Nine Months to Change His Life

by Unknown

  ‘The closest I’ve ever had to belonging is with my team, my Tigers. Ben, I loved playing again tonight, the closeness, the mutual dependence, the power of more than one. I love sitting here now while you row me, but I need to let it go. I need to let you go. Yes, I’m on my own—but I’m not heading to Manhattan because that way I’ll be alone forever.

  And he didn’t know how to reply.

  She loved him. He wanted to take her into his arms, but rowboats weren’t built for passion. And her body language said he shouldn’t even try.

  ‘You’ll have your baby,’ he managed. ‘In Manhattan...you won’t be alone.’

  ‘My baby? That’s just it, isn’t it, Ben? Sometimes you say it’s yours. Sometimes you say ours, but you still feel like it’s mine. That’s okay. The baby and I will be a unit, but where will you be?’

  ‘If you’re in Manhattan I’ll be there when you need me.’

  ‘How will you know when I need you? There won’t be a pile of unstacked wood. The nanny will do the hard bits. How can you possibly know when I need you?’

  ‘You’ll be safe.’

  ‘I’m safe here, Ben. Barbie’s not going to eat me.’

  He reached out then and took her hand. He tugged her slightly towards him and for some reason she didn’t resist. The boat rocked again but he was careful. Very careful.

  He touched her cheek. He could feel the heat from the imprint of Barbie’s hand. That he hadn’t been fast enough to stop her almost killed him.

  ‘It’s okay, Ben,’ Mary said softly. ‘She’s the worst of my dragons and, as far as you can, you’ve slayed her for me. You’ve done all you can. You can go back to the States with a clear conscience.’

  ‘I can’t let you go.’ He hadn’t meant to say it. It had just come out. He tugged her closer and he felt her yield.

  He held her; he just held her, and she let herself be held. For a long, long moment they stayed close while the boat rocked gently in the moonlight. He could feel her breathing against him. His face was in her hair.

  He was holding his woman.

  She loved him. Maybe if he said it back...

  But he didn’t know how to. The words were there but they wouldn’t come out.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said at last into her hair, and he felt things change. She’d been leaning into him, seemingly taking warmth and strength from his body. Now she gathered herself and pulled away.

  ‘I’m sorry, too, Ben,’ she whispered. ‘But thank you for trying. If you ever figure it out... If you ever figure out what love is... Well, I’ve waited for my dad for twenty years. A few more years won’t hurt.’

  ‘And if someone else comes?’

  ‘I hope he does,’ she said with sudden asperity. ‘If any hero happens by on his white charger, with his heart nicely on his sleeve where I can catch it and hold it, then I won’t look back. But that’s none of your business, Ben Logan. How long I wait and how much I break my heart while waiting is entirely up to me.’

  * * *

  They drove home in silence. She ate dry toast and went to bed with hardly a word.

  He woke in the night to hear her being ill, and he felt...well, bad was too small a word to describe it.

  Why not walk in there, take her into his arms and tell her he loved her? For he did love her, he knew it. The thought of walking away was almost killing him.

  But other thoughts kept superimposing themselves, almost as if mocking. The sight of his brother, bloodied and unconscious on a dirty road in Afghanistan. His mother coming home late at night from the theatre, high on adrenalin and who knew what else, hugging him, saying, ‘Keep me happy, Ben, make me stay happy.’

  Looking in his mother’s bedroom doorway the morning she’d died and seeing how he’d failed.

  Half a dozen steps would take him to Mary’s door and he couldn’t take them. If he was to let her down...

  Surely leaving her here was letting her down, but taking her back...on her terms...

  Her manuscript was lying on the kitchen table. He flicked through it, half smiling but close to tears. In fiction anything could happen. In fiction he could even be a hero.

  In her imaginary world, Mary could be safe. What sort of world could he give her where she’d be safer?

  This was doing his head in. He rose, half hoping to see Mary coming out of the bathroom, but she was back in the bedroom with her door closed tight. She and Heinz and baby, a team. She’d let him in if he asked, he thought, but it was all or nothing. And all was more than he could give.

