Chapter Twenty-Three
Henry
It’s getting late, and Rangi still isn’t answering his phone, so in the end, I call Philip.
“What do you want?” he demands.
“Hello to you too.” I clamp down on my irritation, determined not to let him rile me. “I can’t get hold of Rangi, and I wanted to make sure he’s okay.”
“He’s fine.” Philip talks curtly. “He’s in his room, being emo and listening to music.”
“Did Ellie go ahead with the termination?”
“Yeah, apparently it’s all done, thank God. Maybe he’ll pull his fucking socks up now and sort himself out.”
I frown, sad and angry at my brother’s lack of compassion for his son. “Come on, Phil, have a little heart. The kid’s grieving. He had no say in the matter and now he’s lost his girl and his baby, as he sees it.” Ellie’s actually only fifteen, and her parents have forbidden her from seeing Rangi again.
“I should have guessed you’d take his side.”
“I’m not taking sides. I—”
“I’ve gotta go.” He ends the call.
I toss my phone onto the kitchen table, grab a bottle of water from the fridge, and head out to the pool. The sun is setting, and the water is the color of cranberry juice beneath the beautiful sky. I drink half the bottle, strip off my tee, then dive into the water and swim the whole length of the pool before emerging to rest my arms on the side.
If I set sail from the beach below and went east in a straight line, I’d probably hit Chile. For a moment I imagine being on a boat, alone, on the Pacific, with just the sun and wind for company, where nobody could contact me. That sounds like heaven. Except for the fact that I don’t know the first thing about boats or sailing, and I’d probably drown before I even left the harbor.
I let out a long sigh. There’s just over a week until the conference in Sydney, and I’ve got tons of work to do. James has been into the office once or twice, but he’s obviously tied up with what’s happened with Maddie, and the funeral tomorrow, so he hasn’t been able to contribute much to preparing our presentation. Alex is busy covering for James and getting Kia Kaha up and running ready for the company to reopen on Monday. So it’s been down to Tyson and me to work everything out. It’s meant working fourteen-hour days, eating lunch at our desks, and coming home most nights exhausted and with a headache. But I’ve welcomed the work, because it’s taken my mind off Juliette. A bit.
She’s still with Cam. I know she’s not having the time of her life, though. Although I haven’t seen much of her at work, she texts me a lot and occasionally calls me, and it sounds as if things are horrendous with Cam’s family. She’s also exhausted and feeling the strain, but she won’t listen when I tell her she has to put herself first sometimes. I understand that she’s been brought up to have a deep-rooted sense of community, and it’s important to her to help people, but she doesn’t want to be with Cam, and all this is doing is delaying the inevitable.
I can’t push her, though. All I can do is get on with my own life and hope she sorts things out in the end.
I wish she was here. My body aches for her, and so does my heart. I hate to see her suffering like this. I want to help and comfort her, to take her to bed and help her forget. At night I dream about her soft mouth and her light-brown skin and her silky hair. But like Rangi, my hands are tied, and all I can do is wait.
I’m tired, and it’s going to be a big day tomorrow. At least I’ll be able to see her, and she’s told me that Cam won’t be coming to the funeral, so that’s something.
I swim lengths for half an hour, get changed, have dinner, answer some emails, write up some notes while I half-watch a movie, and then go to bed at nine-thirty, unable to keep my eyes open. I’m asleep within about five minutes of my head hitting the pillow, and it’s not even properly dark.
Jesus, I’m getting old.
*
Friday dawns dull and gloomy, kind of fitting for a funeral. I dress in a dark suit and tie, and head over to James’s house around one o’clock. The funeral’s not until three, and he’s hired caterers to organize the wake, but I know guests are going to be arriving soon, and I offered to be there to help.
He looks pale but composed, and Aroha is gorgeous in a white blouse and black pencil skirt. She’s dressed Leia up in a red frock with hearts on it, though, with a matching headscarf, and the baby is like a red rose in a concrete city.
Most people are going straight to the funeral home, but some of his family turn up, and soon I’m busy making sure everyone has a drink and a seat, greeting others as they arrive, and liaising with the catering company so that everything runs smoothly. Alex, Missie, Gaby, and Tyson arrive around two, also wanting to be with James, and I can see he appreciates his friends being around at such a difficult time.
Juliette arrives not long after. I watch her get out of the Uber, and stand in the doorway to greet her as she approaches.
“Hey,” I say softly.
To my surprise, she comes right up to me, slides her arms around me, and gives me a big hug. “Mmm, I’ve missed you so much,” she whispers.
