Page 116 of Catch a Kiwi
No sound, though. I stood still and listened. Still nothing. It had been Delilah, then, leaving.
I went back to work. Another half-hour, and I realized I’d been staring blankly at the refrigerator door instead of my screen for the past—how long? I had no idea.
I pulled out my phone again. Put it back. Thought about Summer getting into the kind of trouble that girl Erica had faced last night, but with nobody to see it and save her. Told myself I was being ridiculous. That Summer was a grown woman and no fool, and as she’d told me, she’d lived in that body a long time. And most of all, that she wasn’t my responsibility and didn’t want to be. She’d made that perfectly clear.
I finally grabbed the key fob and headed down the stairs. A fast drive on a winding road with the windows down toclear my head, that was what I needed. If she came home and found me gone—maybe she’d be the one wondering then.
Childish, you’re thinking, and you’re right.
This falling in love thing? It was rubbish. Why would anybody do it? Why would you even want to? It was unproductive. It was irrational. It was distracting. It was nothing I wanted, and nothing I needed. Even if it had been, I wouldn’t have picked the most guarded woman on the planet to do it with.
My life had worked fine for me for forty years. I had no family but my mum, and that hadn’t hurt me, had it? It had pushed me. Focused me. Honed me into the man I was, and the man I was worked for me.
This was like swimming against the current: fruitless and exhausting. You only won when you let go and let the current bring you back where you belonged. You could struggle, or you could go with it. You couldn’t always get what you wanted, but if you kept trying, you might get what you needed. As the man said.
And if that wasn’t enough? If life felt a little lonely and bleak just now? I could work on that. Or I could go with the current and accept the man I was.
Alone.
51
DOWN TO THE ROOTS
Summer
The duck was out in front of the house again, nibbling grass. As Matiu and I approached, it started quacking excitedly and pounced. Ah. A slug. An enormous one, but no match for that determined little duck. I was learning something, I guessed, as I winced and looked away. I wasn’t sure, though, that I wanted that much information.
The old man wasn’t in the house as I’d expected, although the daylight was fading fast. He was sitting in the front yard instead, under a big tree with shiny leaves. Karen was beside him, and for once, she wasn’t talking. They were just sitting.
“Hi,” Karen said, and stood up. “This is a surprise. Where’d you find her, Matiu?”
“Most of the way up Mauau,” he said. “Brought her back for a bit of quiet.”
“This is the place,” Karen agreed. She didn’t look or sound nearly as perky as she had yesterday, though, as she leaned down, did the hand-on-shoulder, forehead-and-nose-touching thing with the old man—the hongi, that was called—and told him as she rose, “I’ll see you in a couple weeks.”
“Ma te wa,” Koro said.
Karen said, “I don’t want to hear that. I want to hear ‘Hei te ihu.’”
The old man smiled. His face was a map of wrinkles, and his smile was missing half its teeth. “Whichever it is. Go well.” He watched her walk to her car, then said, “Haere mai, Matiu. Come to say goodbye as well?”
“Yes,” Matiu said. “And to give you one last check after all the excitement.” He was unzipping a black backpack as he spoke, pulling out a stethoscope that he slung around his neck, and then a blood-pressure cuff.
Koro said, “You and Karen, eh. Still trying to keep me alive.”
“Illusion of control,” Matiu said, his tone light as ever. “I’m not always as logical as I’d like. Humor me.”
The old man did, and when Matiu was unfastening the blood-pressure cuff again, said, “Ticker’s still going for now, anyway.”
“Yeh,” Matiu said. “I promised Summer a sammie and a cup of tea. Sun’s setting. Want me to take you inside?”
I realized for the first time that the blanket in the old man’s lap was covering a wheelchair. “Nah,” he said. “I’m better outside, with the breeze and the birds. I’ll sit with Summer a wee while.”
“Five minutes,” Matiu said. “For the tea. And then—” He broke off.
“And then,” Koro said, “I’ll take a bit of help getting ready for bed. Make you feel better, eh.”
“It will,” Matiu said. His hand gripped the old man’s shoulder for a minute, and then he headed off the same way Karen had. A little blindly, maybe.
