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Wiri plugged his phone back into the truck charger and started the engine. He tilted his wrist out of habit and regretted the absence of his watch. The clock on the dashboard showed almost eleven, and he pursed his lips and sent a text.
He smiled as his phone rang in his hand and he sighed with relief as he connected the call and let the truck speakers project Phoenix’s voice around him. Its warmth chased away the horror of the dark tank and the tang of impending death. “Hey, Wiri.” Laughter sounded around her and he imagined sitting beside her on the low wall surrounding the school soccer field.
“Hey,” he replied. “I wanted to catch you before the end of interval.”
“Aw, that’s nice.” She exhaled, and he closed his eyes and allowed his muscles to relax against the seat. It hurt, but not as much as earlier. “How’s the new job?”
Wiri paused. He hadn’t just lied to Logan and Hana. Phoenix didn’t know he hadn’t gone north to the family either. He toyed with the idea of telling her, but stopped himself at the last minute. Phoenix couldn’t lie to save herself. But Mac could.
“It’s okay,” he said. “I’m earning money, so that’s positive.” He held his breath. That had been his intention, but he’d wound up in more debt than he’d started. And injured.
He heard her gulp and the smacking of her lips as she toyed with a question. “Will you still come back for me, Wiri?” A plaintiveness entered her tone. “I miss you. I shouldn’t have stopped you speaking to Papa before I went to summer camp. If I’d let you then, things might have been different. I’m sorry about that, but not for kissing you.” A bell sounded behind her to signal the return to class and she breathed into her phone. “I need to go. You won’t forget about me, will you?”
“Never.” Emotion infused his tone with a gruffness which locked up in his throat.
She whispered something he didn’t catch and disconnected the call. He pictured her running to class, her rucksack loaded down with text books and her mind already soaking up information like a sponge.
Doubt slapped him around the head and not for the first time. Phoenix was intelligent and loved learning. How could he justify stealing her away from a promising career and forcing her into hiding? The weight of the boulder pressed down on his head and he groaned beneath the impossibility of a combined future. He couldn’t push it free and it dogged him as he drove back to Vaughan’s farm.
Seline pulled the ranch slider open in response to his gentle tap. She smiled at him, her eyes sparkling with something he couldn’t discern. “You knock like a cop,” she said, her lips turning down into a pout.
“Right.” No ready response presented itself, and he stood on the porch and stared at her. He wondered how she knew what differentiated a police officer’s knock from a farm labourer’s. He squinted as his mind failed at the mental gymnastics required to solve the riddle. Then he figured she referred to Jet. “Is Leilah around?”
“Dee.” All traces of humour faded from her expression. Her lips tightened to create a thin, colourless line. “Or Deleilah.”
Wiri frowned and lifted Alfie’s hat from his head. It tugged the gauze and aggravated the stitches at the back of his scalp. Impatience grew in his chest and he lost the sentence he’d rehearsed to thank her for saving his life. “Whoever,” he growled. “I don’t really care. Please tell your mother I’ve fed the cattle on the slopes and the horses in the lower paddock. I can’t do the fencing alone, but I’m happy to do other jobs if she wants to text them to me.” He blew out a breath and turned to leave. His laces trailed around his feet. “How is Vaughan?”
Seline’s face lost all trace of beauty. Wiri recoiled from the naked hatred in her down turned lips and the sullenness which tugged at the corners of her eyes. “Don’t know. Don’t care!” she snarled.
Heavy footsteps took Wiri from the steps to the gritty driveway as he tried not to trip. Seline watched as he climbed into the driver’s seat of his truck, his expression a mask of pain. “Deleilah, Leilah, Dee. Why the hell should I care?” he muttered to himself, firing up the truck and feeling the vibrations from the diesel engine rumble through the seat and into his painful spine. He glared at her as he made the turn to face his truck in the direction of the road. The lack of a turning circle forced him to perform a three-point turn which extended past three and into the realms of ninety. “What a bitch,” he said out loud, the sentiment only adding to his anger.
At the junction with the road, he turned left and then left again, labouring up the mountain to the shared house and the hopes of a lie down on a comfortable mattress. He promised himself he’d just shut his eyes for a minute as a reprieve from his pounding headache.
