Kiwi Strong (New Zealand Ever After Book 3)

by Rosalind James

  “But how?” Daisy asked. “We don’t know that he did kidnap Frankie, exactly, and he’s got her now. How do we say she’ll press charges, when he’s got her, and she can’t say anything?”

  “What he did to her is one thing,” Victoria said. “How about what he did to you?”

  Now, I told Frankie, “That was how Daisy did it. She and Oriana and I went to the police. Daisy made a complaint, and Oriana substantiated it with what had happened to the two of you. What she saw herself, and the Punishment Hut. They showed the photos Daisy took of you after you escaped last time, too. Meanwhile, Drew called in the media, and everybody rang up everybody they knew, and there you have it. Our very own superhero movie, but with only a couple of punches thrown. A lawyer’s version of an action film, I guess. It’d land with a dull thud at the box office, but the lawyers were right, because it worked.”

  “I liked it,” Frankie said. “But what about Prudence? She’s fifteen next week. She can’t get out for another year, and what if they don’t let her go?”

  “I’m fairly sure,” I told her, “that the Prophet is going to realize he’d better take good care of her. On her sixteenth birthday, we’ll all drive up there, you and Oriana and Daisy and Mum and I, and make them open the gate. And she’ll walk straight out.”

  “Do you promise?” Frankie asked, like the little girl she was and wasn’t. Like a seventeen-year-old woman who’d lost her illusions, but was ready to believe again. Her eyes were closing. She would sleep, now, I thought. Sleep, and begin to heal.

  I bent and kissed her forehead. “Believe it,” I told her. “Believe me. I’ve got this.”

  Three little sisters.

  I could handle that.

  58

  Kiwi Strong

  Gray

  Daisy and I took a walk to the lake after breakfast. Frankie was sleeping with Oriana curled around her, Mum had gone to bed, too, and Luke and Hayden had gone home. The two of us needed a nap of our own before we drove home, but not yet. There were still things to say.

  It was definitely going to rain. The clouds had gathered over the mountains, billowing piles of cumulus, but the sun was still shining fitfully through them as we headed through town. For once, I wasn’t wearing the cap and sunnies, and I was recognized. People called out and waved, and I waved back. Some of them had been up there today with us, at Mount Zion, and anyway, what was being recognized? Being an All Black was a privilege, and with every privilege came responsibility.

  Daisy said, “You didn’t get to hear Hayden’s labor plan.”

  “No,” I said, “but I will. And meanwhile, I got a few good men, I think.”

  “My cousins,” she said. “Gabriel, the tall one, and Raphael. Archangels.”

  “Archangels,” I said. “Especially good, then.” And she laughed.

  “I’m thinking Aaron could make one hell of a foreman,” I said.

  “I think you’re right,” she said. “I told you. He can do anything. Even leave a cult.”

  We’d reached the foreshore now. The wind was stirring up whitecaps on the water, which was glinting green against the stormy sky. The clouds loomed over the mountains, and Daisy pulled my mum’s rain jacket tighter around her and said, “I have something to talk to you about. Something I’ve been waiting to tell you.”

  “You’re pregnant,” I said immediately, and waited to feel the thunderclap of doom.

  It didn’t come. Huh.

  “What?” She laughed. “No. I’m not pregnant.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Good thing, maybe, for now. If you’re going to do that nurse practitioner thing.”

  “Am I?” she asked.

  “Oh,” I said, “I think you are. I think you’ve decided that if Frankie has the courage to do everything she’s done today, and to start over, you can remember that you have exactly that much courage, and what are you waiting for?”

  “It’s a commitment,” she said. “It’s an effort.”

  “Fortunately,” I said, “you’re good at commitment and effort.”

  “Just like you.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Just like me. Reckon we’re a matched pair.”

  She stopped. Looking out over the rugged gray peaks of mountains, half-obscured by fog. Over the lake, restless and ever-changing. And out to the Wanaka Tree, drowned in the water and growing anyway, because you couldn’t kill something that strong.

