CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN
SOPHIA
“Can we please go see the kiwi birds?” Madison pleads for the third time since dinner. “Emma says they come out at dusk, and Jack’s sister Lily can take us to the sanctuary right now.”
I set down my tea, carefully avoiding eye contact with Jack across the dining room. The meal has been excruciating—Helen’s pointed glances, Michael’s sympathetic ones, the sisters’ attempts at normal conversation that only highlight the tension.
“Madison, I’m not sure tonight is—”
“Please, Mom?” Her enthusiasm is the only bright spot in this mess. “It’s not like we can see kiwi birds back home. Jack says they’re super rare, even in New Zealand.”
At the mention of his name, I finally risk a glance at Jack. He has been quiet throughout dinner, speaking only when addressed directly. Now he looks up, his expression carefully neutral.
“Lily’s an excellent guide,” he says, his voice lacking its usual warmth. “I can stay behind if that would be more comfortable.”
The offer hangs in the air between us. A part of me wants to accept, to avoid the pain of his presence. But Madison’s pleading eyes win out.
“We’d appreciate the tour,” I say finally, my voice formal. “Madison’s been looking forward to it.”
Relief flickers across his face. “Of course. I’ll let Lily know.”
Twenty minutes later, we follow a well-maintained path into a densely wooded gully. The evening air is crisp, autumn leaves crunching beneath our feet. Lily leads the way, pointing out native plants to an enthusiastic Madison. Jack hangs back, maintaining a respectful distance from me.
“The sanctuary covers about fifty acres,” Lily explains, her voice carrying in the quiet evening. “Most of it’s off-limits to visitors to protect the birds, but we have observation hides where we can watch without disturbing them.”
“Fifty acres just for birds?” Madison sounds impressed. “That’s huge!”
“It’s a special place,” Lily agrees. “We’ve had a breeding program here for nearly fifteen years now.”
I watch Jack’s profile in the fading light, the tension in his shoulders, the careful way he keeps his focus on Madison rather than me. Despite everything, there is something undeniably attractive about his passion for conservation, his gentle way of explaining things to my daughter.
The path opens into a small clearing with an educational display. The modern structure seems at odds with the wild setting, until I realize it was designed to blend into the environment, the wood weathered to match the surrounding trees.
“This is where we start the tours,” Lily explains. “Though we don’t get many visitors—just conservation groups and researchers, mostly.”
Jack steps forward, gesturing Madison toward a display of footprints pressed into clay. “Kiwis have three toes instead of four like most birds,” he explains. “It helps identify their tracks in the wild.”
Madison kneels to examine the display, her excitement palpable. “They have massive feet for their size.”
“They spend most of their time rooting around in the soil for worms and insects,” Jack says, his voice softening with genuine enthusiasm. “They’re the only birds with nostrils at the end of their beaks.”
I hang back, watching the interaction. Jack’s attention is entirely on Madison, responding to her questions with patience and detail, adjusting his explanations based on her reactions.
It is so different from Troy, who’d barely listen when Madison spoke, his attention always divided between her and his phone, his responses generic when they came at all.
We continue along the path, the light dimming further. Lily hands us each a small red flashlight. “Regular light disturbs them, but they don’t see red light as well.”
The path eventually leads to a wooden structure built half underground, with viewing slots at ground level. We enter quietly, taking seats on benches facing the windows.
“This is the main observation hide,” Jack whispers, his voice barely audible. “If we’re quiet, they’ll come right up to the edge of the clearing.”
Madison can barely contain herself, bouncing slightly on the bench. “How many are there?”
“About five breeding pairs in the sanctuary now,” Lily answers. “We’ve released twice that number into the wild over the years, mostly on the west coast of the South Island here.”
Jack leans toward Madison. “What do you think is the number one predator of kiwis?”
Madison considers for a moment. “Hawks? Foxes?”
“No, actually, it’s dogs,” Jack says, surprising me. “Kiwis have no sternum—that’s the breastbone that most birds have—and dogs love to smell. Kiwis have a very distinctive smell.”
He grimaces slightly. “When I was at the National Hatchery in Rotorua, sometimes you’d almost wish for a big burp of sulfur from the geothermal vents because it honestly smelled better than the kiwis sometimes.”
Madison giggles, and even I feel a smile tugging at my lips despite myself.
“So the dogs poke at them with their noses and kill them without even meaning to,” Jack continues. “They’re incredibly vulnerable.”
As if on cue, a small, round shape emerges from the underbrush outside the hide. Even in the dim red light, I can make out the distinctive long beak and fuzzy, rounded body.
“There’s one,” Lily whispers.
Madison gasps. “They’re fast! And so much bigger than I thought! It’s like a fuzzy football with a stick.”
Jack chuckles softly. “They’re about the size of a domestic chicken, but rounder. The females are larger than the males—sometimes by almost a third.”
We watch in silence as the kiwi probes the ground with its long beak, completely unaware of our presence. After a few minutes, it is joined by another, slightly smaller bird.
“A mating pair,” Lily whispers. “They’re monogamous, often staying together for their entire lives.”
Jack nods. “We have to collect their eggs because they’re not the best at taking care of them,” he explains to Madison. “And when we do, they think a predator got them, but they’re too lazy to build a new nest, so they just move on to one of their old nests and rotate through them.”
“That doesn’t sound very smart,” Madison whispers back.
