"So many rules," she said, trailing her fingers along the wall.
"Were you uncomfortable coming here today?" Adam asked, following her as she moved along.
Paige nodded.
"Because you'd be with strangers?"
"Yes."
"And how did you feel after you had been welcomed?"
She hadn't thought about the impact of the ceremony. "Much more certain I should have come," she said at last.
"You see, that's part of the reason for the rules and for the ceremony. As a people, we're very conscious of similarities and differences among us. In the welcoming ceremony we began apart, hosts and guests, then each step of the ceremony linked us together. You'll see the same principle apply over and over today and tomorrow. In order to find common ground, we begin apart, then explore what links us. In the end, we come together."
Paige turned to him and asked the question she had been asking herself for days. "And what if there's not enough to link together, Adam? Is there a ceremony to bind people who have nothing in common?"
Adam knew they were no longer speaking of Maori customs but of the gap that divided them. He told her what he was coming to believe. What he had to believe. "There are always links, kaihana. Sometimes it just takes longer to find them."
Paige reached for his hand and realized she was praying that he was right.
"I hear the call to tea," Mihi said from across the room. "Shall we go?"
The dining hall was to the side of the meeting house, a large room filled with tables that sat twenty or more people. Guests walked along the side, while smiling hosts filled their plates with a vast array of foods. Since the kitchen was attached to the hall and only a doorway away, the room was warm from the heat of huge cast-iron stoves and fragrant with the smells of home cooking. Paige watched her own plate being heaped to overflowing and wondered how she would eat everything.
"Everybody seems to know just what to do," she said, sitting next to Mihi. Jeremy was across the table from her, but he hadn't yet looked her in the eye. Paige was reluctant to make a point of saying hello.
"We do it often enough to know how," Mihi explained. "And everyone contributes, so the burden is shared."
Adam seated himself beside his son. "Everyone contributes what he's able. The mutton on your plate is from Four Hill Farm. The beef we'll cook tomorrow comes from Hira's mother's family, and the eels were brought by truck from the coast, where one of my brothers lives."
Paige swallowed slowly. "You wouldn't mind telling me which of these dishes is eel, would you?"
Adam grinned and pointed his fork at hers, which was halfway to her mouth. "That one."
The room hummed with the cadences of adult voices and children's laughter. There were a few good-natured attempts to quiet a table of chortling adolescents, but no one really seemed to mind the hubbub. Although she couldn't think of a time when she had experienced anything quite like it, the meal, the room, and the warm family feeling seemed familiar to Paige. "Does everyone here get along?" she asked, starting on a bowl of pudding someone had insisted she eat.
"It's too bad you don't understand Maori. You'd only have to listen to our speeches to see how often we disagree," Adam told her. He knew she was examining everything around her as if somehow, by observing his family, she might understand him better. He wanted her to understand, and he wanted more. He wanted her to move past understanding to acceptance, and then to knowledge of who she was. He knew the path to finding common ground was full of twists and turns and seemingly endless. But now, watching the way her hair fell across her cheek as she leaned toward him, watching the way she smiled at the antics of the teenagers at the next table, he wished he knew a shortcut.
After they had finished their meal, Paige stood, admiring the expertly planned hustle and bustle of the cleanup activity. She suspected she wasn't going to feel like she belonged here until she joined it. "I'd like to help."
Mihi nodded, pleased. "Come with me."
"Where will I find you afterward?" Paige asked Adam.
He sensed her insecurity and smiled to reassure her. "I'll find you. I won't leave you alone."
The kitchen was a cheerful madhouse of men and women who seemed to know exactly what they were doing. Mihi guided Paige to a group of women who showed her where tea towels were kept and where to put the dishes she dried. Then, with a squeeze of her hand, Mini left.
Paige was starting on her second batch of plates when Hira joined her, introducing herself as she reached for a towel to help.
