by Diana Fraser
* * *
Once they were out at sea, a pod of small gray dolphins appeared. They played around the boat, swooping under it, only to pop up and jump out the water. Gabe cut the engine, and the boat bobbed offshore in the gentle swell.
Maddy laughed. “They’re so many of them!”
“We have the densest population of Hector’s dolphins.”
She reached over and splashed the water as one came close to her.
“There are flippers and a snorkel in the cabin if you’d like to get even closer.”
Maddy most definitely did like. She often felt too self-conscious to swim on beaches with people sitting around watching her. But, for some reason, she didn’t worry now about what Gabe might think of her, how he might perceive her, and she wriggled out of her shorts and t-shirt to reveal her one-piece swimming costume. She put on flippers, a snorkel and mask, and jumped into the water, feet first. She gasped at the shock of the cool water against her hot skin but was soon distracted by the dolphins who swam so close to her.
She heard a splash behind her as Gabe dived into the sea and swam underwater with the dolphins. He surfaced and began to blow bubbles. A small group of three dolphins peeled off from the rest and swam around him as if checking out what he was doing. He started making a funny noise, and yet more dolphins came swooping under, nudging him.
Maddy laughed. “I’ve never seen anything like it!”
With a flick of their V-shaped tail, they dove into the water, making brief eye contact with her as they went.
“They’re curious. Twirl around, make funny noises, and they’ll come and check you out.”
It was on the tip of her tongue to say that she didn’t do that kind of thing. She’d always hated the idea of making a fool of herself—even in only her own company—and would do anything not to. But now she found herself spinning around, not caring how she looked. As the ripples radiated outwards the dolphins responded and swam around her, barely an arm’s length away. They were friendly, trusting and much smaller than she’d imagined. They swam gracefully through the water before emerging to reveal their white under-bellies. Then they’d disappear below the green-blue surface, leaving behind a trail of white bubbles.
She continued to play around the dolphins with Gabe, even diving underwater and coming face to face with one before the dolphin followed her up to the surface and swam away. Maddy looked up into the bright sunshine and blinked the seawater away from her eyes, and thought she’d never felt so free. A cold shiver suddenly racked her body, and she realized she must have been in the water a good half-hour, and she twisted to find Gabe watching her from the side of the boat.
She waved and swam over to him. “Hey!” she called, as she grasped the bottom of the step. “Time to get out of the water?”
“Yes, you look cold. But I reckon I could go on watching you all afternoon. You look a different person.”
“What do you mean?”
He shrugged. “I mean that you’re in the moment. That mask you use to protect you, you left it on the boat.”
“Oh!” No one had ever said anything like that to her before. Not even Jonny. Or maybe especially not Jonny. His world tended to revolve around himself. Not that she’d realized that at the time. Being with him was like being caught up in a whirlpool, one which you didn’t want to leave, not until it was too late and by then you were in too far. “I guess life seems less risky if you can keep your thoughts and feelings tucked safely away out of sight.”
“Ah, now, I reckon everyone should risk everything for what they feel in their heart.”
“What if people don’t know what they feel in their hearts?”
“Then that’s a shame. A crying shame. Whatever…” He grunted. “But I hope you don’t feel you have to replace the mask too soon.”
Gabe reached down to help her back on the boat. Their hands met in a tight clasp as she climbed the steps. He was right. She stood before him now, almost naked, water running off her hair, face, and body, and she felt unmasked. “I hope so, too,” she said. She cleared her throat and looked back at the dolphins. “That was amazing,” she said as she caught the towel which Gabe tossed to her. “But I guess you’re used to it.”
“It doesn’t matter how many times I do it, I always think it’s amazing. They’re clever, sociable, and we don’t know the half about their world. They communicate in all sorts of ways —sonar, pulse. They have over forty types of vocalizations. They have huge brains, they problem solve. It’s been proven that they think in abstract terms.” He shook his head. “Sometimes I think I missed my vocation. I should have worked with animals rather than people. These dolphins are an endangered species. I’ll never take them for granted. ”
“True. When you know you don’t have something forever, that they might be taken from you, you cherish them.”
Gabe stopped toweling his hair. “You’re not talking about the dolphins, are you?”
“No.”
“Your friend who died?”
“Yes.”
Gabe grunted and looked up into the bright sky. When he looked back at her he was wearing his doctor expression—compassionate and kind, but no longer intimate. “I’m sorry. It must have been tough for you.”
She opened her mouth to speak but didn’t trust herself.
“Do you want to go back?”
His question startled her out of her thoughts. “Back? Where? To Amsterdam?” She shook her head.
He grinned. “I meant back to Akaroa and forgo the picnic on the beach over there?”
She looked where he indicated, across the water to a small cove, farther along the shore. Should she leave all of this? Her promise to Jonny, the fun she was having with Gabe? Should she leave it all and retreat into herself and the past? Suddenly she remembered Jonny’s take on her work. The past? Why bother with it? The future is all there is. She shook her head. “No. I don’t want to go back.” She glanced at the picnic hamper. “Besides Flo would never forgive me.”
