Kiwi Strong (New Zealand Ever After Book 3)

by Rosalind James

“To do waxing,” Fruitful said.

  “Fruitful!” Obedience said. “You can’t just say.”

  “Why not?” Fruitful asked. “Why can’t I say? My husband’s just broken into Daisy’s flat, trying to find me. Trying to find us. He’s hurt Gray. And I can’t say that I’m getting waxing? Why should those be my rules? Why does he get to do whatever he wants, to try to … to take me back there, and I can’t even say? Well, I’m going to say. I’m going to.” She looked around at all of us. Straight in the eye. Defiant. Dark hair loose, dark eyes flashing. A woman in trousers. The Whore of Babylon.

  I said, “You should say. From now on, go ahead and say.”

  “Right,” Daisy said. “But if Dorian didn’t tell him, and he didn’t, and Uncle Aaron didn’t, because he didn’t even know … how would Gilead have found out?”

  She looked at Matiu. He looked back at her. They both said, “Chip.”

  “Chip?” I asked.

  “GPS chip,” Daisy said. “People put them on their parents with dementia, so they can be found if they wander off.”

  Fruitful jumped to her feet and said, “No.” Explosively. She started to pat herself down, and then shouted it again. “No. No.”

  Daisy was on her feet, and so were Poppy and Obedience. Surrounding Fruitful, their arms enclosing her. Giving her love and protection in the way women did. Matiu and I looked at them, looked at each other, both of us feeling the same way. Helpless.

  Daisy was saying, “No, baby. No. It’s not inside you. It’s not. It can’t be.”

  Fruitful said, “I can’t get … rid of him, though. And now he’s … in me. I … I can’t.” She collapsed into her chair again, wrapping her arms around herself while Daisy crouched beside her.

  Matiu said, “It doesn’t exist, Fruitful. The technology. There’s no such thing as implanting a tracking device. Or there may be, but it doesn’t exist in Mount Zion, New Zealand. Not possible. It’s in your clothes, that’s all. Tell her, Daisy.”

  Daisy said, barely looking up, “I’m trying. I know. Could you just stop being the doctor for one second?”

  Matiu shut his mouth.

  It took five minutes or so, and a couple of hand towels as well, because there were tears, eventually. Like Daisy’s this morning, I hoped, washing away the terror and the pain. Soothing voices, encouraging words. Meanwhile, Matiu and I ate pizza, and Matiu asked me, “Did you get to hit him?”

  “No,” I said. “Unfortunately. Had hold of the bed of his ute, about to jump up in there like an action film, but he pulled out fast and …” I indicated my arms. “This happened instead. So much for Thor.”

  “Pity,” Matiu said. “Hopefully, you’ll get another chance.”

  “That’s what I thought,” I said. “They’re hoping he doesn’t come back. I’m hoping he does.”

  31

  Into the Sea

  Gray

  Thirty minutes later, I was arguing with Daisy. Again.

  Te Mana and Poppy and the kids and the dog had left. Matiu hadn’t shaken my hand this time, either, but he’d clapped me on the shoulder and said, “If you need my help, Daisy’s got my number.”

  Poppy said, “You’re not fighting, Matiu. You’re a father.”

  He said, “Who, me? Nah. Got to protect the hands. Besides, I’m the brain trust.” Then he looked at me, a quirk at the corner of his mouth, and I thought, Yeh, sorry, Poppy. He could be fighting.

  Always good to have allies.

  Now, Daisy was saying, “Of course I’m not going to bed. Are you insane?”

  “You have to work at midnight,” I said. “You said you’d need to sleep a few hours beforehand, and I can handle this. I’m a logical person. I can tell you everything tomorrow evening.”

  “How would I possibly sleep?” she said. “No. I’ll sleep after work.”

  “But I don’t understand,” Obedience said. “If the … whatever it is isn’t implanted in Fruitful somehow, where would it be?”

  “There are different ways,” Daisy said. “Around the neck on a chain, of course. That’d be the main one. But Mount Zion doesn’t do jewelry, and anyway, it’s hard to pass off a black GPS chip as a token of your eternal love. Token of your cold, black heart, now … maybe.”

