Page 42 of Kiwi Gold
My hackles rose. I didn’t normally run much to hackles, but they were doing it.How did the last bloke work out?I wanted to ask him.Maybe she needs to know she can choose better. Maybe she wants to choose me.
Not enough chairs, and I motioned Laila into the one beside me and rose to grab another. Why had I wanted Drake beside me anyway? To protect whom? My mum? From what? To prevent a hysterical outburst from a sister, then? No, because they weren’t going to be upset. They’dwantedthis.
No accounting for taste, I reckoned. I’d had a sperm-donor bio-dad myself, and if he’d come around, all I’d have wanted to do was hit him in the face for leaving my mum alone to deal with me by herself at eighteen.
But then, she hadn’t paid for his sperm, which put a different complexion on the thing.
19
THE MAIN DAUGHTER
Laila
My head was fairly spinning by the time Lachlan sank down beside me. One of his sisters was on my other side—Lexi, the one who’d burst upon us outside. She was trying not to laugh, I’d swear, and I was fighting the urge to giggle myself. It was all so ridiculous. My dad at one end of the table, Lachlan’s mum at the other, and the other three sisters sitting across from me. All four of them gingers, and all of them taller and so much curvier than me, as if they were the regulation size and I was the space-saving version, like a toaster oven that could only do two slices. They looked more like my dad’s daughters than I ever would, because other than the tinge of copper in my dark hair, I favored my mum in every respect. Which was, I’d always thought a little guiltily, one reason my dad loved me.
But here they all were, and their mother, too. She was tall, blonde, and as well put together, in her casual, authoritative way, as my own mother had been. A family group, anybody would have said, with me as the cuckoo in the nest. Lachlan? He was in between. His hair was nearly blonde, but his skin was darker than mine. The hand next to mine on the table was fully brown, in fact, because he tanned. Lachlan’s sisters, though, and my dad? They’d do nothing but burn. Gingers all the way.
On the other hand,my irrepressible sense of humor pointed out,now Dad has fourotherdaughters wearing immodest clothing to focus on!Not to mention their mum, who was in a deep-green, sleeveless shift that showed off her toned arms and legs and set off her nearly flaxen hair, falling past her shoulders and not one bit tied back. She must be over fifty, she had five children, and she was still all confident, low-key gloss. If she’d had an Elsa dress, she’d have passed for a Scandinavian princess herself.
Introductions were happening now, so I waved and smiled at my new … family members? Biological relations? and tried to remember names, while shutting down the darker thoughts that tried to crowd in.
“I’m getting an idea why you chose Torsten as our sperm donor, Mum,” the sister sitting closest to her said. Lark, that was. She had a broad forehead, my dad’s widow’s peak, and my dad’s clear green eyes, and she was laying her points down as dispassionately as if she were playing a hand of cards. “A geologist, exactly like Dad, and a ginger, which was close enough for both of you. Height, so if we were boys, we’d be tall. Cheers for the hips, though, Torsten, and I mean that ironically. Also, Pakeha.” She glanced at Lachlan. “Though maybe that wasn’t so important to you, since you kept Lachlan, and his dad was Maori.”
“Cheers,” Lachlan said, while my mouth was still hanging open. I normally monitored my own words so carefully, it always astonished me when other people blurted out any random thing that occurred.
Lark didn’t notice, just went on, “Howdidyou choose him, Mum? Did you know he was a Kiwi? Surprised you took the chance, then. Too small a country not to foresee this happening. Maybe it was Dad’s choice, though. You’d be off the hook then.”
Lachlan’s mother, who’d looked gobsmacked when we’d come over, had long since recovered herself. “Torsten may not want me to give those kinds of details.” She glanced at my dad. “Or would you prefer we use your surname?”
“A bit late for that now, I’d say,” he said. “And that’s the idea, I reckon. We’re getting to know each other. Go on and tell us why you chose me. Why Peter chose me.” Despite the words, he still looked stiff to me. Out of his depth. Not a feeling he was used to.
Philippa said, “The health report, obviously, and the height and build and athleticism, though I didn’t tell Peter that was why. Could’ve made him insecure. I focused on the personality test, which said you were confident and forceful, which I thought was good. Although I kept the ‘forceful’ idea to myself.”
“Because Dad’s not,” Lexi put in. “Gets along with everybody, but nobody could call him forceful. A bit of a weenie, possibly.”
“No, he isn’t,” Liana said. “He’s sensitive, that’s all.” And Lexi snorted.
“You say that like it’s wrong, Lexi,” Larissa said. “What, is forcefulness gendered, too? Also, Mum’s forceful enough. How well would it work to havetwopeople like that in a marriage?”
“Nah,” Dad said, his own humor coming out at last. “You can have two people like that. As long as you both enjoy the clash.” Which was true. People had always assumed that, because Mum covered her hair, she was subservient. They didn’t know how often she got her way. As in—almost always. Quietly, usually, but firmly, always. And the outcome’s what matters, isn’t it?
“Also the graduate student bit,” Philippa went on, ignoring her daughters, “in geology, which meant you were bright. If he’d known you were anexplorationgeologist, though, and that you were a Kiwi …”
“You wouldn’t have chosen me,” Dad said. “Too close for comfort, you’d have thought. Like Lark said.”
“Well … yes. And if Peter had known it was you—”
“Realize I’m not best pleased about that myself,” Dad said.
“Excuse me,” Lexi burst out from beside me. “What’s all the ‘sworn enemies’ stuff? I heard something, of course, because you were Dad’s best man and then you, you know, weren’t, but seriously? And what about your wife?” she asked Dad. “What does she think about all this? She’s bound to hate it. Is that why she isn’t here, even though your daughter is? Or are you divorced? Another bad sign for us,noneof our parents able to stay the course.”
A pause, and Dad said, “My wife is dead.”
“I’m sorry,” Philippa said, finally looking at him. “I didn’t know.”
“No reason you should,” Dad said. “Twenty years ago now.”
“And you’re not remarried?” Philippa asked. “Lexi’s right, though she wasn’t tactful. If there’s a wife in the picture, she’s not going to like this.”