“Right.” Gabe started the engine. “Good decision. We don’t want an angry Flo.”
The beach Gabe chose was sheltered by two jutting cliffs, and inaccessible from the land. She set out Gabe’s blanket while he brought over the basket. Flo had outdone herself and had included pies as well as a salad, bread, and cheese. Gabe put a bottle of wine to chill in a rock pool, while she opened two bottles of water and sat under the shade of a spare sailcloth he’d strung above them.
He sat carefully at one end of the blanket, and she on the other. Occasionally their arms brushed each other as they reached for something.
“I haven’t been out here in years,” said Gabe.
“Really? I imagined you came all the time.”
“You imagined, eh? And what exactly did you imagine?”
Maddy proceeded to tell him, while keeping a few of her imaginary details quiet, like the fact that he probably always brought his girlfriends here. Looking around, it was the perfect secluded spot for amorous encounters.
“Not far off,” Gabe observed. “Not if you replace friends with family. It’s here I used to come with my family. My brothers mostly.” He raised his eyebrows. “One brother. Before we fell out.”
“Which one?” she asked, although she knew.
“Jonny, my twin.”
She focused on rummaging in a bag of something so that he wouldn’t see her reaction to Jonny’s name. When she sat up again he was gazing out to sea, his eyes narrowed against the bright light.
“He was the odd-one-out in our family and the total opposite to me. And we all adored him.”
She bit her lip and teased a knot in the cord of her bag with her fingers. She waited for him to continue, but apparently, he needed some encouragement. She cleared her throat. “That sounds odd: so different and yet so adored.”
He shrugged. “I think we were in awe of him. Well, the others were. He infuriated Dad; he used to worry the hell out of Mom, my sisters followed him around like the Pied Piper. He was
kind of charismatic, you could say.” Silence descended again, broken only by the lazy splash and pull of the waves on the shore.
“Go on. Tell me about how you felt about him.”
“Ah, now that’s a long story. Probably without an end because, you could say, it’s complicated. He was a part of me, and yet we were highly competitive, and had an intensely volatile relationship. As kids we refused to be apart at night, sleeping in the same bed, but during the day we went our separate ways—Jonny to be with the cool kids, and me to be with the slackers. It was complicated.”
“Sounds it.” She hesitated but had to know. “So how would you describe him? What was he like?”
“He was intense about everything: he was intensely smart, intense about his feelings, and intensely jealous and competitive. People either hated him or adored him.”
“And which did you do?”
“Both. Most of his behavior was explained when he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder.”
“And he died overseas, you said?”
Gabe looked up surprised. “Did I?” He pulled a face. “I guess I must have done, or maybe Amber told you.”
Maddy tried to cover her faux-pas with a non-committal shrug.
“But, yes, he died in Amsterdam. Got run over by a car. He was living alone at the time. He was separated from his wife and child.”
Maddy wanted to scream out that he hadn’t been alone, that she’d been with him, waiting for him at home, but she couldn’t.
“What…” She cleared her throat. “What did you fall out about?”
“Something stupid.” Gabe twisted his mouth with regret before squinting up in the sky. “Something incredibly stupid. I discovered he’d taken something of mine when we were teenagers, something I loved, something which I cherished because it was mine. Jonny being Jonny had always made a fuss about having things first, before passing them on to me. I’ve always been pretty easygoing, but it got on my nerves as the years went by. I guess Mom humored Jonny because it was easier. The one thing that I’d gotten first, he’d also wanted, especially seeing as how much I wanted it. I think he must have regretted taking it. Not enough to give it back, mind. But enough to wish he hadn’t, and enough to lie that he no longer had it. But I discovered it among his things, and it was the last straw. It capped off everything that had been going on for years, and we had a major fight—physical and verbal. My other brothers, Max, Rob and Cameron, also got involved. It was a mess. Jonny took off after that and left no following address. The next thing we heard was from his wife telling us that they’d just got married and had a son on the way, but there was no address, as no doubt Jonny had insisted. And then nothing until a few years later when his wife phoned to say he’d died.” He looked at Maddy. “It’s terrible, Maddy, when you let arguments drive a wedge between family, especially between brothers.”
“Especially between twins,” she added. She reached out and took his hand.
He slipped his fingers through hers, grasping her hand, and pulling it to his heart. “I still feel the pain here, in my heart, every day. There’s like a yawning gap where something should be. And I don’t know how to fill it, or if I ever can. It began when he left, and I know it would have been the same for him. But pride stopped us both from contacting each other. And then the aching emptiness solidified into a mass of aching nothingness after he died.”
She spread her fingers over the soft cloth of his shirt that lay between her fingers and his heart—its slow, steady pulse connecting with her fingertips. She looked up into eyes which darkened and held her gaze. “It will be filled. The emptiness you feel. I’m sure of it.”
He tilted his head to one side, his expression relaxing and the darkness in his eyes, fading. “And how can you be so sure, Lady of the Spreadsheets? Do you know of a magic formula to enter to make a happy ending?”
“There’s nothing magic about formulas.”
He raised a wry eyebrow. “I can believe it.”
