“You can have your horrible throw,” I said against her hair. “You can have your vase. You can have whatever you want.”
“I won’t…” She sat up and wiped the heels of her hands across her cheeks, and I got up and found her the box of tissues. “Thanks,” she said, and blew her nose. I tried to remember when, before Hope, a woman had blown her nose in front of me. Not for a long time, I knew that. “I won’t put it on the couch,” she said. “I know it’s ugly, but Karen and I need to have something that’s ours, something from our life. And nothing from our life was anything very special.”
“Except your mother.” People say, his heart hurt. That was what was happening now. My chest literally ached. “Your mother was special.”
Hope shook her head so violently that her blonde curls swung. “No, she wasn’t. That’s the point. She was ordinary. She worked in an office, and she made bad choices about men. She was like a million other women, just like I am. But she loved us. She thought we were special. We…when she was alive, we mattered. And she mattered to us.”
I sat a minute, then said, “That is special, then. That’s everything, isn’t it? Do you want to know about my parents?” I didn’t know why I wanted to tell her, suddenly, but I did.
She gave her nose a final wipe. “Yes. Please.”
I took her hand in mine, threaded my fingers through hers, took a breath, and told her what I’d told nobody since Anika. The things that weakened me, that hurt me. I made myself vulnerable in a way I never did, because it was stupid, and it was pointless, and it was dangerous. I told her the truth. I said, “My mum and dad both drank too much. Or call it what it was. They were—they are—alcoholics. You said your mum and Karen’s dad had flaming rows. Well, that was my house as well. Chaos. A state house—you’d call it public housing—in South Auckland, full of rubbish and cigarette smoke and worse, and the kinds of words you can’t take back. The two of them getting warnings for causing a disruption, then having more rows about that. And nothing that was ours. Nothing to hold on to.”
“Which is why you like things so orderly now,” she said. “Why you need control and quiet.”
I looked into her clear eyes and saw the waters of Manukau Harbour, heard the lonely calls of the seabirds wheeling over the mudflats on days when I’d ride my bike out there after school, needing the space and the peace. “Yes. And I had a younger sister, too, though I didn’t look after her the way you did Karen.”
She had her palm against my cheek now, and I put my own hand over hers to hold it there. I felt the healing in that touch, and I wanted to give her the same thing. “My mum left. She moved to Aussie for a new fella when I was twelve, and she took my sister with her. She left me with my dad. I didn’t blame her for leaving. I blamed her for not taking me.”
“Oh, Hemi.”
“Yeh. After a few years, my Koro took me in. But I had a heart full of anger by then, no doubt about that. I got it under control, and then I got it more that way. But all that’s to say—I understand missing people. Leaving Koro and Anika and coming here alone was the hardest thing I’d ever done, and they were still alive.”
“But not leaving your parents.”
“No. They’d already left me.”
The truth sat there, bald and unadorned, and finally, she said, “But Hemi—you’re beautiful. That’s their loss. Their mistake. Their…sin, because if you don’t love your child, if you don’t protect your child—that’s a sin. And I don’t think I should meet your parents.”
She was done crying. Now, she just looked fierce. Strong.
Stalwart, I thought. That was the word. An old-fashioned word for an old-style woman. I said, “You’d do better, eh. You already have done better. You’ve got loyalty to spare.” I almost added the next thing, but I didn’t. And I want you to have my children.
Why didn’t I say it? Because I feared it as much as I wanted it, maybe. This thing between us was too new, too precious, and she wasn’t my wife. I had her, but I didn’t. I smoothed my hand over her hair, then stood up, went into the dressing room, took a tiny packet out of a drawer, and brought it out into the bedroom together with a few other items.
I gave her the keys first. For the building, the mailbox, and the door of the apartment, which Josh had had duplicated a few days earlier. Two sets. “One for you, and one for Karen,” I told her. “And then there’s this other thing as well. I have one of these for Karen as well, but this one’s yours. A bit of New Zealand, a bit of Maori mana, and maybe something more. The bag”—I indicated the tiny drawstring pouch of woven material—“is a kete. A flax basket.”
