Kiwi Strong (New Zealand Ever After Book 3)

by Rosalind James

  I set it aside, because we were at the lift. Obedience asked, “How do you use it?”

  “You punch the button,” I said.

  “Can I do it?”

  “Yeh. It’s the bottom button, because you’re going down. If you’re going up, you push the top one.”

  She pressed it, as excited as a kid, then listened as the mechanism whirred.

  When the doors opened, there was a teenaged kid in there, his arm in a sling, with his dad. Seventeen, maybe, with blond hair that was curlier and longer than it ever would have been allowed to be at Mount Zion. He was wearing a basketball singlet. That would be a shock to the girls. Male arms.

  The kid checked the girls out fast, looking, then looking away, and the dad said, “Afternoon.”

  Obedience looked down, and Fruitful ducked her head, then brought it back up with what I could tell was an effort. A frozen second, and I said, “Come on. Help me get her in.” The two men moved to the back of the car, and I told Obedience, “Turn around and face the front.”

  She whirled around and turned red, tugging at the short sleeves of her shirt as if she could make it cover her arms, twisting one foot over the other. The dress came almost to her knees, but she still felt naked. I got it. I pushed the “G” button without explanation, and felt the surprised jolt in both girls at the unfamiliar lurch of the car descending, and the second lurch when it stopped. The doors opened, the men stirred behind us, and Obedience jumped aside. I said, “Come on,” and she helped me get Fruitful out.

  “This way,” I told them, and we headed to Emergency. I told them in a low voice, “Men generally step back and wait for you to get out of the lift first. It’s polite. And everybody stands facing forward in a lift. Don’t ask me why. Gives you the illusion of polite distance, maybe, and keeps you from staring at each other, since you’re standing so close.”

  My everyday life. A foreign land.

  I’d rung ahead, borrowing Gray’s phone one last time before he’d left for work, to make sure things weren’t too busy and to talk to Matiu. In fact, there was nobody waiting. The triage nurse, my friend Ruby, said, “Hi, Daisy. This is the ankle?”

  “Yeh,” I said. “Still got time for it?”

  “Should do,” she said. “Do you have your ID with you?” she asked Fruitful.

  I said, “I have it,” and pulled out a copy of her birth certificate. Uncle Aaron had got them for me back when we’d arranged the escape, which was good, because it was rough establishing your identity without them. I should know.

  Ruby looked at the name, and then she looked at me. “Your sister,” she said. “Fruitful Worthy.”

  “Fruitful Warrior now,” Fruitful said. “I’m married.”

  Ruby’s hands stilled on her keyboard, and she looked at Fruitful, then at me, and then, after a moment, started typing again. “Right, then,” she said. “Just a minute.” She didn’t ask me for a photo ID, though she should have. That was a favor, and I knew it. It was why I’d brought them here. I mentally added Passports to the list. Driving licenses would have to wait until I got a car of my own, one old enough to risk the bang and bumps as they learned.

  Ruby typed a bit more, and eventually, Gloria, a nurse I didn’t know well, came out to get us.

  Time to do our first round of explaining. Good job it was Matiu.

  At least I hoped it would be Matiu. Because this wasn’t just explaining about Fruitful. It was explaining about me.

  After Gloria got Fruitful settled and left us, we waited. The girls seemed stunned into silence, fidgeting a little in the unfamiliar clothes and the frigid air, so much colder when you weren’t moving around, and after five minutes or so, I went out and got some magazines.

  “Here,” I told them. “Cultural literacy. I learned most of what I knew about Outside, early on, when I was still scared to really look at people, from magazines and TV. How people talked. How they dressed, though they don’t dress nearly as well in real life as they do on TV, at least not in Dunedin, so no worries. At the library, you can read all the magazines you like for free. I know that, because I did it.”

  They didn’t say anything, and I couldn’t think of anything either, so I pulled a notebook and pen from my purse and started making a list, starting with Phone and Passports and Car. Car was a project all its own. I was on the second page and trying to feel more cheerful about it when the door opened.

  “Hi, Fruitful,” Matiu said, and put out a hand to her. “I’m Matiu Te Mana. I’m the doctor, and a friend of your sister’s.”