  “There’s nothing except my wedding ring,” Fruitful said, and wrenched it off her finger. “I should’ve chucked it out the window as soon as we left, or thrown it in the fire with our aprons. Why didn’t I? If he could track me with it?”

  “He can’t,” I said. “Not with that.” It was a thin gold band, and that was all. “Bring it with you, though, and we’ll help you can get rid of it.”

  Daisy said, “Yes.”

  “But what else?” Obedience asked. “It can’t be sewn into the hem of a dress, because you have two dresses, and you wouldn’t necessarily be wearing the right one. And would a … a chip be waterproof? For washing?”

  Daisy told me, “Washing at Mount Zion is done communally, like everything else. No, I don’t think a dress would work. A bra would be better, with the chip tucked into a pocket in the center, maybe, where you could have some reinforcing anyway. You’d always be wearing your bra. You have two of those, too, but if one was in the washing basket, he could go in at night and get the chip out again.”

  Fruitful closed her eyes for a second. Imagining, I was sure, a tracking chip tucked into her bra, over her heart. She opened them again and said, “I threw my bra in the rubbish today, as soon as we bought the new ones. I’ll go get it and see.” The tears were gone, replaced by action. Exactly like Daisy.

  She turned for the cupboard under the sink and hauled out the metal bin, and I said, “I’ll do it.”

  “It’s not for you to do,” Fruitful said. “It’s for me.”

  “No, it isn’t,” I said. “I don’t care that it’s a … kitchen task, or whatever you’re thinking. It’s a dirty, disgusting job, and I’ll be glad to do it.”

  “No,” Fruitful said. “I don’t care what you say. I’m doing it.”

  She said it like a tigress. I stepped back, put up my hands, and said, “Fine. You do it.”

  Daisy pulled out another rubbish bag without comment, and the two of them went methodically through all of it without a bit of squeamishness. Bones. Pizza and salad remains. Bits of meat. Slimy vegetable parings. Coffee grounds.

  No woman I’d ever dated would’ve picked through a pile of stinking rubbish without even a pair of gloves. No woman I’d known—except my mother. If my mother’d been here, she’d have been right there on the floor with them.

  “I shoved them well down there,” Fruitful said. “I wish I hadn’t.” Eventually, though, she got to a pile of white cotton. Two bras, and two pairs of enormous white undies of the type not even my mum would wear. Four white socks. She pulled all of them out and held them up, and Obedience made a sound of distress. Fruitful said, “Gray doesn’t care. He thinks they’re ugly. Anyway, Daisy said that men Outside don’t care about lusts.”

  “Well, no,” I felt compelled to point out. “We care about lusts. We just don’t lust over white cotton undies without a woman in them.”

  “Daisy only has colors,” Fruitful said, sorting the bras out and feeling around the centers. “The lady at the shop said you’re meant to wear nude bras with light-colored shirts, but Daisy doesn’t have anything like that. She doesn’t have nude, or white, or anything. Not bras, or undies, either. ‘Nude’ doesn’t mean it doesn’t cover you, it just means it’s colored more like your skin.”

  Obedience said, “Fruitful,” in a despairing tone, and I thought about Daisy’s red bra showing under her damp, pale-blue T-shirt and said nothing.

  Daisy said, “I like colors, and I don’t care what you’re meant to do. I wear scrubs to work, and outside of work, I wear exactly what I like. Do you feel anything?”

  Fruitful sat back and said, “No. There’s nothing here. There can’t have been anything, either. It all looks new. Regular. Besides, it doesn’t make sense. Gilead can’
t sew.”

  “One of the women could have done it,” Daisy said. “Mercy, for example. You know she would. The midwife,” she explained to me, though I remembered. “Or she could have had somebody else do it, because there’s no woman who’d refuse. They could take it out in the laundry, then put it back in again afterward.” She was feeling over the bras now herself, then shaking her head. “No. This can’t be it.” She sat back on her knees, small and lithe, and I thought two things at once.

  First, that I wished I’d been a second faster, had jumped into the bed of that ute like Thor and stayed there, possibly kicking in the back window, until Gilead had got out to deal with me. I was sure he’d think he was tougher than some city fella. I’d have loved to show him he was wrong.