She opened it and carefully drew out what lay inside. A fantastical, swirling shape, like a much-embellished letter S, carved of rich rose-flecked greenstone and hung from a plaited black cord. Small in scale, but perfect in its artistry. Just like Hope.
“It’s your pendant,” I said when she was holding it. Not dangling it from its cord the way another woman might have, but cradling it in her palm like the treasure it was. “You can’t marry a Maori if you don’t have a pendant, and this one’s a manaia. Head of a bird, body of a man, tail of a fish. It’s meant to represent spiritual power, and a guardian. An ancestor, one who’s gone but is still watching over you.”
“Hemi…” Her eyes were shining again. Tears, but something more. Happiness, maybe. Happiness, I hoped.
I smiled at her, my chest aching hard, and then I drew the two knots in the cord apart, put it over her shining blonde head, and tightened it until the small pendant rested between her collarbones and shone there, graceful and solid. “Pounamu,” I told her. “Jade from the South Island, and the most precious thing there is. Ahakoa he iti he pounamu. ‘Although it is small, it is greenstone.’ A treasure given from the heart.” My throat was closing, but the words managed to come out, and I couldn’t have held them back. “You won’t want to wear it all the time, of course. Just when you need to remember that I’ve got you, and I’m holding on. That your mum’s still there in you, still watching over you. When you need to remember that you have a power and a light inside you that nothing and nobody can ever put out. Those times when you most need to know that, when it’s hard to believe—you could wear this, and touch it, and remember.”
She was in my arms again, and I was smoothing my hands over her back, kissing her hair, knowing that I didn’t deserve her and that I was going to keep her anyway, because my sister and my mother and Anika were all right. I was a selfish bastard. But I was a bastard who would die for her.
I held her and knew it, and I could’ve sworn that my own pendant, my hei toki, pulsed against my skin.
Eventually, she sat up again, and I showed her how to loosen the cord so she could examine the shape, could trace her fingers over its swirling lines. I could feel the way she delighted in its smoothness, in the rightness of the carving, exactly as I had. “How did you know to buy this one?” she asked.
“If I’m forced to confess,” I said, “I bought two. This one, and a koru, the spiral that represents new growth, the head of the fern. That’s the feminine energy, nurturing and strength, birth and rebirth. That was right, but this is better. Your pendant should be about what you need most, and you don’t need to be reminded to be strong and nurturing, or to pick yourself up and start again. You need to be reminded that there are people who love you, and that you’re special. Your mum may be gone, but her love is still there. If you wear her here, you can feel her protection and her love. And you can feel mine.”
I got up and pulled her with me. I should have been embarrassed, but I wasn’t. “Let’s go take Karen her pendant. She gets a hei matau, a fish hook. For strength and good luck and safety over water, eh. So when she needs to build her hut on that desert island, she knows she can do it, because I will have taught her. We’ll give it to her, and then we’ll find a spot for your terrible blanket, and we’ll move you in. We’ll go for a walk and buy some flowers to put in your vase and do a bit of a shop, and we’ll cook dinner and w
atch a movie, all of us together. And you and Karen can start to believe that you’re home.”
Hope
When I woke the next morning in Hemi’s enormous bed, I remembered the opening of the superhero movie we’d watched the night before: a comic-book character waking in an unfamiliar world.
Unfortunately, that was all I did remember. Well, I remembered drinking a couple glasses of truly delicious white wine with dinner, and it going straight to my head, and snuggling on the black leather couch with Hemi and Karen. And that was about it.
Now, I was naked, I had a headache, and I had a few questions.
I found a couple Tylenol in the bathroom cabinet Hemi had assigned to me and into which I’d unpacked the toiletries I’d brought from the apartment yesterday, brushed my teeth and washed my face, and started feeling slightly more human. Then I pulled on my robe and went in search of Hemi.
I found Karen first, reading on the couch. I said, “Good morning” to her and didn’t get much in return, because she was engrossed in her book. No surprise there. And after that, I found Hemi in his office. At least, I found his back. He was fully dressed and staring at a bank of monitors with only his fingers moving, every line of his hard body spelling Concentration.