***
He woke from a deep sleep and struggled to orientate himself. His lids grated against his eyeballs as he forced them apart with reluctance. The greyness of the light filtered through the tinted window and threw the ceiling into a pattern of high points and shadows. He didn’t recognise the shade shrouding a single energy bulb above him.
He’d drifted off after lying on his back on the mattress, not bothering to undress or pull the covers over himself. It hadn’t seemed necessary when he expected a text from Leilah or Vaughan at any minute. His trainers dangled off the end of the bed.
Wiri checked his wrist again and groaned. He shifted his head to look at his watch, still on its charger. A green light at the bottom suggested it might not be as dead as he first believed. He sighed and tested his muscles one at a time. “The odds are definitely against me,” he murmured to himself. “I bet that watch is still buggered.”
Rolling onto his side, he pushed his legs over the mattress until the toes of his right trainer connected with the floor. Then he forced himself into a sitting position. He dipped forward to stretch the muscles of his spine and grappled on the bedside table for the packet of painkillers. His empty cooler box tumbled to the rug. “Maybe I shouldn’t have taken them so soon,” he said, yawning and resisting the urge to stretch up his arms.
The sound of a fist rapping against glass took his breath away, and he inhaled in shock. He turned his body towards the noise, starting at the sight of a man peering through his bedroom window. Blond hair sprouted from his head, beginning at a cow lick on his forehead. The genial expression he’d worn the last time Wiri saw him had disappeared in favour of a grimace. He hammered again on the glass, using the balled side of his fist. “Open the door!” he shouted. “Now!”
A watery sun dipped low in the sky behind his angry face and Wiri blinked in surprise. A prickle of guilt played at the edges of the fog that he’d slept through the entire afternoon.
Wiri eased himself to a standing position, anxious at being caught with his trainers still on his feet. He shuffled along the hallway, hoping he wouldn’t find Leilah standing on the door mat with the angry man who strode around to the front of the house to meet him. She’d gone to great lengths with her renovation of the old property, and he imagined her dismay at his shod feet. The laces trailed behind him like a wake.
Wiri leaned against the wall next to the front door and used his right hand to turn the catch. The handle depressed from the other side and he jerked away from the door, which cannoned open into his face a second later. He only just dodged the force of it, listing sideways and scrabbling to hold on to the wall.
Jet’s brother filled the gap, his neck bending as his head just cleared the lintel. He filled his police uniform with a wall of muscle and the faint burgeoning of a rounded stomach.
“What’s wrong?” Wiri leaned against the wall to remain upright and dragged a hand across his scratchy eyes.
“I’ve been knocking for the last ten minutes,” Tane growled.
“Sorry.” Wiri blew out a ragged breath. “I took some painkillers and fell asleep.” He gasped. “What’s the time? Oh, no!” He patted his pockets and remembered putting his phone on charge after its night in the cooler. “Did Leilah send you? Has she tried to call me?” He exhaled and colour flooded his cheeks. “Damn! I’ll lose my job. I left a message for her to text me with the tasks I needed to complete.”
Tane shrugged. “Leilah didn’t send me. That’s not why I’m here.”
Wiri gaped up at him, his tired brain limping through a series of plausible explanations. After a moment of wrangling, he sighed. “Sorry, mate. I got nothing.” He released a hiss through his teeth. “Can I get my phone and see if Leilah sent me some jobs by text?” He ran his palm along the wall for a few metres until the clearing of Tane’s voice caused him to turn back to face him. Every movement made his muscles shriek their protest into his brain. “What?” A tremor entered his voice.
Tane’s expression mirrored one he’d seen before.
Logan wore it when he informed Wiri his dad was dead. So, he’d kept quiet then, not sure if his uncle knew the truth. And then his dad really died and his tent pegs had pinged free from the whenua, as though casting him adrift without an anchor.
Wiri leaned back against the expensive flock wallpaper which Leilah loved but wouldn’t live with. He spread his fingers over the embossed pattern and held his breath. “What’s happened?” he asked, his tone wavering. “Just tell me. And then please, can you lace up my trainers for me?”
