by Bowes, K T
The policeman thanked her, expressed his commiserations to her family and stood to leave. Then Hana asked the one question the cop didn’t want her to. “Who was the male? In the house. Who was it?”
The policeman consulted his notebook and fluffed around. “They’re not entirely confident, they need to make completely sure...DNA, dental records...”
“Oh, please?” Hana put her face in her hands. “I saw Miriam run in so I know she’s the woman. I just don’t want the man to be Reuben, so if I can stop worrying, just tell me.”
The policeman relented. “We have reason to believe the unidentified male was Mr Rueben Jacob Du Rose. We’ll know better after the...the...” He bit his lip, knowing he had said too much already to the attractive female.
Hana’s eyes squeezed tight shut and her head drooped. She thought she had no tears left, but some seemed to find their way back out of her and ran unchecked down her cheeks, setting up a steady drip, drip onto the rug. The policeman backed away, damage done, asking if he could get anyone to sit with her. Hana shook her head. Secrecy had managed to isolate her once again.
As the heavy door clicked shut, a spirit of desolation shrouded Hana, pleased for yet another opportunity to stain her life. She let it, laying down on the sofa and pressing her face into the cushion, greeting her old friend, Grief, once again with resignation.
Du Rose Legacy
Chapter 34
Hana woke hours later, gently shaken by Logan. “Hana, I’ve been searching for you everywhere. Wake up babe, Michael needs to check you over.”
Hana sat up with a start and focussed her eyes on her husband. He wore a tatty old tee-shirt she had never seen before and Michael stood next to him. They both had ugly burns on their hands and Michael had small blisters over his nose and forehead. Logan had a black eye which spread out over his nose.
Hana began to cry and buried herself in her husband’s neck as he crouched down next to the sofa. Michael reached for her hand to feel her pulse and she pushed him roughly away, surprising him. “Oh.” He looked hurt.
A voice inside her head warned her to be careful, but Hana felt irrational and out of control. The sleep had done nothing to calm her jangled nerves. The child inside her moved, but it was a sluggish action, not the usual sharp jab. A flicker of worry shot through Hana’s brain. She offered her hand back to Michael. She needed his help. “Sorry,” she said with contrition.
Words died on Hana’s lips as she realised she didn’t know what to say to Logan. His eyes sparkled brightly and he fought back the weakness of tears. “They made me go to the hospital,” he said, apologising, “I got knocked out and had to have a head scan...for bleeds.”
Hana nodded and looked down. She looked at his hands and arms, new cuts and burns intermingled with the old ragged scars. His father’s long, thin hands. His father, a haemophiliac, his mother a carrier. Logan never stood a chance. She stroked his cheek and kissed his good eyelid. Her husband smiled, unaware of the burden in his wife’s heart.
Hana looked at Michael out of the corner of her eye. His eyes flicked towards hers and held her gaze. In that split second she saw it all - everyone knew, protecting the bastard brother for a lifetime. Poor Logan. No wonder they feared when he pitted himself against his own sire in a legal battle. The atmosphere of impending doom which had hung over them all for months, suddenly made perfect sense. Hana flashed hatred at Michael in a single glance and he recoiled, letting go of her wrist. “It all seems fine,” he lied.
The day had hadn’t felt like Christmas Eve and now it never would. The family wandered around the property, fulfilling roles without commitment, killing time and waiting for something unknown. In the chiller Hana found the huge slabs of home-kill, almost defrosted, waiting to be made into steaks for the barbeque, which now wouldn’t happen. The marinades sat patiently on a high shelf anticipating the next part of their process, which Hana didn’t know and now never would.
Fire officials and police appeared and disappeared periodically. Reuben’s identity remained tentative, although everyone in the family knew. The fire was being damped and monitored somewhere up in the bush and tests were pending on Miriam and her lover’s broken bodies. Nobody talked and they alternately separated themselves out and then cannoned together in a desire to unify before drifting apart again.
