Page 127 of Catch a Kiwi
“Oh,” she said. “OK. I guess …”
“Summer. Wait.” I grabbed her hand and held it. “If there’s more to say, go on and say it. He thought you’d go with him. I think that’s where we were.”
“Oh. Yes. Maybe he was lying about that, but he probablywouldhave wanted me to, because I was his security blanket that also made his life run smoothly, and none of those other girls were. Though I’m under no illusions that he’d have given them up. Again—why would I go for this? And I’m sorry,” she of course had to add, “if I’ve made you feel like you’re that for me, coming to you today. That’s nobody’s job,to be somebody else’s emotional support animal, to spend their life propping somebody else up.”
I laughed. I couldn’t help it. “That’s the last thing in the world I’d accuse you of. Have you never happened to notice that you drive me mad when you won’t let me help?”
“Oh.” She looked confused. “Well, good. But I’ve cried on you twice now.”
“You have,” I agreed. “And you’ve gone to meet my whanau with me, and brought Delilah to New Zealand with you because you couldn’t bear to think of her being alone, and taken my mum away and looked after her when she was being a nuisance, and tried to clean the whole bloody house when some random girl got sick all over it. Therentalhouse. You’re a caretaker. A nurse, not a patient. But go on and tell me the rest of it. Moyano didn’t imagine his brilliant self would actually end up in prison, and he had those debts and all, tens of millions worth of them, so he reckoned he’d wipe the slate clean with a bankruptcy, then disappear and pop up again with his …”
“One hundred twenty-eight million, seventy-seven thousand, nine hundred fifty-six pounds,” she finished. “And ninety-one pence. Which would buy alotof beach time. But now he’ll get out in four years or whatever it is with the eighty-one million, et cetera, andnothave to go hide in some other country. He won’t have to settle for a white and silver condo after all. Well, if he doesn’t blow the money again.”
“So he put you both through all this for nothing,” I said. “Or for his own selfish reasons. The bankruptcy. The disgrace. I reckon that could make a person cry to discover. But—wait. The divorce lawyer. What’s the story there?”
“Ah,” she said. “OK, this is what I can’t figure out. Why this has thrown me for such a loop. He said we could petition to reopen the divorce, since it was filed with false information. Deliberately misleading information. That I coulddefinitely sue for half the money, and there was even a case to be made for me gettingallthe money. He explained some legal reason for that, but I wasn’t paying much attention.”
“Half of the eighty-one million, et cetera,” I said. “Or all of it.”
“Yes. Because Felipe earned it after we were married. But here’s the thing. Warning—I could get tied up in this one.”
“I’ll do my best to help untangle you. Go.”
She sat up straighter and dropped the blanket from around her shoulders. Fine and strong as tempered steel. “I never felt like that money was mine,” she said. “Ishouldfeel like it was mine, because the law says it’s matrimonial property and heaven knows all the debts were mine, and because Felipedidn’tthink it was mine. I think that’s part of the reason he hid it, honestly. He didn’t think it was the government’s, either. That’s theotherreason he hid it. He really thought it wasn’t fair, the tax rate on that much money and the idea that I’d have any claim on it. He earned almost five hundred million dollars while we were married, and he thought he was treated unfairly. It’s mind-boggling.”
“It wasn’t yours, but he still wanted you to go with him and be his support animal,” I said.
“I told you it was confusing,” she said. “But—yes. And even though I know that’s unfair and wrong, itisn’tmy money, not to me. I didn’t earn it, and I don’t want it. It wrecked Felipe, and I have no desire to live in a Snow Queen silver-and-white house, or to own a Lamborghini or fly on private jets or drink Champagne that costs thousands of pounds a bottle or waste my money any other way, either. And I don’t want to be tied to Felipe’s life anymore. That’s the main thing. But …”
“But you didn’t deserve to go bankrupt,” I said. “You didn’t earn that.”
“Exactly.” She beat her fist on her leg. She was in mydressing gown, which was streets too big for her, her face was blotchy and swollen, her hair was a mess, and I couldn’t have walked away from her if I’d tried. Her light was that strong.“Exactly.I was held responsible for his debts, because that’s the law, too, and I deserve to be compensated for losing my home. For losing all my clothes, all my jewelry—well, the few pieces I actually liked—and all my stupid pots and pans that I bought! I deserve to be compensated for having to go to trial and for paying solicitors and barristers and losing my job and my career and being disgraced with everyone I knew. Forstillbeing disgraced. For being so … soashamed.I tried my best to add it up, and …” She took a breath and clearly steeled herself. “I think, five hundred thousand pounds. I think that’s fair.”
“Thought the engagement ring was worth almost that much by itself, though,” I said.
“It was. But I told you, I hated that stupid ring. I’ve been thinking about it all weekend—it’s been hard to think about anything else—and I’ve gone around and around and around, everything from thinking, go on and ask for everything and then donate it, so that I should walk away from the whole deal, and this is where I end up. I deserve something, I deserve to be made whole, but I don’t want everything. I don’t even want half, and I definitely don’t want to go back to court or spend years wrangling over it. I want a quick settlement, and then I want to start over. Tokeepstarting over. But with slightly better clothes and college tuition for Delilah,” she said, trying to laugh.
“Then,” I said, “why not? Sorry, but I don’t get what’s so … so tragic here. What’s making you cry. He was an arsehole. He was worse than that. He made your life hell and only thought of himself, and now you’re shot of him and standing on your own feet and starting over. I’m rapt you came to me, of course, but …” I was mucking this up, I knew. “I’m trying not to be insensitive,” I went on, “but I don’t get it. You don’t want me to fix things for you, but you don’t need me to fix this. You want somebody’s permission to ask for five hundred thousand? You’ve got it. It’s your life, and it's your choice. I’d probably do the same, to tell you the truth. Well, I‘d probably ask for a million. Two, possibly. Two million pounds makes a pretty good launching pad. You could buy a good house with that and still send Delilah to university. You may want to think about asking for enough to open your own firm. You can’t tell me you don’t have ideas for one.”
“You did do the same thing yourself, though,” she said. “You don’t want Hemi Te Mana’s money, as an investment or any other way. You can’t stand the idea.”
“True,” I said. “Not the same in my view, but OK. What am I missing?”
“The thing is,” she said, “there’s something else that keeps getting in the way, that I’m running up against every time I try to think about this. And I need to tell you about that, too. The thing that made me numb for so long, besides Felipe and the trial and the bankruptcy and my mom dying. I didn’t even realize it until this weekend, when all this sort of … boiled up. It’s hard, though, because I’ve never told anyone. I’m not asking you to be my support animal, it’s just …”
“That when you love somebody,” I said, “you share the hard stuff. Because you need to, and because they want to help you carry it.”
“Yes,” she said, her face completely sober. Looking into my eyes the way she had that day on my bed. Wide open. “I think that’s why. I know you thought I was a coward, that day I left. You were right. But I don’t have to be a coward anymore. If I want to be free, I can’t be like Felipe, shying away from that pit of need and pain inside me. It’s time to face it. It’s time to stop running.”
57
OUT OF THE PIT
Summer
I’d faced so much these past few days, even as I’d thought I hadn’t. Once I’d begun talking to Roman, it had all come out, facts and feelings and all, so I’d obviously been putting it together in the back of my mind. Facing this, though, was different, because I did have that pit inside me.
Pits don’t go away by ignoring them, though. Pits only go away when you drop down into them and start carving the steps that will let you climb out. So I took a leap of faith, let go of the edge at last, and fell in.