  Instead, he walked outside and gazed up at the stars, at the Southern Cross hanging low in the night sky. He didn’t belong here, he told himself. He had to leave.

  He had to walk away from Mary.

  ‘There’s nothing else I can do,’ he told himself. ‘Happy ever after...she can have that in her writing. There’s no way I can give it to her. I’d risk breaking all of us.’

  * * *

  Dawn. Time to leave. Jake had post-production meetings all day and wouldn’t be able to see him until evening, but staying was doing his head in. He needed to get back to Manhattan, to an unemotional world, where things made sense.

  He knocked on Mary’s bedroom door, feeling ill himself.

  ‘Come in.’

  She was still in bed, looking wan and pale and incredibly small, huddled under her bedclothes.

  ‘How sick—?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ she said, managing a rueful smile. ‘Okay, I’m not fine, but women have done this before. I’ll cope.’

  ‘You don’t want me to stay?’ He would if she needed him. Practically.

  ‘You’ve filled my freezer. You’ve chopped my wood. Why else would I need?’

  There was no answer.

  ‘You’re leaving now?’

  ‘I... Yes.’

  ‘You want me to kiss you goodbye?’ Her words sounded angry and he didn’t blame her.

  ‘I can do without it.’

  ‘I’m sure you can. Thank you for the wood and for the food. And for my baby. Goodbye, Ben.’

  He couldn’t bear it. He crossed to the bed, stooped and kissed her.

  Her arms didn’t come out from the covers. She simply let herself be kissed.

  ‘I’ll be in touch,’ he said helplessly.

  ‘Lovely.’ She didn’t sound like it was lovely. It was the most perfunctory ‘lovely’ he’d ever heard.

  ‘I’ll transfer funds...’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Take care of yourself.’

  ‘And you.’

  There was nothing else to say. There was nothing else to do.

  He turned and walked out the door.

  * * *

  She lay and stared at the door for a very long time. She’d sent him away.

  If she’d clung...

  If she’d clung he would have picked her up and carried her back to Manhattan and installed her in his sterile apartment.

  ‘At least I’d see him.’ She was very close to tears.

  ‘You’d break your heart. You know it. Sit and write, he says, but how can I write fantasy when my hero’s real and wants... I don’t know what he wants. All I know is what he doesn’t want.’

  She let herself sob, just the once. If she granted herself more than once she’d be a mess for her entire pregnancy.

  Speaking of pregnancy, oh, she felt sick.

  ‘At least it gives you something to think about rather than Ben,’ she told herself, but it was small comfort.

  ‘This is going to be a great pregnancy,’ she told herself. ‘Come on, woman, pull yourself together. It’s only two hours until you need to be at work.’

  How many minutes thinking of Ben?

  How many trips to the bathroom?
>
  ‘It’s hormones,’ she said, clutching her stomach. ‘I’ll get over this.’

  ‘Morning sickness or Ben?’ She was talking out loud, a two-sided conversation. Heinz was at the foot of her bed, looking worried.

  ‘Don’t you look worried,’ Mary told him. ‘I’m worried enough for both of us.’

  Why? She had herself under control—sort of.

  Yeah, she was fine—except her stomach was heaving and the man she loved with all her heart was heading to the other side of the world.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  HE DROVE TO AUCKLAND. He found a hotel, made a few international calls, did some desultory paperwork—and tried not to think about Mary.

  Finally he met Jake. Hell, it was good to see him, but even though the warmth was there, he was instantly aware of tension. There’d been things unsaid since the cyclone, and they were still unsaid.

  Maybe they’d been unsaid all their lives.

  ‘Hey, Jake.’ A man hug.

  ‘Hey, yourself.’

  They headed for a bar Jake knew, drank beer and pretended things were normal. But small talk could only take them so far.

  After the cyclone there’d been the relief at seeing each other alive, but their mother’s suicide now stood stark and dreadful between them.