  Fruitful took one quick glance at his beautiful face, and then she was looking down. I said, “You can shake his hand, love. It’s OK,” and felt two things. Pity. And rage.

  Matiu was brief and businesslike, which was as much of a relief to Fruitful as it was to me. She’d been dreading an interrogation, I was sure. When you got out of Mount Zion, it felt like everybody was standing around you in a circle, shrieking and pointing. Like you were as much a pariah Outside as you now were at home, where your name would never be spoken again, where you were excommunicated, damned to eternal torment in the fires of Hell.

  It was so hard not to believe in those fires. You’d heard about them all your life. It was even harder to believe that Outside, people could be kind.

  Cognitive dissonance, they call it, when your observation is telling you the opposite of what you’ve always believed. People will go to any extent to rationalize those beliefs, until they can’t anymore. It’s an uncomfortable, lonely journey, though, to let go of the old ideas and work out new ones for yourself.

  Now, Matiu palpated the ankle, asked the questions, said, “I don’t think it’s broken, but let’s check to make sure,” and sent us to Radiology, all exactly as I’d expected. I let Obedience push the wheelchair, and when we got there, I told her, “Stay with her. If you finish, come back to Emergency. I need a few minutes,” and headed back to find Matiu.

  He was at a standing desk, charting, but he looked up when he saw me and stopped typing. He didn’t say anything, though. He just waited.

  Matiu was patient. He was kind. And he was the best-looking man I’d ever seen in person. My sometime running partner, and my surfing partner, too, and he looked just as good in togs as you could imagine an absolutely fit Maori doctor with a tattoo down his arm, skin like burnished gold, and amusement in his eyes possibly could look.

  You know what he actually was, though? He was a tolerant, glamorous older brother, that was what. That was why my heart had never fluttered.

  Also, he’d never wanted me, and he was now as married as a man could be, so there was that.

  I said, “I grew up in Mount Zion.”

  “Ah,” he said. “I wondered.”

  “I got them out of there two nights ago,” I said. “Fruitful and Obedience. Two of my sisters. I have eleven siblings. I’m the eldest. My twin brother left with me twelve years ago, and now I’ve got these two. Fruitful hurt her ankle running, because we had to run.”

  “Are they safe?” he asked. Immediately. That was Matiu, too.

  “No,” I said. “I don’t think so. Not if they find us. There’s this wrinkle, you see. Her husband was my husband, before. When I was there. He married both of us when we turned sixteen. I got it dissolved, though, after I left. So—not polygamy.” I didn’t say, It just feels like it. “But,” I added, “it may be extra motivation. For him. I think so. Doubly defied, you see.”

  The thought made me tremble a little inside. I recognized that feeling, and I hated it. It was fear.

  He digested that for a minute, then asked, “Would you like me to examine her for other issues?”

  “No,” I said. “If I need to, I’ll take her to a female doctor. It’s … culture shock. More than you can imagine.” I still had that tremble inside. This was so much more naked than taking my shirt off in front of Gray. This was exposure.

  “I can imagine enough,” Matiu said. “How can I help?”

  I didn’t have emotion at wor
k. You couldn’t, in Emergency. You’d burn out so fast if you did. We’d all seen it happen. I wasn’t at work, though, not quite, and I said, “We’re OK. We’ll be OK. You can spread the news around here, though, if you like. So it’s not hanging over my head anymore like some dark secret. Tell somebody. Tell anybody.”

  He nodded. “If you’re concerned for her safety, though, Poppy’s lawyer, the one who did her dissolution, is good at this. Can I text you her number? The petition could be tricky, I’m thinking, if you need to keep Fruitful’s location secret, and I don’t know what other issues there may be.”

  “Yeh,” I said. “That’d be good, because my lawyer’s retired now. Except—I lost my phone. I … my car went into the river. The Clutha. On my way up there. I lost my phone. And the car. Same night. Rough night.” I tried to laugh. It didn’t come off.

  Matiu never lost his cool, and he didn’t do it now. He digested that, then said, “Sounds like a story. You can tell me during our next run. But you need help now, surely, if they’re living with you. No car, and all this? You need help.” When I didn’t answer straight away, he added, “You came to talk to me for a reason. Because you trusted me, I hope. Well—trust me with this.”