“Aw, me too.” I tighten my arms around her. She’s lost weight over the past few weeks, emphasized by the black dress she’s wearing, and she feels slight and fragile in my arms.
“I thought white was the traditional color of mourning for Hindus,” I say.
“I’m not a Hindu,” she says. “If I was, I wouldn’t be here.” Not explaining that mysterious comment, she moves back. “You look nice.”
“Thank you.”
She looks up at me. “It’s really strange—I can feel confused and emotional and all over the place, but when I see you, it feels as if everything’s going to be okay.”
“It will be. We’ll get there.”
A frown flickers on her brow, but she just says, “How’s James?”
“He’s hanging in there.”
“I’ll go and see him.” She gives me a small smile, then walks inside.
I watch her go, wishing she was mine, and I could stay at her side today. But she’s not, and so I turn away to greet the next guests, hoping that if nothing else I get to spend some time with her later.
*
The funeral goes as well as can be hoped. Afterward, I stay by James’s side, steering him through the crowd before delivering him to the car with his father and stepmother, make sure that everyone has transport back to the house, then head off with Alex and Missie.
When we get back, the catering staff have everything in hand, and begin serving drinks. I look for James, but he’s vanished. I approach Aroha and say, “Do you know where he is?”
“I saw him going around the house to his room,” she says. “Is he okay?”
“Leia’s father turned up at the funeral home,” I tell her. “I don’t know what he said to James, but he went white as a sheet afterward.”
“I’ll go and see if he’s okay.” She holds Leia out to me. “Can you take her for a minute?”
“Oh. Uh. Okay.” I take the baby from her, and she walks off into the east wing of the house.
Conscious that I’m holding Leia like a rugby ball, I put her up against my shoulder the way I’ve seen Aroha do, and the baby snuggles up to me. She’s sucking on a dummy, but she doesn’t seem sleepy. She looks up at me with her big turquoise eyes. They’re the same color as James’s—the color that Maddie’s were. I feel a sudden sweep of grief. Maddie will never get to see her daughter grow up. God, that’s so incredibly sad.
I walk to the window that overlooks the garden. It’s raining, and I immediately see a fantail jumping from branch to branch in the lemon tree. The piwakawaka is said to be a messenger between the living and the dead, and it makes me catch my breath. Maybe Maddie hasn’t gone entirely. Surely, if it was at all possible, she’d stay around Leia to keep an eye on her?
“It suits you.”
I turn at the voice to find Juliette smiling at me. At my querying look, she gestures at Leia.
“I didn’t really have a choice,” I say gruffly.
“You look like a natural.”
I glance down at the baby. She looks back, the dummy moving up and down as she sucks.
“She’s very small,” I say.
“Everyone’s small next to you,” Juliette states. She steps back, holds up her phone, and takes a photo of me. “For my own private collection,” she says.
I shift from foot to foot, awkward and uncomfortable. “You want to take her?”
Her smile fades. “Sure.” She lifts Leia out of my arms and coos to her, a natural, like women often seem to be.
I look away, out at the garden. The fantail has gone, and it’s raining more heavily now.
“She’s so beautiful,” she says, kissing the baby’s hair. “So James is going to bring her up as his own?”
I nod. “He’s a bigger man than I am.”
She lifts her gaze to me. “You wouldn’t do it, if you were in his shoes?”
“I don’t think so. I wouldn’t want to bring up another man’s child.” I’ve already told her that I wouldn’t want her to have a sperm donor, so it can’t come as a surprise to her.
Our eyes meet. Hers are shining, and she seems to be having trouble holding back tears as she drops her head and kisses Leia’s hair again.
I go to reply, but James comes out then, Aroha at his side. “Let’s get this party started,” he says, and he grabs a drink and heads to the middle of the room.
He gives a speech about Maddie, makes everyone laugh, starts some music playing, and bids everyone to eat, drink, and dance.
I don’t talk to Juliette much for the rest of the afternoon. She always seems to be somewhere else, in the middle of a conversation. Once it stops raining, I play rugby outside with Saxon, Kip, Alex, and Huxley, and afterward I sit on the deck and chat to some of the others as the sun begins to head toward the horizon, hoping to catch up with her before the end of the day.
But later, when people start saying they’re leaving, I look around for her and realize she’s gone.
When I eventually get home, it’s late, and I’m tired after the emotion of the day. I haven’t drunk today, wanting to make sure I was able to help James if he needed me, so for the first time I pour myself a whisky and sit out on the deck.