“They’re surprisingly daft for a national icon,” Jack agrees. “But extremely endangered, so we help them along.”
I watch Jack’s profile in the dim red light, the way he leans in to whisper explanations to Madison, pointed out behaviors, answered her questions with genuine interest. There is no performance here, no attempt to impress.
Just the same authentic enthusiasm I’d seen when he’d taught her to make pasta in my kitchen.
“Jack was sixteen when he found that injured chick,” Lily says quietly, glancing my way. “Convinced Dad to set aside this entire gully.”
Another reminder of what wealth could accomplish. What ordinary person could convince their father to reserve fifty acres as a teenager? Who had that kind of power, that kind of privilege?
“I was a stubborn kid,” Jack says, looking embarrassed.
“He spent that whole summer volunteering at the Rotorua breeding center,” Lily continues, “learning everything about kiwi care. Even talked about becoming a conservationist before…”
She trails off, perhaps realizing she was venturing into territory that highlighted the deception.
“We occasionally have University of Canterbury students intern here,” Jack says, smoothly changing the subject. “The estate helps pay for their accommodation and stipends.”
Another casual mention of resources beyond my comprehension. I focus on the birds instead, trying to quiet the turmoil in my chest.
A smaller kiwi approaches unusually close to the viewing window, pecking curiously at the ground just feet away.
“That’s Manawa,” Jack says softly. “She was the first chick born in the sanctuary. She’s unusually comfortable around the hides.”
Without thinking, I speak directly to him for the first time since our confrontation. “What does the name mean?”
Jack looks startled, as if he hadn’t expected me to engage. “Heart or spirit in Māori,” he answers, his eyes meeting mine. “She was stubborn, always fighting. Smallest of her clutch, but the strongest.”
Something passes between us in that moment—a flicker of the connection we’d shared before. I look away quickly, uncomfortable with how easily it had surfaced despite everything.
We watch the kiwis for another twenty minutes, Jack pointing out behaviors to Madison, who absorbs every word.
As they interact, I find myself studying Jack more than the birds—the gentleness in his hands as he directed Madison’s attention, the patience in his explanations, the way he gauged her interest and adjusted accordingly.
The man I see before me was the same one who’d brought me coffee in the ER, who’d taught Madison to make pasta, who’d looked at me like I hung the moon. The context has changed dramatically, but his essential nature hasn’t.
That realization unsettles me more than anything else.
As we leave the hide and head back up the path, Madison chatters excitedly to Lily about everything she’d learned. Jack hangs back, keeping pace with me but maintaining a careful distance.
“Thanks for doing this,” he says quietly, his voice barely audible above the crunch of leaves. “She seems to be enjoying herself.”
“She is,” I acknowledge. “She’s been talking about seeing kiwis since before we left home.”
An awkward silence falls between us. I sense he wants to say more but is restraining himself. A part of me appreciates his restraint—I’m not ready for another conversation—but another part aches at the wall between us.
Ahead of us, Lily is inviting Madison to help with the morning feeding. “If your mom’s okay with it?” she adds, glancing back at me.
“Can I, Mom? Please?” Madison’s enthusiasm is impossible to resist.
“If it’s not an imposition,” I say cautiously.
“Not at all,” Lily assures me. “We’d love the help.”
As we emerge from the woods back onto the estate grounds, the main house looms before us, its windows warm with light against the darkening sky.
The casual opulence of it all strikes me again—the manicured gardens, the vineyard stretching into the distance, the mountains framing it all like a perfect backdrop.
This is Jack’s world. The world he’d hidden from me. The world that had shaped him into the man I thought I knew.
Madison falls into step beside me as we approach the guest house. “That was amazing,” she says, her eyes bright with excitement. “Did you see how close they came? And Jack knows so much about them.”
“He does,” I agree.
“He’s different here,” she observes, with that perceptive insight that sometimes catches me off guard. “But also the same, you know? Like, he still explains things the same way he did at home.”
Home. The word sparks an ache in my chest. Home feels very far away right now, not just in distance but in time. The life we’d built there—the routines, the comfortable patterns, the growing relationship with Jack—seems to belong to another version of reality.
“Yes,” I say finally. “He does.”
Madison studies my face in the dim light. “Are you guys going to be okay?”
The simple question holds such weight. “I don’t know, sweetheart.” It is the most honest answer I could give. “It’s complicated.”
“Because he didn’t tell you about all this?” She gestures vaguely at the estate around us.
“Partly.”
“But it’s still him,” she insists. “Just with…more stuff.”
If only it were that simple. “There’s a difference between having things and hiding things,” I try to explain. “It’s not about the money, Madison. It’s about trust.”
She nods slowly. “I guess that makes sense.” After a moment, she adds, “But I still like him. Even if he should have told us.”
“I’m glad.” And I am. Whatever happens between Jack and me, I am grateful Madison hadn’t been deeply hurt by his deception.
As we reach the guest house, I turn for one last look at the main estate. Jack stands on the path to his cottage, watching us from a distance. When he sees me looking, he raises a hand in the briefest of waves before turning away.
Inside, as Madison gets ready for bed, I find myself thinking about kiwis—stubborn, improbable birds that couldn’t fly but had somehow survived millions of years. Birds that moved between nests rather than building new ones when threatened.
There is a metaphor in there somewhere, but I am too exhausted to untangle it.