"So you're Uncle Adam's friend," Hira said. She didn't examine Paige overtly, but Paige knew that Hira was taking in every detail of her appearance.
"Your uncle is my friend," Paige agreed. She thought of all the times in the last month when she had stood drying dishes and exchanging confidences. She and Julianna had first gotten to know each other at a kitchen sink in Hawaii as they had waited for Hurricane Eve to make up her mind whether to savage Oahu. And then, more recently, Mihi had shared her thoughts about Adam over wet dishes. Paige was beginning to think a dish towel and a psychiatrist's couch were interchangeable.
"Pat told me about you."
"Is Pat here?"
"Pat doesn't come to hui anymore. He doesn't want to be with family."
Paige imagined there was a story there but, not wanting to pry, she changed the subject. "I saw you perform in Rotorua. I was impressed."
Hira looked down at the plate in her hand. "Thank you," she said shyly.
"And Adam said you toured the island recently."
"Just a few places. I'm glad to be home again." Hira reached for another dish. "Do you like Waimauri?"
"I do."
"It must be different from what you're used to."
"Very."
"Did any of it seem famil—" Hira stopped, clamping her lips shut.
"Familiar?" Paige pulled another stack of dishes to the sink's edge. "No, I've never been to New Zealand. Why?" She glanced at Hira and saw the distress in the young woman's eyes. She frowned and wondered if somehow she had said something offensive.
"I... I just thought since you travel a lot, maybe you'd seen places like this," Hira stammered.
"Nothing I've ever seen is like this," Paige said, still frowning. "Hira, did I say something wrong? I'm afraid I'm really not sure what to do or say while I'm here."
Hira laughed nervously. "Nothing you could say would be wrong."
"Good," Paige said, still not convinced.
After a few minutes Hira drifted off, to be replaced by another young woman, a school teacher who regaled Paige with stories about her classroom. Someone took her place, and then someone else, until Paige felt as though she had already begun to make friends. By the time Adam sought her out, she was feeling more at home. He dried her hands with the tea towel and left it for someone else to take up, leading her back through the dining hall to the cool evening air. Next to the side of the building, he pulled her to rest against him.
"I wonder how Rambo is," she said, leaning back against his chest and hugging his arms tighter around her waist. Adam had hired a neighbor's teenage daughter to lamb-sit for the weekend, but Paige still wasn't sure that Rambo was going to be all right.
"He's in good hands," Adam assured her. "How are you?"
"Happy, comfortable—" she paused "—proud to have been invited."
He reminded himself again that the path was long and full of twists and turns, but the reminder did nothing to quench the warmth inside him. "Then you like what you see?"
"Why wouldn't I? Did you think I couldn't appreciate it?"
"Have I told you I appreciate you?" Adam turned her, wishing for more privacy. "That when I look at you I feel something end and begin at the same moment?" He took her lips with more passion than he had intended. His tongue plunged into her mouth, and his body hardened against her softness.
Paige felt a familiar weakness and something more. She pressed against him, wanting him no matter what the consequences. When
he tore his mouth from hers, she clung to him. "Does anything have to matter except what we feel?"
He was aware of the madness of standing in the shadows, Paige in his arms. Any moment they would be discovered, yet he couldn't let her go. "When we make love, nothing else will matter."
She shuddered against him. This kind of desire was something she had never known. It went far beyond the need for physical release. She needed all of him, and somehow, being here was part of that. "When will we make love? I need to know."
If the shadows had been deeper, the place less sacred... Adam told himself to let her go. No part of him complied. "When it's right," he said through clenched teeth.
"We could hurt each other, and I don't even care anymore." Her head fell back as his hand slid to her buttocks and pressed her against him.
He didn't care, either. He had just enough sense left not to take her here. They would make love; the only choice left was when.
Music floated across the evening air. Guitars and women's voices mixed with the nearby laughter of children. The groan he heard was his. "The rest of the evening and night will be taken up with speechmaking in the meeting house. We'll go find our beds."