Rangi finally messaged me this afternoon. I asked how he was doing, and he came back with one word. Shit. The poor kid. He’s in his last year at high school, with no job prospects, no brilliant future to speak of. I wish I could do something, but Philip will do his best to dissuade his son from accepting my help.
I message him back, saying I’m always here for him and that he can message or call me anytime if he wants to talk.
Then, feeling lonely and sad, I text Juliette. It was good to see you today. Hope you’re doing okay. X
But she doesn’t message back. We often send each other little texts—jokes, memes, songs—and it’s only now that I realize they were the same as the Rubik’s Cube—a private communication that said far more than what was actually contained in the message. And I miss it. I miss her. She’s been with me, in my heart, for so long, and now she’s been snuffed out like a candle flame, and all that’s left behind is smoke.
I’m tempted to call her—Cam is in Australia, after all—but I know she might be in bed. It’s late, and she was tired, too. But I can’t help but think she just doesn’t want to reply.
She’s slipping through my fingers, and there’s nothing I can do about it. I’m not just infertile, I’m fucking impotent, helpless in what feels like every area of my personal life.
It’s starting to rain, so I go inside and stretch out on the sofa. My New Year’s resolution not to drink too much is already down the drain, so I pour myself another and welcome the slow, relentless slide into oblivion as the rain patters on the deck and drums fingers on the window, its reflection like tears on my skin.
*
The next day, Saturday the thirteenth of January, I wake up annoyed with myself for giving in to alcohol last night. I swim and work out for a while, trying to make up for it, eat a healthy breakfast of muesli and fresh fruit, then get in the BMW and head off to James’s again.
Today the guys are coming around and we’re working on the presentation for the conference together. The girls—Missie, Gaby, Aroha, and Juliette—are going shopping together, partly in an attempt, I think, to cheer themselves up after the difficult day yesterday.
When I arrive, Alex and Missie are already there, and I join Alex and James at the dining table and set up my laptop. Gaby and Tyson arrive soon after, and the guys are just settling down and the girls are getting Leia ready to leave when Juliette turns up.
It’s a warm summer’s day today, and she’s wearing a light-blue tee and a pair of denim shorts. Her legs are long, brown, shapely, and smooth. She’s pinned her hair up in a bun, and she has only the lightest of makeup on today. She looks about five years younger, and absolutely gorgeous, and she makes my heart ache.
“Hey,” she says to the room in general. She meets my eyes and flicks me a smile, but she doesn’t approach me. “Ready, gang?” she asks the girls.
“Yep, good to go,” Aroha replies, picking up Leia in her carry seat, and with cheery goodbyes they all head for the door and go out. The door closes behind them, and there’s a few seconds of silence in the room.
Then Tyson blows out a breath. “Right. Beer and PlayStation, guys?”
We all laugh and take a chair at the dining table. We might well have a play later, but we’re not eighteen anymore, and we all want to get the work done first.
“First of all,” Alex says, “James, we want to put forward the idea of Henry going to Sydney with Tyson next weekend. You’ve had a tough time and we thought you might need some time off.”
James looks at me. “You wouldn’t mind?”
I shake my head. I’m not as natural a public speaker as James, but I’m not bad, and Tyson and I work well together. “Not at all.”
“Then that would be great, thank you. I could do with a rest.”
“Right,” Alex says. “That’s settled. Let’s get stuck in.”
We work until one, then make ourselves some sandwiches and sit out on the deck with a can of Coke Zero. And it’s then that James reveals that he’s asked Aroha to marry him, ostensibly to secure Leia and make sure her lowlife birth father doesn’t get his hands on her, and he announces he’s paying her a million dollars to do it.
I’d seen him kiss her at the funeral, so I’d assumed he was developing feelings for her, but he’s now implying it was all a ruse. Shocked at his idiocy, I say, “You do realize what an insult that was?”
He frowns. “The money, you mean?”
“Yeah.”
“Why? I couldn’t just ask her to marry me for nothing, could I? It’s a two-year commitment, minimum.”
“You fucking idiot.”
James stares at me, obviously baffled, and says, “I don’t understand.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Alex replies. “It’ll all come out in the wash.” He winks at me. Oh… He thinks James likes Aroha. Ah, that puts a different perspective on it.
We joke with James about the Droit du seigneur, which is the right of the lord to have sex with any female subject, especially on their wedding night, and he bears it in good humor. But as the conversation moves on, I wonder whether Alex is right.