I hesitated in the doorway, then said, “Good morning.”
He swiveled in his chair and frowned at me, and I wondered if I should have left him alone. Then his face cleared and he said, “Morning. Good sleep?”
“Yes. At least—I must have.” We weren’t on vacation anymore. Was I not supposed to disturb him? I’d never even been in this room.
“How about coming in here and giving me a proper good morning, then?” he asked, which answered that question. When I did come in, though, he didn’t say anything. Instead, he pulled me down into his lap, got a hand behind my head and another one on my waist, and kissed me. The moment his lips settled over mine, the hello-baby kiss turned into something sweet and slow and hot, one of the many things Hemi Te Mana did better than anyone else in the world, and I was melting.
“What a pretty girl I’ve got,” he murmured at last, his lips brushing my cheek while his fingers stroked the back of my neck, sending tingles down my spine. “And what a lucky fella I am, eh.”
“Mm.” I moved in a little closer, just because his hand was so deliciously possessive. “But how did I get to bed? That’s what I’m wondering.”
“I carried you. You were asleep.” His thumb was tracing my cheekbone now, and how far gone was I, that his thumb felt that good?
“But I woke up naked.” I remembered undressing. Vaguely.
“Helped you with that, too. And yes, I enjoyed it.”
“But you didn’t…” I began.
He sat back. “Didn’t what?”
“Well…naked.” I tried to laugh, but I needed to know. That was the thought that had troubled me on waking. The point where “possessive” turned into something worse.
His face had settled into harder lines, and his thumb wasn’t on my cheek anymore. “No,” he said flatly. “I didn’t have sex with you while you were asleep.”
“Sorry. I just…” I started to get up, but he tightened his hold.
“You’re always telling me I need to share,” he said. “Now I’m telling you. Share. Why would you ask that?”
“I just…” I tried to shrug. “I don’t know what the rules are for this. I’m feeling disoriented, I guess, wondering if this can really be my life, and feeling so ungrateful for wondering. Like you took the goldfish out of the little bowl with its one goldfish buddy and its piece of plastic seaweed, and you put it into an aquarium with all the big fish and the fancy plants, and I’m swimming around the castle and wondering if I should try going through that window, if that’d be an adventure, or if I’d get stuck. It’s just…it’s odd, waking up here, in your place.” I gave up trying to explain it and sighed. “Gift horse, meet mouth. I know.”
One of his arms held me more tightly to him, and his hand smoothed down my back. As always, it was as if that hand had some kind of sedative in it, the way he had me relaxing into him.
When he spoke, his voice was gentle. “Nah. You won’t get stuck, or if you do, you’ll give a yell, and I’ll come pull you out by your…fin.” When I smiled, he did his own almost-smile and said, “You wouldn’t be a goldfish, either. An angelfish all the way, that’d be you.”
I nearly tipped off his lap at Karen’s voice from behind me. “And…awkward once again. I ask myself—do I check if we’re ever having breakfast? Do I pretend you guys aren’t making out? Do I just eat cereal and forget it? Or what?”
“You ask if we’re having breakfast,” Hemi said as I jumped off his lap, flashing Karen pretty well in the process. Of course, we’d shared a bed since she’d been little, so that wasn’t exactly a newsworthy moment. “And I tell you, yes, we are. Straight away.”
Which was how I ended up eating breakfast on Hemi’s terrace. I didn’t change first, either, because it was July-warm outside already, and I didn’t have anywhere I had to go or anything I had to do before the workweek began, other than unpack and explore my new neighborhood. Inez would be taking care of everything else, Hemi had said.
You could call it different. Or you could call it bizarre, because Hemi had been wrong. I was definitely a goldfish.
It was so odd not to have to rush to get my chores done, not to mention having Hemi there to hand me my cup of coffee, made from a machine so complicated I hadn’t mastered half its secrets, and then having him reveal a basket of croissants delivered from a French bakery that morning. He scrambled eggs while I sliced strawberries and tossed them in a bowl with the fresh raspberries and blueberries we’d bought the evening before, and Karen set the table. Not at the sarcophagus this time, because Hemi said, “We’ll use the terrace, eh.”