The thrill of being part of the hui had taken second place. Paige allowed herself a fantasy and a question. "Are you sure we shouldn't just come back in the morning?"
Adam tried not to let temptation overwhelm him. He had experienced second thoughts since inviting Paige to the hui. She could be hurt by what she might remember. If he took her home and made love to her, one confrontation would be replaced with another.
And if he did, she might never learn who she was.
"We'd miss the best part." He squeezed her wrist, then, lamenting, pushed her away. "You haven't really been to a hui until you've spent the night."
"It's that important to you?"
He couldn't look at her. "That important." He took her hand before he could change his mind and pulled her into the light. "Come on."
The meeting house had been arranged for sleeping, with mattresses laid out in rows on the floor at right angles to the side and rear walls. The central aisles had been covered with beautiful flax mats. Each mattress was covered with a snow-white sheet and a pillow with a starched and embroidered pillowcase. Adam led Paige to the host's side and pointed to a mattress beside the one he claimed as his own.
"Beside you?" she asked. For the first time since their moments in the shadows, she met his eyes. "Hinemoa slept beside Tutanekai and became a married woman."
"Hinemoa and Tutanekai did more than sleep. We all sleep together here. The speechmaking continues until three or four in the morning. The lights stay on all night, and we'll be surrounded by the elders. Nothing could happen even if we wanted it to." Against his better judgment, he touched her cheek and saw that his hand still shook.
"And, of course, we don't want it to," she said, nodding, "so that makes it doubly safe." She turned away, pleased at the unsteadiness of his hands. She didn't have to look at him to see his smile.
The room began to fill with people who settled on their respective mattresses to chat, and, later, to listen to the speeches. Jeremy came in and settled on his father's mattress, as if there was no question in his mind where he should sleep. Mihi joined them, too, and as the evening progressed, Paige felt surrounded by family warmth.
The feeling was a peculiar one, but not completely strange. There had been little warmth at home, but there had been an aunt, her father's half-sister, in Mississippi who had tried to make up for what Paige was missing. And there had been those rare, wonderful times when her mother had tried to make a fresh start and give her daughter the semblance of a normal home life. Still, those times had been very different from this. And yet...
"You look perplexed." Adam held Jeremy in his lap, rocking the little boy back and forth. His eyes hadn't been far from Paige all evening, assessing her responses. Now there was a break between speeches, and the huge room was filled with the low murmur of voices.
"Every once in a while I have this flash of deja vu," she confessed. "I was just trying to figure out why some of this seems familiar."
Adam stopped rocking. For a moment he wished they were home, body pressed to body, with no revelations except the perfection of their lovemaking. "Familiar?"
"You must have had times when you felt you were reliving something. I've been having that feeling since dinner."
Jeremy threaded his arms around his father's neck and whimpered sleepily. Adam began to rock again.
Paige watched the man and the little boy. She was always touched by Adam's devotion to the child in his arms. In no way did his tenderness diminish-his masculinity. One moment he was the prosperous sheep farmer, the next the Maori warrior, the next the loving father. Not one of the roles was any less a part of him than the others.
"Sometimes we bury memories," Adam said, rocking back and forth. "We can't remember exactly why something seems familiar, but we're actually connecting it to those memories."
"Has that happened to you?"
"Yes." Memories of a dark-haired cousin with dancing eyes merged with the feel, the scent, the sounds of the woman beside him.
Paige shrugged. "Maybe I'll remember what this reminds me of."
"Maybe you will." Adam was glad when a warning shout signaled the next speech. He didn't know how much longer he could continue this charade. In spite of all the reasons not to blurt out the truth to Paige, he was finding it harder and harder to hold his tongue. He had never been certain silence was anything except cruel. Now he wondered if it might be more than cruel. If she discovered what he was keeping from her, would it destroy what they were finding together?
