Chapter 50
WHANAU STRONG
It was Friday morning, they were back in Auckland—to be precise, in Zane’s house—and Zane was being annoying.
Yes, he’d been wonderful getting them all back here.
He’d got the kids packed up by himself, because even the short trip from the hospital to the resort had left her weak and shaky, and all she’d managed to do was go to bed.
He’d got them all fed, too, that evening and the next morning, and got them all to the plane, off it again, through Customs, and back to his house.
There were benefits, it seemed, to loving a rugby captain.
He’d kept being wonderful yesterday, too, and this morning, feeding the kids and …
and so forth. Honestly, she wasn’t sure, because she’d slept most of the day yesterday.
But now, when she’d dressed and come out to join the land of the living, because really, she was fine, he was just being annoying.
He had to go back to the team this evening, which meant flying to Wellington.
But she’d promised to stay at his house for the rest of the school holidays, “because,” he’d said, “you’ll have more help here.
” Which would be provided by Granddad and Maureen, as well as the man himself when he flew up on Tuesday morning to spend the day, so what was he worrying about?
“A week or two off work, they said,” he was reminding her at this moment as he brought in two heaping baskets of dried clothes from the line and set them on the dining-room table.
“And I’ll have exactly that,” she said, grabbing a shirt off the top of the closest basket, because she recognized it. Finlay’s. “Well, a week, anyway.”
“And then taking it easy for another two weeks,” he said, folding a pair of undies that could only be Georgia’s.
Pink, small, and with butterflies. How could you not love a man who folded his little girl’s pink undies?
“How were you planning to manage that, working and caring for your kids and your house? And before you say ‘Granddad,’ how much does he actually do? How much is he willing to do, when you know he’d rather be over here?
You can’t be shopping and cooking and cleaning.
Not for at least those two weeks, plus this next one.
You need to stay here.” He was plucking out socks now and lining them up for matching. He was a very systematic man.
She said, “You realize that most people fold clothes in the laundry room.”
“This table’s bigger. More efficient. And stop helping. You’re not meant to be doing housework. What did I just say?”
“I can fold shirts. I can do the cooking, too, before you start worrying about that. Breakfast and lunch? Of course I can, and Maureen’s already said she’ll do the dinners. I can cook for my own kids at my house once term starts, too, and stay there. I’m fine, Zane. It was a very simple surgery.”
“Maybe so and maybe not, but recovering from pregnancy is no joke. And it’s breakfast and lunch for six kids. Once you’re home, it’s dinner for four, and everything else, too. You can do it all yourself? Yeh, right.”
Scarlett wandered into the room. “What are you talking about? I can fold these with Dad, Skylar. You should go lie down.”
“You see?” Zane said. “Everyone agrees with me.”
“I feel fine,” Skylar said. “I don’t need coddling. So I get a bit weepy still. So what?”
Scarlett said, “Dad said the doctor said you had to rest, though. You’re as stubborn as Dad. Honestly.”
Zane said, “I have an idea. I need time and space to work it out, though. Go back to bed, please, Skylar.”
“I don’t need to—” she began.
“Go back to bed,” he repeated. “Or lie on the couch in the family room, if you’d rather. You can read a book. You can watch TV. Plan your lessons for the new term. Doomscroll on the internet, if masochism appeals. But I need this space. Want a cup of tea?”
“I can make a cup of tea,” she said.
“I told you, I need the space. I need to focus. We’ll bring you the tea. Go lie down. Please.”
“Scarlett?” Skylar said.
“Yeh?” Scarlett asked, as she folded shorts.
“You know how I said that you should tell people what to say if they called you bossy?”
“Of course,” Scarlett said. “That I have excellent leadership skills.”
“Your dad has excellent leadership skills too. But sometimes, he’s also bossy. This would be one of those times.”
When Skylar had left, Zane told Scarlett, “Go get me that big pad of drawing paper and some markers. And then go get Finlay. I have an idea, and I need both of you to help me work it out.”
Five minutes later, both kids were back, and he said, “Let’s get these folded and put away first, because we’re going to need the space.”
Finlay said, setting to without argument—Skylar’d trained her kids better than Zane had, he had to acknowledge—“Folding on this table is a good idea. You could even have a system where people stood around it and everybody folded a different kind of thing. That would be heaps more efficient than the way Mum does it. You could set up the ironing board beside it and one person could do all the ironing, too. Mum’s the only one who knows how, but she could iron and we could fold. ”
“Good ideas,” Zane said. “And along the lines of what I’d like to discuss.”