  The second thing was that I’d like to see Daisy’s bra collection.

  She said, “We need to go to the flat.”

  I thought about that night shift on no sleep at all. And said nothing.

  Daisy

  Walking up the iron stairs to the flat didn’t feel good at all. Walking through the door felt worse.

  Gray had been right. Nothing was out of place in the lounge. Also, however I felt, Gilead’s presence wasn’t here. I didn’t believe in that sort of thing. I didn’t burn sage or pursue rituals or worry about vibrations. I got on with my life.

  Gray had carried Fruitful up the stairs again because of her ankle, which also meant she’d be feeling more secure. His arms were a comforting place to be. Now, he set her on the couch and asked, “All right?”

  No answer, and after a second, I turned from where I’d been headed toward my bedroom.

  He wasn’t looking at Fruitful. He was looking at me. He asked, “All right?” again, and I said, “Oh. Yeh. Of course. I’m just …” I swallowed. “Going to see what he got into back here.”

  He came with me, and I couldn’t be anything but grateful for that. I switched on the light and looked around. The tenancy agreement, which had been in a wire basket on my desk, was gone. In Gilead’s pocket, I suspected. With my surname on it. My driving license number. My phone number.

  I said, “I need to change my phone number.” My voice was steady, somehow. My knees weren’t. The thought of him able to reach me, of his voice on the other end of the line …

  Gray put an arm around me, and I was glad of it. He said, “I’m sorry I missed him.”

  “Don’t be,” I said. “Him driving, you in the bed of the ute … That doesn’t work out well. It’s not like in the movies. Somebody dies.”

  He said, “I earned my living for more than ten years as a professional sportsman, Daisy.” His voice was quiet, and his arm was strong. “Did he get into anything else, can you tell?”

  I looked around, and he dropped his arm. I was sorry, and I was glad. I needed to be strong for Fruitful and Obedience. They hadn’t come with us, were still on the couch, I thought. Huddled together. Fruitful’s anger came from fear. I knew it, because I’d felt it. I was feeling it again now.

  “Not this, I don’t think,” I said, after I’d opened the file box under the desk. “He’d have thrown things around, surely.”

  “Yes,” Gray said. “I saw his face in the rearview mirror. It wasn’t pleasant.”

  I didn’t answer him. I opened the closet door instead. It took an effort to do it, like a monster would jump out at me.

  No monster. A mess of tumbled shoes, though. A nightdress pulled halfway off a hanger, another one on the floor. I picked it up and smoothed over it with my hand, fighting the emotion. It was ivory with scrolls of blue paisley, in a comfortable nightshirt style that had felt feminine and a little badass, both at once. Like I was Sandra Bullock, in a film where I would have been the one hanging on to the back of the ute, going after the evil ex.

  Gray said, “Just because he touched it doesn’t mean he can still touch you.”

  I didn’t look at him. I couldn’t. I hung the nightshirt back up, straightened the other one on its hanger, and said, “If he was looking in here, he expected to find something.”

  Gray said, “Let’s check the other closet.”

  We did. Nothing in there, of course, but the door was standing open, and I hadn’t left it that way. I said, “Obedience will have been in here, but she’d never leave a closet door open. Not possible. When you live in one room, you’re tidy.”

  We went back out to the lounge, where the girls were still sitting close together on the couch, and I said, “He tracked you here by something, Fruitful. It wasn’t the apron or cap, because we burned them. It wasn’t your bra.”

  Fruitful said, “It has to have been my shoes. I left my shoes here, remember?” She shivered. “It’s in my shoes.”

  I said, “There’s an insole you can get. For dementia patients, like I said.” I didn’t move, though. I didn’t want to look.

  I had to look. Another kitchen rubbish bin, and two cludgy white trainers stuffed into it.

  It wasn’t the insoles. Once I’d checked, I sat back on my heels and said, “It wouldn’t make sense anyway. You have to recharge them every night, unless he had two pairs and switched them out. But—no. You’d want a chip. They can last a year.”

  Gray said, “May I look?” When I nodded, he sat on a kitchen chair and took the shoes from me. He removed the insoles, then the laces, felt inside, and pressed around the outside edges. Finally, he turned them over and checked the heavy soles.

