Smoke Screen

by Emilie Richards

  Jeremy put his arms around her neck and rested his cheek against her robe. Paige cried silently for all that she had lost and found.

  Chapter 13

  How could you not have told me?

  Adam read the words out loud, then crumpled Paige's note and pitched it across the floor, where it rolled to a stop at the feet of a woman making her bed.

  "So now she knows." Mihi stood beside him, straightening her robe. "Just as you wanted her to."

  Adam kept his voice low. "We don't know what she knows. A child's memories are hardly fact-filled. But no matter what she remembers, she blames me for not telling her the truth right at the beginning."

  "Didn't you know she'd blame you?"

  "There was more at stake than my desire for her to know the truth!"

  Mihi reached for Adam's hands, aiming through the air for them with uncanny accuracy. She held them firmly. "Don't blame yourself. This was not your decision alone. Now you must tell her why you didn't speak of her past."

  "She's gone. And I have responsibilities here."

  "Then go to her after the feast tonight."

  Jeremy came through the doorway, skipping between rows of mattresses. He wrapped his arms around his father's legs. "Paige went home," he said, squeezing hard.

  Adam was silent, wondering what he was supposed to say.

  "I watched her go through the gate." Jeremy released his father. "She has bad dreams, too."

  Adam squatted in front of his son. "How do you know?"

  "I woke her up." He looked down at his feet as if he were embarrassed.

  "That was the right thing to do," Adam said, tipping Jeremy's head so they were eye to eye again.

  Jeremy still looked embarrassed. "She's soft, and she smells good. I sat on her lap, and she cried in my hair."

  Adam wished that he could cry, too.

  * * *

  The oversized phone booth held no charms today as Paige waited for the overseas operator to process her call. As she waited, she tried to calculate what time it would be in New Orleans. Not that she cared if it was blackest night. Her questions couldn't wait.

  "I'm sorry, there's no answer at that number."

  Paige held the receiver away from her ear and stared at it. She could hear the operator repeating the message, and she slowly put it back to her ear, speaking in a dull voice. "Thank you, I’ll try again later."

  Only she wouldn't. Because by then the images racing disjointedly through her brain would settle to form a cohesive picture of the past. By then she would already know everything her parents had neglected to tell her.

  Neglected? That was a joke. No one had neglected anything. Her heritage, her extended family, both had purposely been kept from her like the most hideous of secrets.

  And Adam and Mini and all the rest had somehow been in on it.

  Paige paced the length of the booth until she realized what she was doing and how crazy it looked. She threw open the doors and stalked back to her car, turning the key with an angry twist. She was out on the road and driving before she had even made a decision where to go.

  There was one place she certainly wasn't going. She wasn't going back to the hui. That was something she couldn't face. How many of the people there were related to her? How many of them knew it? How many of them thought she was a shallow rich girl with values as ephemeral as the smoke that hung like a haze over the Waimauri thermals?

  And wasn't she?

  The sight of emerald hills blurred in front of her eyes as she blinked back tears. She drove for hours, stopping once for fuel and once to pick up food to eat under the shade of a tree at the edge of someone's pasture. As she drove, images from her dream began to flow together with pictures of a childhood she had forgotten, until she understood only too well why she had forgotten it. When she finally drove up to her house, exhausted and emotionally drained, she was left with only one important question.

  How could Adam not have told her?

  * * *

  Stripped down to a wool shearer's singlet and denim jeans, Adam helped four other men tend the hangi. The sun just bordered the ridge of trees beyond the green grass of the marae, and when it sank a little lower it would be time for the feast that was the culmination of the hui. Inside the hangi were beef, pork, mutton and chicken, along with kumara, a sweet potato brought to New Zealand with the first Maori settlers, potatoes and squash. When the food cooked in the hangi was brought inside to be set out with numerous other native and imported foods and a rich display of desserts, Henare Poutapu would call the guests to the dining hall and the hosts would serve them. The hosts themselves would not eat until the last of the guests had finished.