Hana sat in Logan’s bedroom, curled up in a comfy armchair watching DVD’s she knew she wouldn’t remember afterwards. Michael came periodically to check on her health. “You need to take it easy,” he insisted, appalled by her ascent and descent of the mountain at her stage of pregnancy.
“Really?” Hana sniped unkindly at him. “It’s a bit bloody late for that, isn’t it?”
Michael’s face hardened and he leaned in close to Hana. “I don’t know how you found out, Hana, but you don’t tell him, ok?”
Hana shook her head. “I’m not doing this again. I’m not protecting liars for another decade of my life. You tell him, or I swear, I will.”
“No!” Michael’s grip on Hana’s wrist became painful and he gritted his teeth, his grey eyes flashing. “You’re not part of this family! You’re just grafted on and don’t you forget it!” He stormed from the room and didn’t come back again, withdrawing his medical expertise as punishment.
Hana cried herself to sleep, woken by the jovial laughter on the screen or some gunfight that disturbed her reality, before pitching back into tortured dreams. Tama sought her out, drawing comfort from the contact with her. He got pillows and snuggled down on the floor at her side, sometimes watching the television, sometimes exorcising his grief in bouts of tears which he tried to hide. A couple of times she reached out and laid her hand on his back, rubbing gently. While he appeared to ignore it, she felt the small act of solidarity offered him some comfort. It helped her, the physical contact reminding her she was alive.
Logan stayed up at the fire site. He watched as they collected the ruined body of his mother, packing her into a body bag and carrying her down the mountain on a stretcher. He bit the inside of his cheek until the blood poured unchecked and his lips were stained with it. Still he watched, his face grim and his heart on fire.
News came back from the fire investigators via Michael’s tentative knock on the door. He focussed his attention on Tama and wouldn’t look at Hana. “They’re saying an electrical fault was the probable cause of the fire. A set of Christmas tree lights shorted out and the old wiring couldn’t cope. It was an accident. They’ll be more definite after the holiday, but that’s what they think.” Michael left the room and Tama burst into tears.
“Tama, I’m so sorry,” Hana dropped to her painful knees and held him.
“I put the Christmas tree lights up,” he sobbed. “I put them up with Nev’s little boy. We were all joking and laughing. Shit, shit shit!”
“It’s not your fault!” Hana told the teenager sharply, her voice catching in empathy with his distress. “I won’t let you carry this! I won’t.” She held him and rocked his rigid body until her legs were numb and his tears had soaked her shirt right through. He cried himself into exhaustion and she stayed on her knees, cradling his head in her lap, his face pressed against the outline of Logan’s daughter.
Raised voices broke out in the hallway near the spiral staircase around tea time as Hana contemplated sneaking down to the kitchen and attempting to make food for everyone. She recognised Logan’s voice and stepped carefully over Tama, trying not to fall over on her wobbly legs. Hana shut the door behind her and followed the source of the shouting. Her heart sank as she heard her husband’s voice, knowing the argument was inevitable. “It was all fine between us!” Logan yelled at a man Hana recognised from the fire site.
The stranger was dark haired, olive skinned and the physical likeness to her husband was overpowering. He had his fist raised ready to smack Logan in the face, but couldn’t seem to get close enough. For once, Logan backed away from the fight. “Why are you holding me responsible? Reuben apologised and we came to an und
erstanding. It was all fine between him and me! I’m sorry he died, Kane. I’m truly sorry, but it was an accident.”
The man advanced, but Michael appeared and clasped him around the torso, preventing him from forcing his fist through Logan’s face. Kane Du Rose shook his head, disbelieving or grief stricken, it was hard to tell.
“You know all this, we shook hands,” Logan said quietly, moving backwards out of range, “Nev was there!”
The man was older than Logan and he put his balled fist into his own eye, pressing at the misery leaking out. His body shuddered and he looked like he would collapse if Michael let him go. Logan decided to turn and walk away; instinctively understanding that his presence inflamed the situation. He made for the top of the stairs and then it happened.
Pandora’s Box snapped open and the dark secret that had been prisoner for so long, leapt out like an ugly clown and stained all that it touched.