  But, then, maybe it had always stood between them, Ben thought. Maybe it had always stood between him and the world.

  But now Jake knew the facts of his mother’s death. Admitting it to Jake meant admitting its reality. Maybe Jake wasn’t the only one who’d retreated to make-believe.

  ‘I gather you’re not just here to see me,’ Jake said, as the small talk died.

  ‘That’s why I’m in Auckland.’

  ‘That’s not what I meant. Why come to New Zealand?’

  ‘I brought Mary home.’

  ‘Mary?’

  ‘The girl who saved my life. She came to New York but was ill so I brought her home.’ There was a lot more he could say about that, there was a lot more he should say—Jake was going to be an uncle?—but right now he wasn’t going further. He didn’t know where to start.

  But Jake knew him well. He was watching his face and Ben knew he guessed a little of what he wasn’t saying. That something was wrong. That Mary wasn’t just...the girl who’d saved his life.

  ‘So now you’re heading back?’ His brother seemed almost wary.

  ‘Yes. Tomorrow.’

  ‘How ill is she?’

  ‘She’s okay now. Sort of.’

  ‘And you’re not getting involved any further?’

  ‘I brought her home. In the company jet.’

  Jake snorted. ‘That’s involvement.’

  ‘Cut it with being snide, Jake.’

  ‘I’m not snide,’ Jake said, and suddenly he wasn’t. ‘I’m worried.’

  ‘She’ll be fine.’

  ‘I’m worried about you.’

  ‘Why on earth?’ His twin’s words brought him up with a jolt. Since when had Jake ever worried about him? It was he who did the worrying. It was Jake who got into trouble and it was Ben who picked up the pieces.

  ‘I’ve met a woman, too, Ben,’ Jake said, almost gently. ‘Same as you, it’s the woman who plucked me out of the sea. Only unlike you, I’m in it up to my neck. But...it’s not going so well right now.’

  Of course. He might have known. This was all about Jake. Of course it was.

  He looked across at his brother’s worried, open face, once more bearing tales of woe to his big brother, and something snapped. Here we go again, making him responsible...

  ‘You don’t need to tell me. Of course it’s not going well. But there’s no need to talk about it—I’ll be reading about it in the glossies soon enough.’ He sighed, raked his hair, feeling infinitely weary. Jake, alias Peter Pan, eternally young, good-looking, eternally flying from one disaster to another.

  He’d had enough. He didn’t have room for more emotion.

  Jake was looking taken aback. Fine by him. It was time to tell it like it was.

  ‘Maybe it’s time you grew up, Jake,’ he snapped. ‘Marriages and happy endings belong in one of your movies. They’re not the real world. Not for us, that’s for sure. You’ve already tried and failed. You play-acted the perfect husband last time. Wasn’t that enough?’

  Jake was staring at him, dumbfounded. ‘You think I was acting?’

  But he wasn’t shutting up now. He couldn’t. ‘You’ve acted all your life—just like our mother. You don’t know what’s real and not.’

  ‘I wasn’t acting the first time round,’ Jake threw back. ‘Believe it or not, I thought it was real. But now...I’m sure not acting this time. Ellie’s different. She’s one in a million. This is a million miles from one failed marriage.’

  Enough. He’d had it, up to his neck. He was on his feet, his anger surging. ‘Then you’re even more of a fool than I thought. One in a million—just like the last one. And the next one and the one after that?’

  ‘Will you cut it out?’ Jake was also on his feet. The bar was empty save for a lone barman polishing glasses at the other end of the room. He was staring at them, making a tentative move toward them. Pre-empting trouble.

  If they’d been ten years old, Ben would have been punched by now. Maybe he still would be. But as he watched, he saw his brother visibly force himself to relax. Jake waved to the barman, a gesture of reassurance, and when he spoke again his anger seemed to have faded. ‘Ellie is different, Ben,’ he said at last. He hesitated, as if searching for words, and what he finally said was confusing. ‘And we’re not...we’re not our parents.’

