“This is amazing! Ka mau te pai!” Will’s face lit up like a Christmas tree, as David hefted the boxes one at a time into the old man’s workroom. Hana stood at the top of a steep ramp, staring at Will’s muscular arms and wondering how he managed to wheel himself up and down it. Will sat in his wheelchair watching the steady parade as David and Tipene followed each other in and out of the shed. The boxes were heavy and unwieldy and took considerable manhandling out of the vehicle. They had occupied the large boot space and all available seats, meaning Hana drove ahead of the Range Rover in her car.
“I thought you’d be cross,” she said, gulping with emotion at Will’s ecstatic grin. She hadn’t understood how much it meant to him, being trusted with the treasures.
Will took Hana’s hand in his and gave it a decent squeeze, never taking his eyes from the men. “Not on the floor!” Will bellowed at his brother, “Stand them on the pallets.” He turned to Hana, “You never store taonga on the floor.”
Hana bit her lip and looked at the drooping, water-stained box. It showed all the signs of its forty-odd year lifespan in someone’s damp garage. “I hope you won’t be disappointed at the state of some of the contents,” she said, sounding nervous. The smell of mildew wafted past as Tipene tottered by with the sorriest looking box. It was bound to require more of Will’s careful treatment and would probably cost more than all the others put together to restore. Hana sighed and wished again she hadn’t started this.
Will squeezed her fingers in his gnarled hand. “It’s fine, kōtiro. Everything will be fine. Hei aha koa.”
When Hana’s brows knitted, he smiled showing his missing teeth. “I mean don’t worry, it doesn’t matter. I’ll take care of everything.”
Hana smiled and squeezed his hand back, balancing a curious Phoenix on her hip. Her house in Flagstaff had lain empty after the previous occupant went to prison, leaving his wife without income or support. Hana refused to turn her out and let her stay rent free for a month while she sorted out her affairs and readied her small children to return to the South Island. Hana’s phone rang on the drive to Will’s house.
“You’ll never believe it,” the real estate agent chuckled, “but while I was hammering in the ‘For Sale’ board outside the property yesterday, I was approached by one of your old neighbours. Seems he might want the house for a relative who’s back from Australia.”
“Gosh, that would be amazing!” Hana agreed.
“I’m showing them round this afternoon. If it’s what they want, we can shift it really quickly.”
Hana felt cautiously optimistic as Will fudged the question of cost, engrossed in basking in the wonderment of the artifacts. He shouted instructions from the ramp at the men, getting them to move the boxes twice more so he was sure he had room to navigate his wheelchair inside the shed. “It’s no bloody good if I can’t get to it, is it?” he bawled at them, drawing a snigger from David and an exaggerated eye roll from Tipene.
The workroom was a large, tin double garage with two roll top doors. Inside were sundry tools, all mounted on a shadow board and neatly labelled. The centre of the room was taken up by low work tables and Tipene explained quietly how Will’s son painstakingly sawed the legs down so his father could still work at them in his wheelchair. Around the walls were the most incredible landscape paintings, so real Hana was initially fooled into thinking they were photographs. “My brother painted them all,” Tipene proudly informed her. “It passed the time when he lost both legs and helped with the agony after his wife died a few months ago.”
Hana walked around the workroom, marvelling at the skill that went into creating the realistic scenes before her. Easily recognisable were the mountains of the North Island, the three peaks of Mount Pirongia, the snow dappled faces of Ruapehu with Ngauruhoe in the background, all in beautiful tone and shade. The stratovolcano, Mount Taranaki rose from lush green surroundings, dusted with white on its peak, icing on a craggy, undulating cake. The foreground was dominated by an aged, lichen encrusted farm gate and the perspective was stunningly accurate. The painting had something about it which pulled at Hana’s insides and made her desire to own it. The prospect of selling Achilles Rise made her rash and before she had considered her words, she asked Will to sell it to her. Phoenix snuffled in the car seat, the unintentional reprimand lying heavily on Hana’s heart. Will’s price was not exorbitant but inwardly Hana panicked. “I want to give it to Logan,” she said shyly, hoping that her husband would love it as much as she did. Promising to bring a cheque on her next visit, Hana extricated herself and parted ways with David outside the front of the small house.