Paige settled in between the sheets to listen to the latest rapid-flow Maori discourse. Adam's words stayed with her, and she thought about his theory. She wondered if it was ancient Maori wisdom or just psychology he had studied when he had attended the university. She had discovered that Adam was not only well-educated in the formal sense, but also well-versed in all the subtle philosophies of his culture. He was both Pakeha and Maori, comfortable with seemingly diverse identities. He embodied the best of New Zealand.
She had changed into a nightgown and new robe, bought just for the occasion, and now she pillowed her head on her hands and listened to the lilting speech of the orator, enjoying it even if she couldn't understand it. She felt at peace, in tune in a way that seemed odd to her, considering that she had never been so completely surrounded by strangers. She let her eyelids drift shut, as others around her were doing, and gradually she fell asleep.
Adam watched peace spread over her features. Jeremy was asleep, too, cuddled tightly against him. He wondered if he would ever sleep again.
Paige woke once when the room was silent. She turned and saw Adam gazing at her. Sleepily she reached out and touched his cheek with her fingertips. Then her eyelids drifted shut.
The familiar nightmare began just before dawn. She was in the meeting house, but it wasn't the same. The building was much larger, or perhaps it was just that she was much smaller. Whichever it was, the fierce carvings on the walls seemed to smile at her, their paua shell eyes following each move she made in loving approval. The people surrounding her were much larger than she was, gods and goddesses who smiled and stroked her hair, calling after her in a language she couldn't understand. She felt shy, yet pleased at the attention.
A young boy who looked like an older Jeremy appeared and offered her his hand. She reached for it gratefully, and he pulled her inside, where other children played. She hung back, uncertain. "Come," he insisted. "I'll take care of you." When she still hung back, he gave her a warm hug. "I'll take care of you," he repeated.
She went with him to stand on the sidelines and watched two boys tumble playfully on the grass. When she turned back to her companion, he seemed to have grown. "Are you Jeremy or Adam?" she asked.
"Don't you know?" he answered. "You must know."
"But I don't," she insisted, near
tears. "Why am I here?"
"Just watch."
She turned back to the boys, but they had grown into men. Their fight was no longer playful, but vicious, each trying hard to wound the other. As she watched, the man with the lightest skin faced her. It was her father. "Daddy!" she shouted, recoiling at the anger in his eyes. She shrunk back as he came toward her, but a crowd had gathered behind her, and she had nowhere to go.
She began to whimper, and the sound was answered by a woman's cries. Frantically, Paige tried to reach her, because, somehow, she knew without seeing that the woman was her mother. But no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't move. Pleading, she stretched out her hand to her companion. "You said you'd take care of me," she cried. "You promised." But no one was there to take her hand. The man who had been fighting her father began to shrink, slowly, into a boy, and she knew, suddenly, that the boy was Adam and powerless to help her. Someone took her hand, and as she watched in horror the hand began to shrivel, its flesh falling away. She heard screaming
"It's okay. Wake up."
Paige fought the voice, turning away from it. The voice was a child's and a child couldn't help her. No one could help her.
"Wake up." Tiny fingers gripped her shoulder, shaking her in alarm.
She came awake in an instant, and her eyes focused on rafters painted in ornate spirals. She knew exactly where she was, and she knew something more.
She had been here before.
She sat up, icy cold and numb with shock, to find Jeremy sitting on her mattress, his eyes round and worried. The room was quiet. They were the only ones awake. Adam slept soundly beside her, exhaustion etched across his features.
"Jeremy!" She tried to blink back tears.
Hesitantly he reached up to touch her cheek. When he withdrew his hand, his fingertips were damp. "I have bad dreams, too," he whispered.
She didn't consider the consequences; she just scooped the little boy into her lap and held on to him as if someone was going to take him away. She began to rock. "It was a terrible dream," she whispered, choking on the words. "Thank you for waking me."
Smoke Screen Page 18