Kane held his hand out towards Logan, no longer a fist but a begging, needy hand. Logan looked at him strangely, perhaps seeing something nobody else did. And then Kane said it, the unspoken thing. “He always loved you. Dad was so proud of you. He watched everything you achieved. He wanted you and her so much, it destroyed him. The loan, the land, it was all to get your attention. He couldn’t take the lies anymore. He was your dad too and he needed you to know...”
His voice broke. A sharp inhalation of breath from all those collected in the hallway threatened to empty the space of oxygen. Hana felt her chest tighten.
“Dad?” Tama’s sleep fuddled voice appeared behind Hana, the dreadful hitch still torturing his lungs. Michael and the man he held in a reverse grip each looked backwards towards Tama and both faces softened. What a mess, Hana thought to herself, seeing the repeated history playing out before her. Two men, one child, two fathers. Kane shrugged Michael off with a glare as old rivalries surfaced. He stepped towards Logan and Hana held her breath. Truth finally flowed like a swollen river and nothing would stop it now.
“The other night after you left, something snapped in him,” Kane said, his fists clenched by his sides.
Logan stood at the top of the spiral staircase shaking his head. Hana saw his mind working overtime as he replayed the meeting. He would have been polite, business-like but fair. Professional and emotionless, unaware he spoke to his own father like a stranger, a father who made a rash, stupid, last desperate attempt to get his son’s attention.
Kane inhaled and a sob caught in his throat. “He loved you and he loved Miriam. Always. He never felt that much for anyone else. It was all about you. None of us were good enough. We hated the sound of your damn name!” Kane finished and the silence was piercing and shrill around him.
Hana heard Tama take a sharp intake of breath, but Logan didn’t look their way. He looked at Michael and Liza, then at Alfred, who appeared at the end of the hallway. Logan looked for reassurance from his safety network, his whanau and got lowered eyes from each of them in confirmation. “But Barry...” he began, looking pointedly at Michael. “Barry was Reuben’s son.”
Alfred’s voice was assertive and firm. “Barry was my son.”
Logan clung to his heritage, to his whakapapa with desperation, jabbing his finger at Michael and appealing to Alfred. “You said...”
The old man shook his head slowly and destroyed Logan’s world as surely as if he had detonated a bomb under it.
“You’re liars!” Logan roared. “You’re all liars!” He was gone instantly, whirling down the stairs in a clatter of feet on treads. Nobody moved.
Nobody except Hana. As she heard Tama breathe out an incredulous swearword, she lumbered over to the top of the stairs and clambered her own way down. She headed for the front of the hotel and found nothing. The Honda still sat where it had been for days, a film of soot and dust covering its windshield.
A motor split the air and Hana lumbered around to the stables, getting there only to see the back of one of the newer quad bikes tearing off out of the yard. A saddle and tack hung precariously over the rail on the back as it sped up the hill. Logan’s body language was rigid and wooden as Hana saw him jam the bike into the gate, reach down to open the latch without getting off and then use the bike to force it open, evidently doing damage to the front of it and not caring. He set off up the hill without closing the gate behind him or looking back.
“Logan!” she cried, hearing her voice come back to her in the wind blowing ash off the mountain. “Logan, please come back?” She waited until he was nothing more than a tiny dot on the bush line, running away from the hurt and misery of Kane’s revelation. Running away from her, just like he promised not to.
Hana walked back to the front of the house slowly, knowing her husband was unreachable in even more ways than she ever believed possible.
Du Rose Legacy
Chapter 35
Hours later, when everyone else had dispersed to other places in the house to deal with their emotions in their own way, Tama sat with Hana in the kitchen. Dusk set in and with it, an overwhelming sense of foreboding which made it hard for Hana to sit still. A series of odd pops and twinges in her stomach and back made sitting down uncomfortable and she paced around the tiled floor with her hand on her lower back. “I can’t just sit here waiting anymore!” She waddled over to the door and threw it open. It was a fire door and hurt her arm as it came back on its spring and hit her in the side. Hana ignored it, charging upstairs full of purpose, dragging on a pair of boots and tying her hair back into a rough ponytail in the bedroom.
