Chapter 34 Riptide
riptide
A sudden drag beneath the surface where love, fear, and truth all pull the hardest.
Grandpa pats my hand. He says the words aloud, slowly, as if anchoring himself to each one.
“I had a stroke right after the accident. My mind . . . it did things to make me forget. Trent had already lost so much. He was terrified. I was the only one he had left. He needed to keep Ika alive through stories, through postcards.”
He touches the box gingerly. “Over the years, I’ve remembered bits. Found clippings, boxed them. Then . . . forgotten again. I know why he did what he did. I know why he brought you home.”
Grandpa couldn’t be clearer.
He’s saying: My boy has gone through so much. He’s suffered. Please, don’t make him hurt any more.
He’s saying: Don’t pull away.
I shudder violently.
This pain I’ve caused, this family I’ve stormed into, made wreckage of. I don’t deserve their open arms.
The instinct to run, to punish myself, to fix the unfixable, grips me like an undertow.
The same pull I felt with Mum. Beth died because of me. So I should live with it. I should feel what I’ve done. I should go.
My throat burns. “I took him away. Claimed to be him. Stole his family.”
Grandpa looks at me sharply, a command in his silence. Do. Not. Pull. Away. “We want you to stay.”
It’s so sincere, it hurts.
I wobble to my feet. “I, ah . . . didn’t finish cleaning up the barn.”
Wind rushes around my ears. The trodden path, the sinking view of the farm, the grassy paddock—
Trent. Still sleeping in the sunshine.
He knows.
He still cradled me in his arms.
I can’t breathe.
I stagger into the barn. Clean up. Clean up—that’s what I said.
Hay is scattered across the floor. And—
The bottle.
Filmed with dry dirt.
Like it’s been dug up. Uprooted by wild weather. Like it’s been buried.
I drop to my knees, hands shaking, and pick it up. The waxed top.
Something’s inside.
With my shirt, I scrub at the dirt. Is this . . . could this be . . .
Bottle’s buried, Trent said. Maybe his dreams will wash up somewhere new.
And earlier:
Have you ever opened the bottle?
I’ve thought about it.
The barn door squeals open. My shoulders stiffen as footsteps cross the hay. A yawn. “What are you doing?”
So warm. So much like he wants another hug.
I grip the bottleneck.
He hasn’t told me Grandpa knows. That he knows. Because he’s afraid if I know . . .
Turning my head feels like a fight. Like swimming against a current. I can’t quite look at him. My breathing is choppy.
I lift the bottle. “I’m sorry,” I choke. “It’s been unearthed.”
He rocks on his heels. The air pulls taut. The tug to run rises again.
Fight it. Face it. Do not pull away.
Trent looks from the bottle to me, then takes it, a gentle pluck from my hands.
“The oldies must’ve seen it under your nīkau,” I stammer.
He studies the bottle where I rubbed it clean. “Playing spin the bottle with it.” A brief chuckle. “He’d laugh.”
I swallow hard. “Don’t you want to open it?”
Don’t you want to see what you’ve lost? Don’t you want to hate me?
Trent holds the bottle in both hands.
I hide my trembling ones behind my back.
He sinks to his knees. Lifts a hand to my cheek, thumb brushing away the wetness there.
“Don’t you?” I whisper again.
He shakes his head slowly. “I just want to lay it to rest.”
He buries it back under the nīkau and presses the dirt firmly over it.
I watch him, my stomach somersaulting.
His arms have just opened wider.
Yet the jut of his throat, the flicker of vulnerability in his eyes, the twitch of his muscles every time I move . . . the taste of his fear is salty.
I crawl through the grass to him, knees wet, and wrap my arms around his neck.
I will not pull away.
It’s not enough to say it.
He has to feel it.
He presses his lips to mine, and I press back.
When we return to Wellington, when I step into our bunk-bed room, the tide drags me under again.
The scent of cologne on the rolled carpet. The broken bottle. The echo of his anguish in the air.
I will not pull away.
I climb onto the bunk and rest my head on his bare shoulder.
The next morning, I hang up Grandpa’s denim hat.
He spies me from the hall, his shuffle turning into a dance.
Trent takes me to renew my driver’s license. Lets me sit behind the wheel of his car.
“You want to drive again,” he says simply. “You should.”
I stop-start a lot. He talks me through it, patient as ever, until I’m steady, driving smoothly up and down The Parade.
Even in a car, he loves me.
I park by the shore. The engine clicks to quiet. He leans close and murmurs, “You’re having Purples.”
I know you know. But do you know I know you know?
When will either of us speak it?
I grip the steering wheel.
Against the wall of ache, I turn and kiss him.
“Whānau and friends picnic,” I call to Grandpa over the rock he’s blasting. “I’m heading down with Moana. Trent’s bringing you and Sara there.”
Trent raises a hand, a casual wave off and see you soon. Effortless, like he’s starting to believe: I’ll stay.
But then, he walks me out the door and watches me jog down the lane. Like there’s still a wee part that’s nervous.
Maybe . . . maybe some words need to be voiced after all.
My step hitches on the stairs, and then I grip the railing. Later, after the picnic.
Moana picks me up at the Berhampore shops, and we go on a mission for ice cream.
“Actually pretty decent weather for it,” I murmur, taking in Welly on a good day. (Nothing beats it.)
“It’ll be awesome,” Moana agrees. “There’s even a surprise for you.”
I lean in, eager, and she swats me away. “You’ll see. Now let’s get this cooler box to the beach.”