  I said, “It can’t be on the bottom. How could it be? You wear those shoes everywhere. Through the mud. Everywhere.”

  Gray said, “Here.” He was rubbing a section along the thick edge. “I can feel a line here that isn’t on the other shoe. Hang on.” He pulled some sort of multipurpose tool out of the pocket of his jeans, sat down on the chair beside me, and started to dig.

  “Glue,” he said, switched to a knife blade, and began to cut.

  The plug of white rubber slipped out, revealing a hole, and then the chip did. A round thing about the size of a dollar coin, but twice as thick. Gray held it in his palm and told Fruitful, “You got rid of your shoes the minute you could. Your instincts were good. Just like your sister’s.”

  Fruitful said, “He followed me.”

  “He did,” Gray said. “But he can’t do it anymore.” He looked down at the chip some more, then said, “One question. Why would he come at five-thirty in the afternoon? If you’re going to break into a flat, to come after your estranged wife … wouldn’t you do it at two in the morning, when everybody was asleep?”

  “He’d think,” Fruitful said, her voice tight, “that we’d be making dinner. He’d think dinner was at six, and at five-thirty, we’d be cooking it. He doesn’t know about … pizza. He knows about women cooking dinner.”

  “Maybe he just wanted to talk to you, then,” Obedience said.

  Silence from Fruitful. Finally, I said, “He wanted to take you back with him. He thought he could convince you.”

  Fruitful said, “Yes.”

  “Reckon he doesn’t know you as well as he thinks he does, then,” Gray said. He asked me, “Ready to go?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “What will you do with the shoes?” Obedience asked.

  “Chuck them in the dumpster,” Gray said. “And we’ll get your bike and your surfboard, Daisy, and anything else you want to take along. Bring your clothes. Bring that nightdress. Wear it in a room he’s never been in, a room where he’s never going to be. Wear it and know you’re free.”

  He stopped at the entrance to Tunnel Beach. Somehow, I’d known he would.

  Sunset had faded into dusk by the time we were walking the earthen track at the top of the cliffs for the second time today. Gray had Fruitful in his arms, since you couldn’t crutch on a beach, and I led the way, using his torch to light our path through the tunnel, the echoes of the sea bouncing off the black walls like holding a shell to your ear.

  Otherworldly. Not eerie, though. Like entering another world. A better one.

  We stepped out
onto the hard-packed sand, and the sea was all there was. The hiss of the waves, the patter of the waterfall. The power of water.

  Gray asked Fruitful, “Still have that wedding ring?”

  “Yes,” she said, and pulled it from her trouser pocket.

  He asked, “Ready to do it?”

  “Yes,” she said again, and he walked out to the edge of the water, the two of them dark shadows in the gray. I couldn’t hear what he said to her, but I saw her arm draw back, and I saw it go forward.

  Gilead’s ring, gone for good.

  A second toss, and that was the tracking chip gone as well.

  Beside me, Obedience said quietly, “He’s so kind. I didn’t know men could be kind, except Uncle Aaron, maybe. But Gray’s even kinder. And so was Matiu, tonight. Is that how men are, Outside?”

  “No,” I said. “Not always.” That was all I had left in me. I was done.

  We drove the rest of the way home without more conversation than that. Gray pulled into the drive and up to the house, Xena barked from inside, and Gray said, “Shit,” and braked to a stop.

  “What?” I asked.

  I could see his frown in the light from the dash. “Fruitful was wearing those shoes when she escaped,” he said. “That means he could have tracked them to the Wanaka house. To my mum.”

  32

  Protect and Defend

  Gray

  Why would absolutely no woman in my life do what I wanted?

  We were back in the yurt. Daisy was making tea, and I was thinking that I hated the idea of Gilead having her phone number, and that the thought was making her jumpy, too. I was also talking to my mum on speaker.

  She said, “Some fella came to the door yesterday, yeh. Dinnertime, it was. And, yeh, he was one of those from Mount Zion. I recognized the haircut. Ask Daisy why they always have such rubbish haircuts.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked.

  “I don’t tell you every time somebody comes to my door,” she said. “Why would I?”