Page 125 of Catch a Kiwi
“Bugger my shirt,” I said, although, yeh, I was pretty damp. “Want to tell me first, or clean up?” I was marginally capable of learning from experience, and last time, cleaning up had been high on her list.
“Clean up,” she said, sniffing. No surprise.
“Right, then.” I showed her the bathroom and found her a dressing gown, because when Summer was unhappy or scared, she always seemed cold. Then I changed to a T-shirt, made two cups of tea, dumped a bit of that bourbon into it, as she’d liked it last time, and waited to hear.
I should be angry, maybe, that she’d only come back to me when she was at rock bottom. I couldn’t be. For better or worse, I was glad. Or if I wasn’t …
I was here for her anyway.
Summer
I was saying, “I’m sorry,” for about the tenth time, sipping the hot tea—he’d definitely put bourbon in it—and feeling, for the first time in days, safe.
I knew another person couldn’t make you safe. I felt safe anyway. Maybe it was what Koro had said: that having the right person beside you made life better. Not easy, but better.
Roman said, “Less apologizing and more explaining,” and I had to smile. It was such a Roman thing to say.
I said, “OK. But it’s a lot.”
“You heard me clear my calendar. I have time. Talk.”
“It’s all mixed up together,” I tried to explain. “I can’t even sort it out, so it won’t be organized. I kept thinking, this weekend, that I could handle it, that I could figure it out by myself. I didn’t want to tell Delilah, not until I’d processed it. She’s leaving for the States in a week, and I can’t stand her to think that she has to stay and keep me company. I want her to have her life. That’s what all this has been about. That we can start over and have a life.”
“Still not explaining,” Roman said.
“I’mgettingthere, OK?” He smiled, which was better, and I went on. “The problem was, Icouldn’tprocess it, not without getting rid of the … the emotion first so I could think it out logically, but I couldn’t face the emotion, and as for talking it out so I could be logical … I couldn’t. There’s so much I have to tell first. Things I can’t … that I can hardly stand even to think about. And I just …” My eyes welled up in spite of myself. It was impossible that I had more tears left. How many could your body even store? Yet here they were. “I just wanted you,” I said. “I’ve been wanting you since I left, and I can’t stop, and Iknowthat’s unfair to you. Iknowit. You don’t want a needy woman.”
He laughed, which was pretty startling. “Have you been listening to me at all?”
“What?” I stared at him.
“Never mind,” he said. “Sorry for laughing. Go on.”
“OK. Where was I? Oh, wanting you. I wasn’t sure I was ready, though. I did get a job. A software job, and it’s fine. It’s good, in fact, so that’s better. But I wanted you to get a whole person, a healed person—if you still wanted me, of course. Surprise!” I tried to laugh. “You’re not getting that.”
“Oh, I dunno,” he said, back to Roman-calm again. “Don’t you think a whole person includes the messy bits?”
“Oh. Huh.” I tried to consider that, but my fuzzy brain didn’t seem to have the bandwidth. “OK, then. Here goes. My divorce lawyer came to see me on Friday and kind of … dropped a bomb on me.”
“On Friday,” Roman said. “And you’re just here today. Monday.”
“Well,” I pointed out, “I didn’t know where you lived. If you were even in Dunedin. I could have asked Esther, but … Anyway, I kept thinking about it and pushing it away, this whole big … problem, and today—well, I tried to go to work, but when I got there, all I could do was sit. And then I started shaking. I had to get out of there, and my feet sort of … took me to you. I looked up the address for your firm. I was so glad when you came out. You were the only plan I had. It was that or fall apart by myself, or possibly on Daisy, and Ireallydidn’t want to fall apart on Daisy. She’s my landlady, and she’s also extremely competent. She’s the way I used to be.”
“You’re still that way,” Roman said. “You’ve also told me exactly one thing. That your divorce lawyer dropped a bomb. Your UK divorce lawyer? He’s—she’s—in New Zealand? Thought the thing was final. My divorce lawyer doesn’t come by for chats, and he lives here in Dunedinandhas done two of them for me.”
“It is final,” I said. “But I guess it can be reopened if there’s new information. Which there is. The thing is—I never thought Felipe had really hidden the money. I thought he’d lost it, like he said, or that his accountant had stolen it, maybe. I could never get a straight answer from him, but if he’d hidden it, why didn’t he just plead guilty and pay? He might still have gone to prison, but not for nearly as long, and he could have kept playing afterwards. He could have kept being a star. Why would you be a prisoner if you could be a star?”
“I’m guessing,” Roman said, “that all this means he did hide the money.”
“Yes,” I said. “He did. Do you know how much?”
“No. How much?”
“One hundred twenty-eight million, seventy-seven thousand, nine hundred fifty-six pounds and ninety-one pence. It’s earned interest.”
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MILLIONS AND MILLIONS