  She said, “The thing I have to tell you. I did some research, and then I talked to Matiu, and he did some more. There’s a test.”

  “A test?” I said. “For what?”

  “Two tests, actually, that can help predict late global outcome after TBI. The research is new, just in the past couple years, but it looks solid.”

  “Late global outcome,” I said.

  “Meaning that they can help predict whether you’ll develop CTE. Not definitively, but significantly.”

  “Oh.” I couldn’t say more than that.

  “One of them,” she said, “is non-invasive. A test for eye movement abnormalities. The other is more specific. More predictive. It involves a lumbar puncture to get a sample of your cerebrospinal fluid, and then they run it through a PET scan. There’s something called tau proteins. Elevated total-tau in your cerebrospinal fluid is a strong indicator of pathologic causes of brain dysfunction. Not so much for Alzheimer’s, but for multiple-TBI patients, it appears to be predictive. In other words, if your t-tau’s elevated, you’ll know you’re more at risk, and if it isn’t, you’ll know you’re not. If you want to know. Do you want to know?”

  I had to think about that.

  “Yes,” I said. “It’s better to know. If you know, you can act. If I know that I’ll get it …” I had to stop a minute. Had to catch my breath. “I can make the right decisions.”

  I said it, and I felt all the chill of it. I’d avoided thinking about this, but it was why I’d run away from involvement. Why half of me wanted to run still.

  How does it help, Mum had asked, for you not to love somebody?

  Because I wouldn’t put myself in a position to hurt them.

  Daisy asked, “Why are you so quiet? What are you thinking?”

  “That I’m glad you told me,” I said. “And that once I know the truth, I’ll make those decisions.”

  “Gray.” She’d turned to face me, her hands on my wrists. “What are you thinking? Tell me the truth.”

  There was a line in some Shakespeare play they’d made us read in school. Though she be but little, she is fierce. That was how Daisy looked now.

  I said, “That I’ll be glad to know.” Though I wouldn’t be. And then I did tell the truth. “Because I’ll be able to protect you, if I have to.”

  She stared at me, and then she laughed. “You’re joking. You think that’s why I’d told you? So you could nobly renounce me and free me to be with a better man?”

  “What?” I said. “What else do you imagine I’d do with that information?”

  “Gray.” She still had my wrists, and her eyes were intent on my face. Brown eyes, clear and honest and shining with intelligence. “I’ve got the better man. I’ve got the best man. How could you imagine that I’d let you do that?”

  “If I have it,” I said, “it can mean dementia, later on. Personality changes. Even violence.”

  “So we’ll know,” she said. “And we’ll plan. With clear heads.”

  “You don’t want that,” I said. “I’d never sign you up for that.”

  “No,” she said. “I’d sign myself up. Don’t you know that I’d rather have this time with you than a lifetime with anybody else? Haven’t you figured that out yet?”

  I couldn’t speak. I tried, and I couldn’t do it.

  She said, “Do you imagine you’re the only one with strength?”

  “No,” I said. “I don’t.”

  “Then let’s do it,” she said. “Let’s find out. All of life ends in death. That’s the horror of it, and the beauty, too, isn’t it? Living clear-eyed in the
face of that knowledge. Somebody said that when you love somebody, you give a hostage to fortune, and I’d say they’re right. You put yourself at so much risk for pain and suffering, but if you don’t do it, what’s the risk then? What’s the cost of living without love?”

  “Too high,” I said.

  “That’s right,” she said. “It’s too high. And I won’t do it. I choose the risk, and I choose you.”

  “Then,” I said, and took a breath. “If I can’t stop you, I reckon I’ll just have to love you back.”

  I smiled at her, and she smiled at me, our hearts too full for words. I kissed her, finally, and she kissed me back like a promise. Like a vow. Together in the wind, in the chill, under a sky full of clouds and sun and the promise of rain. And I looked out at the Wanaka Tree. A fence post, and a willow. Strong and graceful and determined to live.

  A tree exactly like Daisy.

