Fractured (Not Quite a Billionaire #2) (22 page)

Hemi

I was knee-deep in spreadsheets, all three monitors on my desk pressed into service, when my phone rang.

The fella at the front desk said, “I have Hope and Karen Sinclair here for you,” and that was when I realized I’d never given either of them a key. I shut the laptop, and the monitors winked into darkness.

Ever since they’d left, I’d wondered if I should have gone with them. But what would have been the point? I couldn’t do that sorting for them, and it would only be a couple hours’ work. There was nothing of value in that apartment. They could’ve come to me with the clothes on their backs without losing much. When they got to the apartment door, though, I had it open.

Hope came in first, a stack of dresses over one arm, her old suitcase in the other hand. “Hi,” she said. “We just brought a few things.”

I glanced at the garments. “Take them off those wire hangers first and use the wooden ones. If there aren’t enough, we’ll buy more.”

I could’ve sworn she flinched, but then she nodded and disappeared into the apartment, and I stood there, my hand on the doorknob, and wondered what I’d said wrong.

Karen was still standing there, too, holding a little duffel and a green plastic rubbish bag. I frowned at it absently and said, my mind still on Hope, “I told you to leave anything you didn’t want. Charles will take care of it.”

She hefted the green plastic and said, “Yeah. Well. This is my clothes. I don’t have a suitcase.”

“No?” I’d loaned her and Hope some good-sized ones for our holiday, but I hadn’t realized Karen didn’t own one at all.

She must have noticed me looking startled, because she said, “I’ve never gone anywhere before.”

That wasn’t quite true. I’d taken her and Hope to San Francisco for the weekend once, and Karen had brought her school backpack and that same little duffel. I’d thought she didn’t care about clothes, but that wasn’t it. She didn’t
have
clothes.

Her chin was up, exactly like Hope’s when her pride was on the line, and she said, “Which is no big deal.” And then her expressive face shifted. “But I think you should talk to Hope. I think she’s freaking out. It’s cool to move and all, but it’s…it’s weird. I almost called you, but then I thought…you had work. Anyway, we did it.” She swung her rubbish bag. “I’ll go put these away, I guess.”

“You do that,” I said, then headed to the master bedroom. Hope had laid the clothes on the bed and opened the suitcase, and now, she was pulling something out of it.

Something absolutely, positively hideous.

“Is there a spot in the living room for this?” she asked. “Maybe in a basket by the couch or something?”

“No,” I said. “You can’t want that. I have a mohair throw out there, and an alpaca one for winter.” Knit into chevrons of natural light and dark gray, to be precise. Tasteful. Elegant. Not a series of…starbursts, or flowers, or however you’d describe that—my designer’s mind balked at even attempting to find a word—that
thing
that assaulted my eyes and stabbed every finer feeling to death.

“I want this,” Hope said, her face settling into stubborn lines. “It can be in a basket. It can be in a
box.
But I want this one.”

“You can’t want it,” I said. “You have taste, and that’s awful.”

“I know it’s awful, but it’s mine.” She was hugging the hundred-percent-acrylic monstrosity to her as if it were a baby. “My great-grandmother made it for my mother while she was pregnant with me. It’s been on my couch my whole life, and Karen’s whole life, too. It’s been…it’s been…it’s ours.”

I opened my mouth to tell her no. To tell her absolutely not. To tell her I wasn’t having anything that horrible in my house. And then I realized.

My house.

I closed my mouth, sat on the bed beside Hope’s heap of cheap clothes on their wire hangers, and said, “Tell me.”

Her face worked, her mouth moved, and nothing came out.

“What?’ I asked.

“My…my apartment.” Her voice was so hesitant, and it pierced me all the more for that. “It’s the only place I’ve ever lived, you know? It’s the only place Karen’s ever lived. I know it’s awful, but it’s like this afghan. It’s like this vase I brought that you’re going to hate, but—Hemi, I need to put flowers in that vase and put it on the kitchen counter, even though it doesn’t go and it’s all wrong. It’s…it’s my mom, and it’s us.” The tears were shining in her eyes now. “You’re going to think that’s stupid. Why wouldn’t we want to leave that place and move in here? But my
mom
was there, in that apartment. It was the last place she was. And when we locked the door behind us and I thought, this is the last time…it was…like…” A single crystal tear escaped and traced a slow path down her cheek. “Like losing her all over again. I was saying goodbye, but this time, it’s forever.”

“Aw, sweetheart,” I said helplessly, then put my thumb out and wiped that tear away. Her throat worked, a few more tears escaped, and I wiped those away, too. And then I took her in my arms and finally felt the convulsive heave of a sob.

She was crying, and I was
glad.
Glad she had a safe place to do that. Glad that I was here, and that she was. Glad I had her.

“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 watch a movie, all of us together. And you and Karen can start to believe that you’re home.”