for the Christmas holiday and take a well-deserved break. He worked tirelessly moving the stock around and checking fences and troughs. He hadn’t understood there were more important things.
Life could change in a day.
In his mind’s eye he saw his mother leave the hotel the afternoon she died, making the steep climb up the mountain along the boundary. “Where’s she going?” he asked his head stockman and Toby blanched.
“Leave it, Logan. We’ve got stuff to do here.”
“Na, she’s been sick again, I’m gonna check on her.” Logan mounted the bay gelding and followed her. The depressed phase of Miriam’s condition ended a few weeks previously, but Logan still feared for her as he tracked her through the bush. “What the hell is she doing?”
He was appalled as the seventy year old woman climbed the post and wire boundary fence twenty minutes later, negotiating the steep slope onto his uncle’s forbidden property. His heart tightened in his breast, not wanting to acknowledge something terrible. Miriam was sprightly for her age and appeared to tread a well-worn routine, a skip in her step which wasn’t usually there. Logan pushed his horse to the fence, allowing him to look on the cedar wood house below, his stomach roiling in fear.
The sight took his breath away. His mother stood on the overgrown driveway below with a dark haired Māori, his tall body wrapped around hers. They whispered, their heads together and and he kissed her as though she was a much younger woman.
“No, no, no,” Logan breathed, his heart in agony. He took his cowboy hat off to wipe the sweat from his brow and squeezed the bridge of his nose with his left hand, hoping when he looked again the touching scene would be gone like a heat induced mirage.