  Kiwi strong.

  59

  Same as It Ever Was

  Daisy

  I woke up on the last day of January, over a year later, looked up at the radiating spokes of the yurt’s roof, the blue of the sky overhead, and remembered. Today was the day I got to see the house. The workmen had departed last night in a final rush of debris-hauling, dusty utes pulling out of the drive and heading up the track. They were a crew Uncle Aaron had put together. Gabriel, Raphael, and the others who’d left the cult since.

  Our house had been remodeled by Mount Zion hands that weren’t in Mount Zion anymore, and Gilead was in prison. I can’t tell you how much pleasure those two things gave me.

  Oh, not everybody had left. My parents were still there, and so were some of my siblings, and about half of the others. But Prudence was with us, though her name was Priya now. Priya, an Indian name. It meant “beloved,” and she was. She was at Honor’s house, though, with Frankie and Oriana. They’d gone to stay for the long summer holidays, because I was working and studying, and Gray was working, too. In the final stages of his University of Otago projects, and starting on the next ones. Meeting his deadlines.

  Honor had told us a few months back, during one of her frequent visits, “I always wanted to be a grandmother. Never thought I’d get the chance. I’ve got a few granddaughters now, though, I reckon.”

  Gray had looked at her, amusement in his eyes, and said, “I’m not touching that.”

  I couldn’t lie here any longer. I threw back the blanket, got out of bed, and got my clothes on. And then I went out to find Gray.

  He was in the front garden with Xena, who was lying beside him as he pruned bushes, and with Iris, who was on the riding mower.

  I had flowers now. Lavender and roses, fuchsia and crucifix orchids, and more. Purple and red and pink and orange, the colors of an Otago sunrise. The bushes were small, but they would grow. Everything grew, if you gave it moisture and sunlight and care.

  I went to him, smelling fresh-mown grass and sunshine, and he straightened at the sight of me. I wrapped my arms around his waist and said, “It’s barely eight. How long have you been out here?”

  “Couldn’t sleep,” he admitted. “Too excited.”

  “Mm.” I kissed his chest, sure that Iris was watching us and snorting. Never mind. She could snort. She missed Oriana, that was all.

  “Course I do,” she’d said, when I’d asked her about it a few days ago. “Free labor, isn’t she.” After she’d dumped a pasteboard box of vegetables on the front porch and shouted, “Greens,” by way of announcing that she’d brought us a gift.

  “Flattering, too,” Gray said. “Having her absorb your gardening wisdom and life lessons and all.”

  “Making me take on alpacas,” Iris answered. “As if I don’t have enough to do.”

  “Mm,” Gray said. “You may have to move out, things have got so complicated and entangled here. All that dangerous emotion. All that troublesome family.”

  She glowered at him. “Did I say I was moving out? Who else is going to look after all this? You? That’s never happening.”

  “You’re right,” he said. “You’d better stay. And put up with Oriana.”

  Well, she could snort all she wanted, because Gray had wrapped his arm around me and was walking up the track with Xena following after, always his devoted shadow.

  Off to see the house. Two months’ worth of labor, of saws going from dawn to dusk and sometimes beyond, of hammering and men’s voices calling to each other and dumpsters filled with debris. I’d chosen colors and materials and discussed the design with Gray, but I hadn’t set foot in the place since the first of December. He hadn’t allowed it.

  We stopped outside the door, and I said, “Of course, if I hate it, I’m going to say so, and then you’re going to have to decide between ripping it out again and redoing it to please me, or telling me to bugger off, because I chose it, and now I just have to live with it.”

  “Reckon I will,” Gray said. “We’d better find out which it is.” And opened the door.

  We stepped into light. Ancient, wide-plank hardwood floorboards, unearthed from under layers of linoleum and carpet, varnished to a shine. A white-painted foyer full of built-in shelves and hooks and cubbies, and beyond it, our brand-new great room. The enormous, ornate, carved-wood fireplace mantel, and the brick of the chimney above it exposed, old, and warm. Three couches set around it in a U, with a non-bulbous coffee table and end tables to set your tea on. The dining table, too, where you could sit and look out through windows unobstructed by curtains, to the gardens and the trees.

