“Car repair,” I told Hope. “Body shop.”
“Yeh,” my dad said. “Better than the mattress factory, though. So you see, it all worked out well in the end. All for the best. I’m on the road up now.”
“Are you sober?” I asked, and his head snapped back, the anger flashing in his eyes for just a moment. The anger he’d shown so often when I’d been a kid, and not since. Not since I’d had money.
“Yeh,” he said. “Have been since I got out of the program. Six months now. I’ve started again.”
I’d believed that too many times already, and been disappointed every time, until I’d stopped believing. It hurt too much to have the belief shattered, and I couldn’t afford to hurt that way. Not ever again.
My dad told Hope, “Hemi paid for the program. Four months inside, getting sober. He doesn’t think I’ve been such a good dad to him, maybe, doesn’t understand how life can knock you down, but he paid anyway. At least there’s that.”
“That’s good,” she said.
“He’s a good man,” my dad said, and I tried not to let myself hear that, tried to remember why he’d be saying it.
“Where are you living?” I asked.
“Got a room in Onehunga. Car’s still running as well, but it’s not too flash.”
“No,” I said.
“Haven’t even asked, have I.”
I stood up fast, and after a second, Hope scrambled up to join me. “You don’t have to,” I said. “I can hear it coming down the pike. I’m glad you’re sober, if it’s true, but the answer’s still no. I’ve paid enough. I’m done paying.”
I would never be done paying.
Hope
I walked out with Hemi, and he didn’t say anything, and I didn’t ask. I held his hand as he headed back toward his grandfather’s room, and finally, he said, “Sorry.”
“No,” I said. “Don’t be sorry. Hey, my dad never even came back again. I’ll bet he’d be there in a heartbeat if I had hundreds of millions of dollars, though.”
“You will have hundreds of millions of dollars. And if he turns up, I’ll be there to help you deal with him. Thanks for that. Who knows what you must’ve thought.”
He said the last part fast, like he didn’t mean it, and I knew that was because he’d meant it too much. I squeezed his hand and tried to send all my belief through it. “Thanks for letting me hear it. I have the feeling you’re ashamed, but you have nothing to be ashamed of. You’re even more amazing than I knew, do you realize that? You give so much, even when nobody could expect it of you, even if nobody will ever find out. You think you’re hard, but you’re so . . . so decent underneath, Hemi. And so you set limits. So you cut him off when he tried to go somewhere you couldn’t stand to go. That was the right thing to do, and it made you look even stronger to me.”
He stopped where he was, in the middle of an echoing corridor, and looked at me. His face would have seemed as inscrutable as ever to somebody else, but I saw his eyes, and he couldn’t hide from me. “I hated you hearing that,” he said, “and I would have said I didn’t want you to, but could be I was wrong.”
“Hey,” I teased gently, “I got the ‘w’ word and everything. And if I helped, I’m glad.”
“Wait till you meet my mother,” he said, and started walking again. “She won’t be sober. I’ll have to invite them both to the wedding, and I’ll have to chuck at least one of them out.”
“And if you do,” I said, “I’ll just be that much more impressed.”
Hemi
Back in Koro’s room, Karen was reading aloud, and Koro had his eyes closed.
“Don’t stop,” he said when she trailed off at sight of us. “I want to hear what happens.”
“Harry Potter,” Karen informed us, and I laughed despite my still-turbulent emotions.
My dad. And Hope. And Koro. It was all too much.
“Don’t laugh,” Karen said. “Have you ever read it?”
“No,” I said. “And I wouldn’t have said it’d be Koro’s cuppa, either.”
“Just because you haven’t tried something,” she said loftily, “that doesn’t mean it’s no good. Open your mind, Hemi.”
Koro smiled, but his eyes were shrewd as he studied me. He might be dizzy, and his head might still be aching, but he saw too much all the same. “Leave your dad behind, did you?”
“Finishing his coffee,” I said. “He’ll be back.”
“Leave Karen with me for a bit, then,” Koro said. “Let her keep distracting me. You take Hope someplace more cheerful for a wee while. Say all the things you’re scared to say, and let her say all the things you’re scared to hear. Only one way out, and that’s through.”
I could have pointed out that I knew that, since I’d been pushing through all my life. But maybe not with Hope. Maybe I’d just thought I had. I’d done something wrong, and it seemed that everybody could see it but me. I’d better find out what it was if I was going to fix it.
“I’ll be back,” I promised. “I’ll switch off with Karen.”
Koro waved a hand that still had IV tubes running into it. “Or whoever else is coming. You know they’ll be here soon enough. I have enough company, and I’ll have more. You’ll keep. Go.”
When Hope and I were in the car, I started to turn the key, then stopped myself. “I was going to say, ‘We’ll go to the beach.’ But maybe I should say, ‘How about the beach?’”
“The beach is good,” she said. “The beach is perfect. Good job asking, though.”
I nodded, put the car in gear, and went there. All the way through Tauranga to Mt. Maunganui and the kilometers-long stretch of sand where I’d given Hope her ring and we’d danced on the shore. If I was going to do this, I was going to do it with every happy memory I could invoke attached to it. If I were really meant to be honest, I’d need all the help I could get.
We were walking, then, on the firm sand at the water’s edge in a fresh breeze that felt glorious after being cooped up in the jet for so long, the winter sun warmer than it had any right to be in August and only a few white clouds scudding across the blue sky. I was holding Hope’s hand, and having her this close to me on a New Zealand beach was a pretty good place to be.
After a couple quiet minutes, during which I let the peace settle over me and seep into my bones, she said, “It’s beautiful today. You should have seen how hard it was raining when I came.”
“Mm,” I said. “When you were caught out in it.”
“Yes,” she said. “Which I survived, even though I was cold and wet and tired and scared. I can always do more than I think I can. I remembered that afterwards.”
The only way out is through. I plunged in. “You left because I didn’t tell you about Anika, and because I asked people not to hire you. And because I didn’t pay enough attention to you. And because you were pregnant, and you were afraid I’d . . . what? Not want the baby?”