  “No,” I said. “I—that is, we got help. I went into the river because somebody pushed me in. By accident,” I hurried to add. “And he’s been helping me. And the girls. All of us. Helped me get them out, loaned me a car, and we’re staying out at his place, because—because of Fruitful’s ankle. Stairs, eh. And a few other things. But thanks. I appreciate it.”

  Matiu had turned all the way to face me. Blue scrubs. Perfectly cut dark hair. Cheekbones. Concerned frown. He really did look like a TV doctor. “You and your sisters are living with some bloke,” he said. “Who you just met. Who pushed you into the river, but that’s OK, because he rescued you? Daise. You’ve got to know how that sounds. You’ve got to know it isn’t safe.”

  “No,” I said. “His mum was there, at first—well, in Wanaka—and he’s … kind. Older. He is safe.”

  “Older fella who lives with his mum? That could be even worse. Ever seen Psycho?”

  “No,” I said, “he’s not older older. Well, yeh, he’s older, but not that much. Heaps younger than you, for instance.”

  Matiu smiled fleetingly, but said, “Give me a name. An address. I’ll feel better.”

  “His name’s Gray,” I said. “Grayson Tamatoa. He’s a builder. Houses, I guess. He has a place beyond Corstorphine, down toward Brighton. Lifestyle block, on the sea. I don’t have the address, actually. I should do. If I had a phone, I’d have got it and put it in. How did people survive without phones?”

  Matiu wasn’t listening. He said, “Your kind, older, safe fella is Gray Tamatoa?”

  I said, “What? Is he a serial killer or something? I have gaps. You know now that I have gaps. As in—no frame of reference before twelve years ago.”

  “Daise,” Matiu said, “Gray Tamatoa is an All Black. A very well-known All Black.”

  “No, he isn’t. He’s a builder. I told you.”

  “Good-looking bloke?” Matiu asked. “Big? Late thirties? Samoan tattoo? General air of extreme fitness?”

  Wait. The offseason, Gray had said. The … rugby offseason?

  Oh. The houses. The flash car. I said, “But he’s not. He’s been a builder for years.”

  “Had to retire earlier than he’d have liked,” Matiu said. “Too many concussions. Made a bit of a stir, because it was around the time when they first started looking seriously at the effects of multiple TBIs in rugby, and at the possibility of CTE later on. The talk was that he’d had some pretty worrisome issues, and no choice but to quit. He played for the Highlanders, and his firm’s doing some new buildings for the University. He doesn’t do houses. He does commercial. Big contracts. Local boy made good twice over, eh. Of course, those contracts may have had something to do with his investors, too. Drew Callahan, for one. Pardon. Sir Andrew.”

  “Oh.” Rugby was incomprehensible to me, like most other team sports—no frame of reference again—but even I knew who Drew Callahan was, if only vaguely. Former captain of the All Blacks, and he was here in Dunedin now, I thought, doing something rugby-like.

  TBIs. Traumatic brain injuries. And CTE. Chronic traumatic encephalopathy. That wasn’t good. Not good at all. Uncontrollable anger, that could mean. Violence. Dementia. “I didn’t realize you liked rugby,” I told Matiu, feeling like I’d taken an unauthorized peek into Gray’s private documents.

  “I have to like it,” Matiu said. “Hamish is dead keen.” His stepson. “Gray Tamatoa’s before his time, unfortunately, or I’d be earning Dad Points all over the shop here. But Daisy,” he went on more soberly. “You and your two pretty little teenaged sisters are living in his house, because he kindly invited you, because he felt sorry for you? On his lifestyle block, far from the neighbors, out of screaming range? Without a car of your own, and him weighing more than any two of you put together and five times as strong, and with that history? No.”

  “We’re not in his house,” I said. “Or we are, but … not exactly. He’s in his house. We’re in his yurt.”

  Matiu said, “His yurt?”

  “A very flash yurt,” I said. “And I have a key.”

  Matiu folded his arms. “You’re safe because you have a key. You don’t think he has a key as well?”