  Adam listened to the joking of the other men, but his mind was on Paige. He had thought of nothing else since she had left, and he was no closer to a decision on what to do about her than he had been that morning.

  "Adam?"

  He turned at the sound of a woman's voice and managed a smile for Hira. "Has it been a good day for you?"

  She ignored his question. "Pat's here."

  Hira should have been thrilled that Pat had come. The fact that she wasn't was Adam's signal. "Has he been drinking?"

  She nodded, and Adam could see that she was struggling to keep her lip from quivering.

  "Is he causing trouble?"

  She nodded again.

  "Why do you put up with him?" Adam asked, more harshly than he had intended. He sighed, running his hand through his hair. "Why do I put up with him? Why do any of us? Come on, e tamahine, I'll send him home."

  "If his father had lived—"

  "If his father had lived, he would be sending him home."

  Hira followed Adam around the side of the dining hall. "He's over near the gate."

  Adam saw Pat immediately. He also saw a sight he hadn't expected to see again. Paige was walking through the gateway, her head held high. She wore a printed dress with all the shades of the sea and sky swirled in abstract patterns, and a white jacket that brushed the curve of her hips as she moved. As if she knew he was looking at her, her head turned in his direction. Her eyes looked straight through him.

  Adam started toward her, but Pat reached her first.

  "So, you've come to see how this half of you lives." Pat began to laugh, as if he had said something uproariously funny. He put his hand on her arm, staggering a little as he did.

  Paige realized immediately that Pat was drunk. She tried to free her arm, but his fingers tightened around it hard enough to cut off circulation. "If you want to talk to me, I'll stay here," she said quietly, "but please let go of me. You're hurting my arm."

  Pat staggered backward, holding up his hands in mock apology. "My, my. We can't have that, can we? Can't touch the princess. Not the princess."

  Adam reached them, clapping his hand on Pat's shoulder. "You're plonked. Let's get you out of here."

  Pat shook himself loose. "Just talking to the princess, boss. Aren't we commoners allowed to talk to the princess? The princess and the boss. The princess and the boss," he chanted.

  Hira reached them, her face was wet with tears. "I'm so sorry," she apologized to Paige. "He didn't want to come today, and I begged him to. It's my fault."

  "It's not," Adam said. "For once, let him take responsibility for what he's doing." His arm shot out, and he grabbed Pat by the shoulder, locking his fingers in place. "Say good-night, Pat," he ordered.

  "But I haven't bowed to the princess." He bent his head and almost lost his balance. "A Maori-American princess. First of her kind. Long live Princess Paige, and long live her consort, Prince Adam. As for me, I don't care if I live at all. Not if I have to live here. Hira, come with me. Let's get out of here, Hira." He sniffed as if he were going to cry.

  Half-dragging, half-propelling Pat, Adam started toward the gate. "Hira!" Pat called. "Come with me, Hira!"

  Paige stood in shock and watched the weeping woman at her side. Finally, with no other remedy in sight, she put her arms around Hira and hugged
her as she wept.

  "He's not usually this bad," Hira insisted through her tears.

  Paige looked up and saw that they were beginning to draw a crowd. "Adam will take care of him," Paige whispered, smoothing Hira's hair. "It's going to be all right."

  "He hates Waimauri. He wants to live in the city. He wants to be somebody."

  "He just has to grow up," Paige reassured her. "He doesn't know how important his family is. He doesn't see what he has here."

  Hira sniffed. "He didn't know what he was saying to you."

  "I think he did."

  Hira pulled away to stare at Paige, but before she could say anything, a plump woman broke through the cluster of people moving toward them and came to Hira's side. "Did that boy hurt you again?" she demanded.

  Hira sniffed, her lower lip trembling with her effort to stop crying. "I'm fine, Mama."

  Hira's mother reached out for her, but Hira backed against Paige. "Mama, I'm fine," she repeated. "I really am."

  Hira's mother shook her head, as if this was an old scene, replayed too many times. "Thank you for helping her," she told Paige. She extended her hand. "We haven't met yet. I'm Iris Tomoana."