“Oh,” Karen said, “the terrace,” and made a comical face at me.
Hemi’s lips twitched, but all he said was, “I have it. We may as well use it. Every Kiwi would rather sit outside. Surely you’ve learned that by now.”
We went outside, and he was right. There were no birds, and in that way, it wasn’t a bit like New Zealand. And yet, it was. We were in the midst of one of the largest cities on Earth, but up here, trees in tubs offered dappled shade, and a fountain trickled water music onto moss-covered rocks, competing with the echo of traffic far below. Two cushioned chaises sat to one side inviting you to lounge, while a glass-topped dining table near the French doors to the living room was surrounded by six natural wicker chairs softened by overstuffed cushions in a variety of bright hues.
There was something new about the table, too. It had a pergola built over it now. I’d noticed the wood-framed structure yesterday, but I hadn’t realized that the terra cotta pot at each corner held jasmine that had begun to twine up the wooden supports.
“Oh,” I said, touching one of the star-shaped perfumed blossoms as I stood beside the table holding my bowl of berries. “Nice.”
“Not grown up yet,” Hemi said, which was true. The vines reached only my shoulder height, leaving the overhead wooden frame of the arbor bare. “But I thought you’d like it.”
I barely heard him, because I was finally registering something else I hadn’t before. The square planters near the terrace railings, and what they now held.
“You have roses,” I told Hemi. “When did all this happen?”
“While we were gone,” he said. “Go look.”
“The eggs will get cold,” I said. I sat down, but my eyes strayed to the planters all the same. He’d had roses planted. That was…nice. White, lavender, yellow, and red. Purity, enchantment, friendship, and passion. All the best things. “I could have cut my own flowers yesterday and put them in my mother’s vase,” I told Hemi. “Except, um…”
“Hope hates heights,” Karen informed Hemi. “She won’t go to the edge, because she doesn’t want to look over.”
“I don’t want to look through,” I said. The walls around the terrace
weren’t stone, like you’d expect. They were some kind of Plexiglas. They were clear. And we were on the twenty-seventh floor.
“Is that true, sweetheart?” Hemi asked.
“That would make anybody nervous.” I picked up a croissant and dipped the special spoon into the pot of extra-special jam. “But the roses are beautiful. Why did you do that?”
He looked at me, not smiling. “Why do you think?”
“It doesn’t make me nervous,” Karen said. She hopped up and went over to the edge of the terrace, stood between two planters of roses, and leaned against the glass, waving her arms behind her, over the edge. “Whee!”
“Stop,” I said. “Please. Stop.” I was half-rising, and Hemi had a hand around mine.
“Never mind,” he said. “Karen, come sit down and eat your breakfast.” She looked startled, and I wondered if I should step in, but I didn’t. I was glad he was getting her away from the edge.
“Let me guess,” Hemi said to me. “You have falling nightmares.”
I scooped berries onto my plate. I’d showed him all my weak places yesterday, and I couldn’t stand to show him more today, yet I’d been doing just that. “Maybe,” I said, as lightly as I could manage. “I try not to remember bad dreams. No point. They’re over.”
Hemi didn’t say anything, just studied my face a moment, then began to eat his own eggs. Karen asked me, “What are you going to do about swim lessons, then? What if they make you dive off the board in order to pass?”
“I guess I’ll deal with that when I come to it.” I didn’t say, Then I won’t pass. Not skiing was bad enough. I wasn’t going to add not diving to my list a few days later. I was brave about plenty. Just not about diving and skiing. Or heights.
“Did you mean it about the lessons?” Karen asked Hemi. “Because I looked it up on the Y’s website yesterday, and it’s two hundred dollars apiece, and that’s just to get to Advanced Beginner. Which Hope isn’t going to make it to, not if she’s scared to jump off the side.”
Fractured (Not Quite a Billionaire #2) Page 15