Ten minutes later, he had them seated at the table and the block of art paper and markers in front of him. “Right. I’m going to outline a problem and then some possible solutions, and we’ll brainstorm.”
Scarlett and Finlay looked at each other and shrugged. “OK,” Scarlett said.
“When you said the two of you could be co-captains,” Zane said, “when I was with Skylar in hospital, that gave me the idea. Skylar’s going to try to do too much this next week, and the two weeks after that, too, once the new term starts, unless we have a firm plan in place.
Let’s think about the things that need to be taken care of, during the holidays and after them.
I’ll be home for another week after those first two weeks of term, but we have to get there first.”
“Before you leave for Europe,” Scarlett said.
“That’s right. So let’s think about this. What needs to happen at home during the day?”
“Meals,” Finlay said.
“Good,” Zane said. “We’ll put all of them down separately.” On his pad, he wrote,
Breakfast
Lunch
Dinner
“Helping the little kids get ready comes before breakfast,” Scarlett said. “Making sure their hair is combed and their backpacks packed and all of that. If you want to say all the things.”
“Getting them ready for bed is more work,” Finlay said. “Mum helps George with his bath still, and washes his hair, and Georgia needs help too. And then there are stories and all.”
Little kids—A.M., Zane wrote. Also Little kids—P.M.
“Washing-up,” Scarlett said. “That’s almost as much work as cooking, unless you cook the way Skylar does, where she cleans things as she goes along.
You have to be very organized to do it that way, though, and you probably have to have made the thing before, so you know how much time you have in between steps. ”
Washing-up, Zane wrote, and under it,
Breakfast
Lunch
Dinner
“You should put ‘Cooking’ at the top of the other list, then,” Scarlett said. “So it’s the same.” Which Zane did.
“Laundry, obviously,” Finlay said. “And helping the little kids make their beds in the morning. And cleaning the bathroom, because Mum does that during the week, too. That’s because we only have one, plus another toilet, and they get too dirty otherwise.”
“If you’ve been in hospital,” Scarlett said, “you probably have to have an extra-clean bath, or you may get an infection. The cleaners come on Thursdays, so maybe Skylar’s bath needs to be cleaned again on Monday? Ours will be dirty too, but we may be able to wait for the cleaners. I’m not sure.”
Zane’s marker was traveling fast now. “What else?”
“Going to the shops,” Scarlett said. “Nan does that almost every day. That’s heaps of lifting, putting things in the trolley and then carrying the bags, and Skylar’s not supposed to lift things. It’s also heaps of walking, but she says she is supposed to walk.”
“You can order groceries online,” Finlay said, “and get them delivered to your house. I’ve seen adverts about it. If we did that, nobody would have to drive or lift things. Except that it costs more. That’s why we don’t do it.”
“And Nan doesn’t do it,” Scarlett said, “because she says she needs to see what’s in the supermarket to remember what she needs. But won’t Nan be the one going? And doing the cooking, too? And the laundry?”
“It’s probably too much to do for nine people,” Finlay said. “That’s why we had to start helping Mum at our house, because Granddad was over here all the time and she said it was too much for one person to do. And there were only four of us there. Also, Snowball.”
“Snowball?” Zane asked.
“He’s still having the cat sitter come,” Finlay said, “but he gets lonely. If we’re going to be here, I think we need Snowball to be here, too.
So you should add the litter box and feeding him to the list. Mum usually does the litter box, but it’s not a very nice job.
Oh—we have to mow the lawn at our house soon, too, or it’s going to get really long.
I guess that goes on a different list, though. ”
“No,” Zane said, “one list. OK, then.” He looked at his sheets of paper. “I’m going to put ‘Service’ by the lawn, and ‘Dad.’ That means I’ll ring them up and tell them to do your mum’s house, too, besides ours. So that one’s done.”
“Cool,” Finlay said. “That means I don’t have to do it.”
“And put ‘Nan’ by the ‘Dinner’ line,” Scarlett said.
“OK,” Zane said. “Now. Shopping.”
“I told you,” Scarlett said. “Nan likes to go herself.”
“Right,” Zane said. “For the dinner stuff. For the rest, though, seems like we could do that ordering online thing. Breakfasts and lunches for seven. Washing powder, dishwasher soap, all that.”
“Loo paper,” Finlay said. “We’re always running out of loo paper.”
“What d’you reckon?” Zane asked. “Plan on putting in an order every other day?”