  What the...? ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Just that.’ Jake sounded as if he was figuring it out as he went, but increasingly he was sounding sure. ‘We’re our own people. You finally let it out, didn’t you? In the life raft, when you said I wouldn’t know reality if it bit me. That I was just like Mom. You told me she’d killed herself and you think I’m on the same path. Heading for self-destruction because I can’t pick what’s real or deal with it.’

  ‘I don’t—’

  ‘Yeah, you do. It’s gutted me, knowing now that Mom’s death was suicide, but it’s gutted me even more that you’ve kept it to yourself all these years. You’ve been protecting me, but you didn’t have to. You’ve been protecting yourself and that’s worse.’

  ‘This isn’t making sense.’

  ‘Maybe it’s not,’ Jake growled. ‘But this girl you brought all the way back to New Zealand. Mary. She went all the way to the States to see you?’

  ‘So...what?’ He couldn’t explain. He couldn’t tell Jake she was pregnant. One day soon he’d have to, but not now. It’d escalate this into the stratosphere.

  ‘I’m not even beginning to guess what that was about,’ Jake continued. ‘But I don’t have to guess because it doesn’t make any difference. No matter who she is, no matter what she’s done, no matter what she means to you, you’ll never open yourself up. Because if you do then you open yourself up to that whole mess that was our mom. Our family. And Mom killed herself. Finally I’m seeing why you’re so damned afraid.’

  ‘I’m not afraid.’ He was having trouble getting his head around this. Jake sounded sure of himself. He sounded almost...sorry for him?

  ‘If you’re not afraid of relationships, then why assume that whatever I have going on with Ellie will inevitably be another disaster for the glossies to gloat over?’ Jake demanded.

  There was a long silence. Jake turned away and stared out into the darkening night, and when he turned back to Ben his voice had changed again. ‘Well, maybe it is a disaster,’ he muttered, ‘but at least I’m involved. I know I’m capable of loving. I’m not running away, like you.’

  ‘Oh, for...’ What w
as his brother on about? He’d never talked like this before. ‘I’m not running away from anything.’

  ‘It looks that way to me,’ Jake said flatly. ‘You run, you hide. Just like you’ve been hiding from me all these years by not telling me the truth. Shall we go there now, Ben? Talk about it properly? Or do you want to run away from that, too?’

  How had this happened? He’d come to talk to his twin. His younger brother. What was Jake offering to talk about? A grief from twenty years ago? Any minute now he’d stick a counselling hat on.

  In his dreams. ‘I need to go.’

  ‘Of course you do,’ Jake said, almost sadly. ‘People talk of emotions, you run. You’ve spent our lives accusing me of being like Mom every time I showed emotion. Play-acting. Yeah, okay, maybe some of it was, but not all of it. I’m trying to figure it out at last. Maybe the real is worth fighting for. The real is even worth hurting for.’

  ‘Yeah, well, good luck with that. What did you say—that things aren’t going well between you and this new woman? Amazing. I stand amazed.’

  ‘Get out of here before I slug you,’ Jake snapped, and as if on cue Ben’s phone rang.

  They both ignored it but it broke the tension. No one was going to get slugged.

  No one was going to get counselled.

  ‘Maybe you should get that,’ Jake said at last. ‘Maybe it’s Mary.’

  Maybe it was. He checked.

  ‘It’s work.’

  ‘There you go, then. I don’t know why you’re not taking it. Work’s always been your place to hide, hasn’t it, big brother? Why should anything I say make it any different?’

  * * *

  Which explained why he was back in his hotel room, staring at the ceiling at midnight.

  There was a cold, hard knot in his gut that didn’t let him sleep.

  He could have flown out tonight. The plane was at his disposal. Work was waiting.

  The conversation with Jake was reverberating in his head.

  Mary was four hours’ drive away. If he got on that plane...

  ‘It’ll make no difference if you go tonight or tomorrow,’ he told himself. Work was waiting, piling up. He should go tonight.