I was the first of our group of friends to get married. Now they’re all following in my footsteps—Tyson got married last year, Damon at Christmas, Alex is sure to propose to Missie soon, and now James—the eternal bachelor—looks as if he might be settling down.
Hopefully they won’t all follow me out of the exit.
Lost in thought, I only half hear James tell Alex to follow him to his office to get something, and when I look around, I discover myself alone with Tyson, who’s sipping his Coke, looking out at the garden, although he glances over and smiles as he sees me looking at him.
I have nothing but admiration for him. Confined to a wheelchair at twenty-two, he could easily have given into depression and resentment at his bad luck. And he was low for a while, there’s no doubt about it. But Gaby stuck by his side, and the rest of us were determined to help him walk again. Once we discussed the idea of the exoskeleton and the creation of Kia Kaha, he never looked back. He did his physio, never missing a day, and worked his butt off, determined to stand next to Gaby at the altar, which he did last year, bringing a tear to every eye at the wedding.
He walks somewhat stiffly, and occasionally uses a cane if he’s having a bad day, but it never seems to faze him. He’s a good-natured guy.
“You’re sure about Sydney?” he asks.
“Yeah, of course. It’ll be fun.”
He nods, turning his can in his fingers. “Alex thinks it’ll do you good to get away,” he says softly.
My eyebrows rise. “Oh?”
“Tell me to mind my own business if you want,” he says, “but it’s obvious that something’s going on with Juliette.”
I inhale, then give a long sigh. “It’s complicated.”
“It always is.” He tips his head to the side. “Is she still with Cam?”
“Like I said, it’s complicated. He’s in Australia at the moment—his brother had a heart attack, and his wife is about to have a baby. Juliette’s looking after his mum, who had a kind of breakdown.”
“Jesus.”
“Yeah. I don’t think they’re together together, if you know what I mean. But she hasn’t broken up with him, either. I’m just waiting, hoping she’ll work it out.”
“That’s tough for you, man.”
I shrug. “It is what it is.” I look up as Alex walks back through the living room and joins us.
“James is just coming,” he says, “and then we’ll get started again.”
Tyson gets to his feet and heads off to the bathroom, and Alex and I start clearing up.
I glance at him as he stacks the plates. “Tyson said you suggested I go to Sydney because you thought it would be good for me to get away.”
“Yeah.” He picks up some of the rubbish. “I know you and Juliette are having trouble.”
“How did you know?”
His eyes meet mine. “You haven’t given her the Rubik’s Cube since she started work on Monday.”
My eyebrows rise. I’m surprised he’s picked up on that. But he’s right. Since she came back, we haven’t done it. I don’t know why. But something’s awry between us. I suppose I shouldn’t be shocked that he’s noticed. We’ve all worked together for years, and he’s pretty astute.
“She’ll get there,” he says. “Hang in there.”
My throat tightens, and I look away. “I dunno. I thought she was done with him, but then his brother fell sick, and now… I feel like I’m losing her.” I don’t normally talk like this, and I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I don’t know what to do.
“She has a strong sense of duty,” he says, “and Cam’s brother falling ill has knocked her for six. But she’s not the sort of woman to stay in a failing relationship. He’s let her down, and eventually she’ll walk away.”
“Maybe.” I crush my can with a hand. “But I’m tired of things being out of my hands, you know?”
“Yeah, I get that.”
“I know this is the reason you hate relationships at work. But I’m not waiting forever. If she stays with him… if she doesn’t leave soon… I can’t continue to work with her.”
He sighs. “Yeah, I know.” He scoops a few crumbs onto the plate on the top of the pile. “What would you do?”
“I’m not sure. I was thinking about helping out at Greenfield.”
His eyebrows rise. “Working there, you mean?”
“Yeah. Atticus—the deacon who runs it—has asked me if I’d consider leading some of the adventure therapy sessions. It would be cool to help out some youngsters. Maybe even work there full time.”
He nods slowly. Then his lips twist. “Kia Kaha wouldn’t be the same without you.”
“You’d be fine.”
“Come on, the building was all your idea. There’s more than a little of your heart left in the walls.”
“I dunno. It’s pretty fractured at the moment. I think maybe it needs some time to heal, you know?”
He goes to reply, but James and Tyson are heading back to the dining table, and so we rise, go back in, and take our places.
But I see him look at me a few times as we work during the afternoon, lost in thought.
I know all of them would be incredibly sad if I left the company. But how can I continue to work there, seeing Juliette at the meeting every morning, knowing how close I came to having her? And knowing that I lost her?
I just can’t do it, and unfortunately it’s looking more and more like a reality with each passing day.