  It all looked like relaxing. It all looked clean and unfussy and comfortable and bright. I couldn’t stay there, though, because I had to explore the kitchen.

  It was what I’d dreamed of, but better. Glass-fronted cabinets on top and white ones beneath, and dark-green soapstone benchtops with a huge farmhouse sink made of the same material, the texture so organic and silky-smooth under your hands, you just wanted to stand there and feel it. A huge island full of storage, with four stools arranged in front of it and an actual vase of flowers on top. Flowers arranged without the least bit of talent, by somebody who’d made an effort, because he knew I loved flowers.

  It was all warm and bright and clean and so homey. The home I’d never had.

  I wanted to explore it some more, to open every cabinet and drawer and see what he’d done there. Whether the spice cupboard was as good as it had looked on the website, and whether there were turntables in the pantry, and so many other things. I couldn’t, though, because Gray was tugging at my hand.

  “Come on,” he said. “Come and see.”

  Through an arched doorway that had once led to the dining room. Now, it was an office. A double office. The wood-burner was still in the corner, but there was an old Oriental carpet on the hardwood floor, all deep reds and burnished golds, and a basket in the corner for Xena, which she went to now, curling up and lying down with a sigh, like all this looking and exclaiming was exhausting. The walls were lined with shelves and cabinets and two built-in desks that wrapped around the corners. One at the back of the room that was Gray’s. And the other, kitty-corner to it at the front, looking out onto the gardens again, out to the sky and the sea, that was mine. So I could study, whatever time of day or night it was.

  “Upstairs,” Gray said, when I lingered again.

  The stairs and railings had been laboriously stripped of their paint, the original wood restored and varnished, and a carpet runner laid down. Xena followed us up, panting a little with excitement, picking up on the mood, and Gray started opening doors.

  Two bedrooms, the dormer windows now boasting window seats with cushions and storage beneath. A laundry room with cabinets and a rod for hanging clothes and another deep soapstone sink. And a bathroom. With a heated floor and a double sink and heated towel racks and a bathtub and a shower, the benchtops and shower done in veined quartz in white and pale gray. Almost no grout to scrub, and a windowsill you could put an orchid on.

  “Another half bath downstairs,” Gray said,
“Beside the entryway. I forgot to show you.”

  “It’s beautiful,” I said. “I love it.” It was true. The walls were white, and every fixture was new and gleaming. Not a concrete sink or bare wall of showerheads to be seen.

  “Our bedroom,” Gray said, and took me to the last room. The same size as the others, with the same window seat, ready for reading or just dreaming, and with the best view, of flowers and vegetable garden and orchards, and silky-haired Suri alpacas chewing grass. A big bed with a view out that same window, and an enormous photo hanging over it.

  The Wanaka Tree. Not black and white this time. Photographed instead in a rosy dawn that tinted everything pink and gold and blue. The mountains, and the lake, and the sea. The sinuous black branches of the tree reaching out over the water and reflected in the calm surface beneath, and the mountains overhead sending out the same message. Of endurance, and of more than that, because life was more than endurance. Life was beauty, too.

  I said, “It’s wonderful. It’s perfect. I can’t believe you did the photo, too.”

  Gray opened the door to one side of the bed. “Don’t you want to see the rest?”

  The closet, and a storage area. I said, “Of course,” and went to join him.

  It wasn’t a storage area. It was an ensuite bath.

  I cried.

  Gray

  I said, “Baby. What?” I had her in my arms, and she was sobbing. “If you don’t like it,” I told her, “I’ll redo it. I know I didn’t ask you. It was meant to be a surprise.”

  She shook her head violently, then hiccupped a couple times, cried some more, stood back, grabbed some toilet paper, and wiped her nose. “No,” she said and waved her arm around her. “It’s just … you listened. To my dream.”