“That’s because there’s no magic required. It’s the data that makes the result appear like magic. It’s all about the data. That’s it.”
He rose slowly. “I’ll drink to data. The wine should be cold now.”
She watched him walk over to the rock pool where he’d placed the wine, and unscrew it as he walked back. She held up the tumblers, and he poured a little wine into each. She rose, and he held up his glass to hers. “Here’s to data,” he said with a grin. “May I discover what’s required to give the correct answer.”
They drank but before he could turn around, she spoke. “And here’s to Jonny, your twin, the brother you lost but who will always be in your heart.”
His eyes shone in the light as they drank to the toast. She picked up the soda water and topped up the wine.
“Good idea,” he said. “Half a glass while I’m driving. Even if it is a boat.”
* * *
They only drank a small glass of wine with the soda water, but even so, Maddy could feel its effect on her, relaxing her. And she needed relaxing. She wasn’t only keeping a secret from Gabe now. The better she got to know him, the more she felt she was deceiving him. She pushed the thought out of her mind, determined to do what Jonny would have done, and enjoy the moment.
“I feel like Robinson Crusoe must have felt, alone on a desert island.”
“Except for his Man Friday.” He glanced at her. “Am I your Man Friday?”
“More like Man Saturday,” she said, lying back and closing her eyes.
“I could be your Man Sunday and Monday, too, if you like. You only have to say the word.”
She opened her eyes to find him seated opposite her, looking at her with a serious expression which he hadn’t worn before.
“Gabe, I’m sorry, I can’t.”
He jumped up and walked to the shore. He threw a pebble, impossibly far, into the sea before glancing back at her as he selected another stone to throw. “Can’t? That’s a strange word to use. It makes it sound like something’s preventing you. And there’s nothing stopping you, is there, Maddy?”
He immediately pulled his arm back and threw another pebble so she couldn’t see his expression. But she could imagine it from the sound of his voice. There was a barely suppressed yearning that shot straight to her heart. Before she could stop herself, she rose and went and stood beside him. She didn’t look at him; she couldn’t trust herself. She looked directly out to sea, the bright light making her eyes smart and water. It must have been that. She wiped her eyes with the heel of her hands. When she dropped her hands, she felt his eyes upon her.
“Is there, Maddy?” he repeated.
“I’m sorry, Gabe, but I made a promise which I can’t break.”
“A promise? That’s the first you’ve mentioned anything about a promise.” He frowned. “What kind of promise could stop you from having a relationship with me?”
“I can’t tell you.”
He grunted. “I suppose that’s also part of the promise.”
She nodded, not trusting herself to say anything further. She’d always been an honest person and knew that, if he asked a specific question, she was in danger of telling him everything.
“Okay,” he said slowly. “So this promise doesn’t stop you spending time with me.” He paused.
She shook her head. “No.” She clipped the word, not wanting to elaborate and tell him that the promise was for the opposite—it required her to spend time with him.
“Well, that’s something.” He gave her a brief smile. He looked out over the sea toward the lowering sun. “It’s time we headed back.”
They packed up the picnic things, and Maddy gave one last look at the small beach where she’d heard things about Jonny that she’d never known before. It helped to fit him into family life at Belendroit, and she could now imagine him—charismatic, argumentative and demanding—leading a turbulent life with a family, who, despite everything, continued to love him. She just wished Jonny had known that.
6
/> Maddy looked back with regret on that day for weeks afterward. Despite her best intentions, she was growing closer and more involved with Gabe with every passing day. She found herself continually thinking about him, trying to figure him out. Gabe spent his life caring for people, and while his family obviously adored him and were protective of him, Maddy couldn’t help wondering whether his need to care for people took a toll on him that few could see. Surely you couldn’t go on loving and caring for people, without receiving that same intensity of selfless care in return? But, despite her growing obsession, she’d tried to stay away from him because it wasn’t fair—on either of them.
She’d been relieved that Gabe had taken her rejection to heart and had done his level best to avoid her. And she’d made it as easy for him as possible, only going to work when she knew he’d be occupied. So when she arrived mid-afternoon, she was surprised to find him at home.
“Hi! No patients?”
“No,” he said looking up from his computer with a wary smile. “I’m working on other stuff this afternoon.”
“Right. Right.” He went back to work, and she took a reluctant step into the hall. “Um, Gabe?”
“Yes,” he replied without looking up.
She hesitated but couldn’t bring herself to leave. She’d thought of nothing but him and Jonny since their day on the boat, reflecting on what Gabe had and hadn’t said, on what his silences had suggested about Jonny’s behavior, and its effect on the Connelly family. Jonny had hurt them all badly, and she knew he’d come to regret it. Given time, he’d have made his peace with them, she was sure of it. And when he’d thought he couldn’t, he’d made her promise to do it for him. She couldn’t leave Gabe hurting. She was sure Jonny wouldn’t have wanted her to.
The question was what did she want to do? One thing she knew for sure was that she couldn’t carry on in Akaroa without seeing Gabe. She needed to see him.
He put down his pen and looked at her. “What is it, Maddy?”
“I… wondered if you’d like to join me in a coffee?”