  Paige took the woman's hand, admiring the strength of her handshake. "Perhaps we met before," she said carefully. "When I was a child."

  Iris held her hand seconds longer than was necessary, then, reluctantly, dropped it. "Perhaps," she murmured, as if she were afraid to say more.

  Henare Poutapu stepped forward and said something to Iris in Maori. Iris stepped back as Paige turned to face him. Henare waited, expressionless, for her to speak.

  "And perhaps," she said carefully, "I met you as a child, too. Perhaps you are part of my family?"

  There was a silence, and Paige knew she would always remember that moment when the New Zealand sun sank over the horizon and the marae was bathed in twilight—caught exactly between day and night.

  Then the stern patriarch smiled and opened his arms. "I am your family," he said clearly in English. "And you are mine. Welcome. You have come home."

  * * *

  Through it all, Adam hadn't spoken to Paige, nor she to him. Through the tears, the hugs, the introductions of people who one day before had been strangers and were now family, Adam hadn't once approached her. She, as family and host, had helped serve the hui guests, and when they had finished their feast, she had sat at Henare's table, trying hard to follow his explanation of just how she was related to everyone there.

  There was so much she still didn't understand. She knew now that her grandmother had been a full-blooded Maori, a Poutapu, Henare Poutapu's first cousin. She had married George Abbott, a well-to-do merchant in Waimauri, and they had lived a long and prosperous life. Paige's mother Ann had been born long after the Abbotts had given up hope of having a child, and although no one was disloyal enough to say so, Paige surmised from veiled comments that Ann had been badly spoiled.

  The conversation had centered on Paige's relationship to the Maori families left in the community. Her grandparents and great-grandparents had long since died. Henare and Mihi were her closest kin, third cousins. After that the relationships got even more tenuous. The Tomoanas were related by Mihi's marriage to Adam's great-uncle. When her whakapapa, or genealogy, had been proudly recited to her, Paige had understood two important things. One was that, in American terms, she had no close relatives in New Zealand, just as she had been told. The second was that, in Maori terms, that made no difference. She had Maori blood; she was a Poutapu, descended from chiefs and tohungas. If she wanted to be Maori, she was. If she wanted to be family, she was.

  On her long soul-searching drive, she had discovered that she wanted to be both. Through tear-filled eyes she had driven through the country of her mother's birth and felt a connection flow from the earth itself. Her blood, like Adam's, combined two ancient and honorable cultures. Her bloodlines were no different today than they had been yesterday, but, knowing her heritage, her ties, her roots, she was different.

  She was different. She was not the person who had come to New Zealand seeking peace of mind. She was not a visitor or a tourist, and New Zealand was no longer a place to escape to. It was part of her.

  At last, exhausted, she had driven home to the cottage near the thermals that had once belonged to Jane Abbott. She had climbed the highest hill on the Abbott land and looked out over the countryside. The wind had ruffled her hair, and nearby a bellbird had chimed its sweet welcome. In the distance she had seen the smoke from the thermals and, beyond, the beginning of Adam's pasture land.

  Until that moment she hadn't been sure what to do. But as she had walked back to the cottage, she had known. She was not going to run; she was not going to ignore what she had found. She was going to go back to the hui and claim what was hers. And in the claiming, perhaps she could discover why her ancestry had been hidden from her.

  Now the hui was over, and she was alone, although she knew she would never be alone in quite the same way again. The night air was cool and damp; the night smells were heady. Paige sat on her front porch with all the lights off to discourage the large moths that fluttered through the darkness. Cornwall lay at her feet, and Rambo snuggled beside him, disturbing the night symphony of insects with an occasional baa. Wrung out from a day of revelations, she let the dark, cool mists slide over her skin as she tried to solve her one unanswered question.

  Why hadn't Adam told her who she was? All his veiled comments made sense now, yet his silence made none. He had known from the beginning, but he hadn't wanted her to know. There had been a conspiracy to keep the truth from her. And although Henare had answered every other question she had asked, when she had confronted him with that one, he had only shrugged. Already she knew that Henare's shrugs were unassailable.