Tama followed her, sticking to her unquestioningly as she went back down the stairs and outside to the shed with the quads and motorbikes in. “Which one?” she asked him.
He shook his head, his eyes growing wide. “Are we going to look for him?” Tama asked, satisfied by Hana’s nod.
“He had tack on his bike,” she said, “where would he be going?”
Tama leapt into action, grabbing the key from the box on the wall after punching in a numbered code. He turned to her, bearing it like a holy grail and her heart sank as he indicated the old green quad. He saw her shoulders drop. “You can’t sit astride these,” he said reasonably, gripping her shoulder, “you’re too...you know...fat! Get in!”
Hana clambered into the dreadful old vehicle, praying it would start for them. It blew into life in a cloud of smoke and hayseeds, which puffed around them and covered them in the dust. Hana sneezed and wondered who brought the vehicle down from the clearing after the fire. “Someone’s shut the gates after Logan,” she mused and Tama shrugged.
“Maybe Jack. He’ll give Logan a slap for leaving them open when he gets back.”
“Don’t be daft,” she sighed, tiredness gripping her.
Tama snorted. “I’m not. Jack’s got a nasty right hook. Look.” He pointed at a scar in his hair line and Hana looked horrified.
“Your stable manager hits you all?”
“Hell yeah!” Tama made it sound normal.
Hana offered to do the honours with the gates and lumbered in an out of the quad.
Tama wouldn’t let her after the second one, seeing how hard it was for her to clamber out and in again. “It’ll be quicker if I do it,” he said graciously, nothing like Liza’s biting taunts of the night before.
They trailed over the land in the darkness, travelling kilometres into mountainous bush until they found Logan’s bike parked near the gate at the end of a track. Some nasty scrapes adorned the front and the front headlight was smashed. A halter was discarded on the fence post and hoof marks were imprinted in the soft soil near the gate. Tama looked at the horses still in the paddock. “He’s taken the mare he was riding.”
“Sacha?” Hana asked, knowing the mare would take good care of her husband and drawing comfort from it. Tama shook his head and pointed at a white mare with a speckled foal next to her. They grazed peacefully, slightly away from the herd of around fifty horses. Hana sighed. “Where next?”
Tama seemed to know where he was going and
they set off up another trail deep into the bush. There were no gates until the top of the rise. Dark trees obliterated the starry sky and the going was dusty and bumpy. Tama pressed on. Hana clung to the bar next to her, hating the ride but driven on by the need to get to Logan. She knew she had nothing to offer him in his grief and utter confusion, but some kind of supernatural urge fuelled her desperation. “We need to find him,” she shouted over the sound of the bike and Tama nodded.
Eventually, they crested the hill onto Logan’s paddock, finding the gate swinging open. Tama drove through and headed for the clearing, swearing as the quad spluttered and produced a puff of black smoke. He pressed every lever and button but to no avail as it bucked and ailed. “No, no no!” he yelled at the top of his lungs.
“What?” Hana asked, breathing out through pursed lips and rubbing at the side of her swollen belly. “What’s happened?”
“It’s bloody broken down!” Tama shouted, jumping off and kicking the tyre nearest him. “We’re kilometres from the hotel, in the most inaccessible part of the property and it’s broken down! That’s what’s happened!”
They were so high even the smell of the charred remains of Reuben’s house hadn’t reached there. Tama cast around the clearing while moonlight poured down in a circle of light amidst Nikau palms and punga. After another kick at the tyre, Tama ran the key again, managing to raise a grating sound and more black smoke. With a final sputter of choking energy, the vehicle died. Tama turned the key again but the engine stayed silent. “This is bad. This is really bad.” He clasped his hands behind his head and pointed his elbows out to the sides. “Did you bring a radio?”
Hana’s face paled. “No. I assumed you did. I don’t know how to work them.”