  I said, “I was thinking, before, that you were like an older brother. Now I remember why I don’t want an older brother.”

  He sighed. “I need to get my skates on. Patients to see. But I’m coming out to see the yurt, and to meet him. You’re working tomorrow, yeh?”

  “Yes,” I said cautiously. “Night shift all week.”

  He turned back to the computer and started typing again. “Go get a new phone today, before you go back out there. Text me with the address and put me on speed dial. And I’m coming out tomorrow after work, before you come in for your shift. Leaving those little sisters alone with your lovely, safe, older fella, I’ll just add. Who weighs a hundred-plus Kg’s if he weighs one, and probably bench-presses 140. And isn’t married.”

  “You can’t,” I said. “You have a family. Also, I have things to do tomorrow. And excuse me, were you married until, oh, two months ago? Did I miss that somehow? How many axe murders did you commit whilst scarily single?”

  He finished typing and headed for another patient room. “I’m coming out. Call it six o’clock. We’ll bring pizza. The kids will be thrilled. Hamish on both counts, once I catch him up on the highlights reel. Go get your sister so I can see those films. And for God’s sake, get their names changed. What was yours?”

  I did my best to scowl at him. “Chastity.”

  He winced. “Ouch.”

  26

  Morning Light

  Gray

  Before dawn the next morning, I was running on the hard-packed sand of the beach, warmed up and going well, my body and brain loose and relaxed. To my left, the coming-and-going sound of the surf filled my head. Ahead of me, the waving beach grasses and golden sand and gray sea continued on, world without end. Above me, the wispy morning clouds were just beginning to be tinged with pink.

  Daybreak.

  There were a few others out here. Early-morning dogwalkers. Fitness fanatics. And maybe some people like me, who needed some air before another long day.

  I’d come home at eight last night, three hours past quitting time, after cobbling together a makeshift plan for the week, possibly regretting my extra half-day off. When I’d opened the fridge, though, there’d been a plate under clingfilm in there, piled high with tender chunks of lamb dripping with rich brown broth, all of it ladled over pillows of potato gnocchi. There had been a brightness to it besides the heartiness, too. Layers of flavor. I didn’t know how she’d done it, if the cook was Daisy, but it was one of the best dinners I’d ever eaten. There’d been green beans as well. Buttery, lemony, garlicky. I’d practically licked the plate clean.

&nb
sp; There’d been something else in the fridge, too. A dish of rhubarb stewed to softness, with something cakey on top, and a little bowl of vanilla custard.

  Obedience had made me a rhubarb slump. That just made me … smile.

  There was a little piece of paper under the rhubarb bowl that I only saw when I was putting it in the microwave. Stuck there by juices, maybe. I unfolded it, my heart beating like I was sixteen and it was a love note.

  I like your car, it said. I didn’t even smash it up.

  It was signed with a little doodle of a daisy.

  I smiled like a fool and told the dog, who’d been more than happy to spend the afternoon moving between ute, job sites, and construction trailers, “Not sure if she likes me, but she likes my car. Enough to cook for me, anyway, if that was her. I’m going to think it was her.”

  The dog cocked her head, her ears folded over in that Labrador way, and with so much intelligence in her brown eyes, I’d swear she knew what I was talking about. That was why I was running with her this morning instead of leaving her at home. She was at my side, not a bit interested in chasing seabirds. A very well-bred Lab indeed, though I had the feeling that if I’d thrown a ball into the surf, her day would have been complete.

  I was looking at the dog, and then I wasn’t. The sky had lightened a little more, enough for me to recognize the runner. Or maybe I would have anyway, because she was fast. Small, economical, and strong, her dark ponytail swinging, wearing tiny running shorts and a sort of cropped sports top.

  I ran faster.

  When we met, she went straight for the dog, dropping down and giving her a cuddle. The dog, of course, was thrilled about that. I’d have been thrilled about it, too. Her legs looked just as good as they had before. Firm, rounded thighs, slim ankles, honey-colored skin. A sheen of moisture on that skin from the effort she’d expended, and some soft down at the back of her neck where her hair had been pulled up high. Even her ears were pretty, with tiny gold balls in the lobes.