We stash the loot not too far from the dunes where Trent and I chased the chicken, mocked by kiddos.
My lips curl, and Moana catches it.
“It’s nothing,” I say. “Nothing.”
“Rubbish.”
She’s right. It’s everything.
Tamariki dribble in for the picnic with a parent or two, and they light up at their ice creams.
“I see your surprise coming,” Moana says, and then pivots to a cry of her name. “There’re the cousins. Back in a bit.”
I wave her off and then search for my surprise.
My stomach balls.
Holly is racing across the sand in a wetsuit, a towel slung around her neck.
I thought she couldn’t make it?
She jumps over a lone boogie board and skids to a sand-whipping halt before me. “Dylan!”
My pulse ticks wildly in my throat and I’m too afraid to look beyond her, to see the parent that accompanied her.
I pivot, hunching over the cooler box, and sift my fingers through ice as I try to keep my voice light. “What ice cream are you after?”
Holly’s still catching her breath. “Strawberry!” She says brightly, and then on the same breath, exhilarated, na?ve, uncensored: “Are you my brother?”
I tip over into the ice and numbly drag myself out of it.
Holly laughs like it’s a joke. Then says again, with that naked curiosity, “Are you?”
Such childlike innocence. No hesitations, no doubts, no life experience to hold the question back.
“‘Cause, I wanted to learn magic like your coin trick. My nana said it was the same wish Dylan had when he was my age. Then Mum got mad and Nana went quiet. I didn’t want to ask her, so I’m asking you.
” She bites into her ice cream. “You had all the stories of Beth. Of her putting the cat in the shower for time out. I found a picture of a cat.” Her hand stretches to my ear. “And we have the same mole.”
I thunk onto the sand and huff a pained, awkward laugh against my knees.
Holly keeps licking her ice cream, then biting down the cone.
“You’re nice to me,” she says, when I’ve sat lost for words. “I hope you are.”
“Holly,” I start, but I’m interrupted by my mum’s cool voice.
“Holly.”
She scrambles to her feet. “He is. He is!”
“Go play somewhere else a moment, hm?”
Holly drops her towel and races for the water. “He is,” she yells.
I rise, brushing off shells and seaweed.
The sun flashes on Mum’s dyed-brown hair and heavy eyeliner. Her lips press together, choosing words. Her manicured nails dig into her handbag.
“Don’t think I didn’t know it,” she says. “The ‘scholarships’ to drama classes. I’ve known. I’ve let it happen.”
I swallow thickly.
I thought it was my secret, my way to bond with Holly without anyone knowing.
I’m not sure which is worse: her not knowing, or knowing and not caring.
I open my mouth, but her hand tightens on the bag.
“As long as you don’t try to make out that you’re family, it’s fine.”
“We are family.”
“You’re biologically related. It’s different.”
My heels sink into the sand.
The sky’s spotless. Moana’s whānau laugh over kai. Tamariki chase around sandcastles.
At the roadside, Trent’s truck slows.
“You had your chance at family,” Mum says, her voice tight. “You lost it.”
I swallow hard, watching Sara jump out and Trent helping Grandpa from the truck.
A heaving breath shudders through me. “I lost theirs, too,” I say, pointing. “Yet they open their arms for me.”
I laugh tightly. “You’re right. It is different. That’s family.”
I rip my gaze away, to the sand, to the ocean, to—
Where’s Holly?
Cold fear ices my spine.
A small hand rises from the water. Too far out.
No screaming. No cry for help.
It’s the silence that scares.
“Holly!”
I’m already running, snatching the boogie board, plunging into the sea.
Behind me, Mum’s scream splits the air.
The same sound from that night, through the phone, over broken glass.
The water pushes against me, shoving me back. I bash through it. Holly’s drifting farther out.
She’s trying to swim against the riptide.
I’m coming! comes out as “Holly!”
At my waist, the current grabs me. Pulls me forward.
Good. Towards her.
A wave lifts. She can’t get atop it.
Behind me: “DYLAN! DYLAN! DYLAN!”
A plea. A demand. A declaration: the play is over. Dylan.
It gives me strength.
I fight towards her.
She’s sucked under.
“Holly!”
I loop the board string around my wrist and dive.
Snatch her arm. Kick up. Up!
We break the surface. Another wave crashes over our heads.
We spin underwater. Fight against the pull away from shore, from safety, from family.
Bubbles, salt, fire in my lungs.
I grab her under the arms. The board. Hold on.
She coughs, draped across it.
It can’t hold both of us.
I tread water. But I’m tiring. Fast. My clothes drag.
We need out of the rip.
Sideways.
I start swimming. Arms burning. The cord sears my wrist.
I lost Beth. I lost Ika.
I won’t lose again.
One arm, then the other.
I will not lose.
A hand grips my arm. I cough, choking seawater. I’m hoisted onto the end of a surfboard.
Holly still clings to the boogie board.
Trent’s hands. I know their feel.
There’s a tug. We’re moving—towards shore.
I’m spluttering salt. Trent’s pleading. “Say something.”
I gasp. “Know the truth. Grandpa knows. You know. We all know.”
Relief breaks in his voice. “Keep talking. They’re tugging us in.”
I blink. A rope coils around Trent’s ankle. It’s leading shoreward.
Up to his waist in the surf, Grandpa hauls hand over hand.
Mum clings to him.
Sara to her.
Moana clasping behind.
And her whānau, one by one, a living chain of hands, anchoring Grandpa as he tows us in out of the riptide.