  Mihi's answer had been little better. "The time wasn't right for you to know," she had said.

  And Adam had never gotten close enough for her to ask.

  Even now, confused and aching, she was too proud to go to him. She had been a pawn on a chessboard, caught somewhere between her father and her mother's family, with no one willing to tell her the truth. And Adam, who she had begun to love, hadn't loved her enough to be honest with her.

  At her feet, Cornwall sat up, cocking his head to one side. Unhappy at the disturbance, Rambo baaed. Cornwall stretched and trotted to the porch steps, looking out into the darkness.

  "What do you hear, boy?"

  Cornwall wagged his tail in answer, but otherwise he was still.

  Paige listened, but heard nothing. She was deep in thought again when Cornwall barked. She stood and went to his side. There were no cars on the road, and she doubted that Cornwall would do anything so out of character as bark at another animal. She was about to give up and go inside when she heard something, too.

  The sound was eerie, a high-pitched sob carried on the night wind. Just as she was sure she wasn't imagining it, it stopped. Just as she was sure she was imagining it, it began again.

  "Well, you heard it first. What is it?" she asked, scratching Cornwall's ears.

  The sound ebbed away, renewing itself on the next gust of wind. This time Paige swayed gently to its rhythm. Somewhere at the edge of her consciousness, the sound was familiar. Once before she had stood just so and swayed to it. Only then the sound had been strong and vibrant.

  The pitch changed, climbing higher, dropping to a resonant wail, climbing again in a primitive, modal melody. She tensed and stopped swaying. She knew where she had heard the song before. It was Adam's own composition, and the sound was Adam's flute.

  Still tense, she waited. But the sound came no closer.

  Cornwall whined and jumped down off the porch. He took a few steps, then turned back to Paige and barked.

  "I'm not a sheep, and I won't be led."

  Cornwall cocked his head and waited for her.

  "And I'm not Hinemoa." Turning, she scooped up Rambo, debating whether to put him in the makeshift pen Adam had built in her front yard
or the kitchen. She carried him into the kitchen, reluctant, as always, to leave him outside at night. In her bedroom, Paige began to undress, trying to ignore the music floating in bursts through her open window.

  "And Adam isn't Tutanekai," she said, as if her one-sided conversation had never been interrupted.

  She paused when her sweater was half over her head and faced the truth. Adam was playing the music for her. She knew, without questioning how, that the music was a gift, a consolation for what she had suffered today. He had been unable to console her with words. He had no way of being sure she would be awake, but even asleep, perhaps he hoped that the music would weave its primal secrets into the fabric of her dreams and comfort her.

  Tears filled her eyes as she made herself face the truth. Whatever Adam's reason for not telling her that she was Maori, one thing was certain. It hadn't been to hurt her. The man who had grown from the little boy in her dreams would never willingly hurt her.

  Paige pulled the sweater back on and stepped into her boots. She was going to find Adam and ask him to explain. Not only did she want to know why he hadn't told her the truth, she wanted to know what the truth was. She hadn't been able to talk to Henare about her childhood. She remembered enough to know that she had been to New Zealand, and that she had been to the meeting house. She remembered enough to know that she had been dragged away by her father, and that Adam had tried to stop him. But she wanted the whole story, and she knew that Adam could tell it to her.

  Outside, Cornwall lay with his paws under his muzzle, waiting for her. At her appearance he stood and trotted across the yard, stopping to wait until she caught up before repeating his performance. The moon was nearly full, washing the ground at Paige's feet with quicksilver rivers of light. After her eyes adjusted, she snapped off her flashlight and tucked it into her pocket.

  As she walked, the music grew steadily louder, although it was still far away. Following Cornwall, she crossed the open pasture behind the house and started into the forest. The path was still clear in the moonlight, and the music grew louder. Paige only hesitated once. When the smell of sulphur intermingled with the sweet fragrances of the night, she stopped. They were very near the thermals, and no matter what her incentive, she knew better than to venture into them in the dark.