“Nice guy,” David said conversationally and Hana nodded, her conscience getting the better of her. She confessed to Logan just hours ago she had gotten herself into a financial mess and then compounded it. She began to wonder if she had some incredibly destructive need to sabotage herself. “What is all that stuff?” David asked, leaning his neat butt against the truck. “Nobody seemed to want to help me except Rawhiti. They all steered clear of it.”
“I think,” Hana said, a feeling of doom settling heavily in her chest, “it’s a whole heap of trouble actually and I kinda wish I hadn’t gotten into this.”
The soldier looked at her attractive face, her brow knitted and furrowed. He wisely chose not to ask. It was none of his business. He felt sure that he would be moving on soon anyway. All the farm vehicles were fixed and he was just waiting for the local township garage to get him a part for the plough. Then he would be surplus to requirements. David Allen was philosophical. He had been well fed, decently paid and treated with respect. Although his sleep was still disturbed, the deep green of the mountains soothed him and his work wore him out enough to allow the images to relax their haunting. The haggard, hunted look had begun to leave his face, replaced by a tanned, healthy glow.
“You’re looking well,” Hana commented, desperate to distract herself from her own dilemma. She instantly realised her mistake as the soldier’s face slammed shut against her probing. She could almost hear the whirr of the rollers and the clang of metal on metal as everything in him closed. Hana had been there and it made her sad. She remembered only too well the sense of imprisonment, looking out through the dirty windows of her soul at the world carrying on without her, aching to be broken out, but too afraid to scream for help. “Nobody can break you out,” she whispered to no one in particular, “because nobody knows you’re in there.”
David looked at her strangely and Hana felt embarrassed. “Sorry,” she said. “I was just thinking aloud...about prisons of our own making. Nobody could help me because I couldn’t admit I was in one. The great irony is I just had to try the door handle and pull. It was unlocked the whole time.”
David eyed her as though she was a maniac and Hana bit her lip, deciding it was time to leave. She feared he would go back up to the hotel and tell everyone she was a loony. She looked again into his deep blue eyes and knew he wouldn’t. Belting Phoenix’s heavy car seat back into place, Hana sent up an arrow prayer that God would undo her stupid words and make David forget. She also prayed God would make her lose her voice at relevant moments and sort out her financial concerns. Heaven sniggered fondly at her randomness and the angels present smiled, as they forced the impact of her wisdom harder into the soldier’s damaged heart, compounding and not lessening the effect.
“Thanks for your help,” Hana said, climbing into the Honda. “I’ve made dinner but if you get a better offer, I’ll understand.”
David watched her without expression and Hana gave up and started the engine. Tipene waved happily from the front door of the tired little house before going inside. Only David remained in the quiet street, his backside against the door of the Range Rover and his mind elsewhere. He couldn’t seem to shake off Hana’s words. ‘I just had to try the door handle and pull. It was unlocked the whole time.’ Now why did that sentence affect him so damn much?
Hana pulled over to answer her mobile phone. The lay by was directly opposite her favourite coffee shop on Peachgrove Road. A full fat latte called to her from underneath the sign, and she turned her face away. She couldn’t just nip anywhere anymore.
The phone call was from Mrs Dobbs, replying to her message of the previous day. “I’ll be round just before three o’clock today then,” Hana said. She didn’t get to say goodbye as the phone mysteriously cut out on her. Peering at the screen in expectation of a depletion in signal, she was astounded to see the battery light flashing. Again. “You only lasted an hour!” she said crossly to it, throwing it back into her bag.
Hana glanced down at her baby sleeping next to her in the passenger seat. Her little head tilted sideways, looking like it was held on only by the car seat strap. Not for the first time, Hana wondered how she never seemed to wake up with neck ache. As if in response, the lips tightened around the crinkly thumb and her eyelids fluttered gently against her olive skin. Dark hair peeked out of the knitted hat, curling back against the pink woolly hem. Her daddy’s did that when it got longer, curled away from his face in great shiny waves. “Phoenix Du Rose, you’re going to be a stunner,” Hana breathed, wondering if there were any photos of Logan’s grandmother in the boxes. It would be a fascinating comparison to make, especially as Tipene had recognised the genealogy in the child so quickly.
At home, Phoenix was wide awake and wired after her nap. She crawled around the kitchen floor getting underfoot, crying a couple of times in anger as she pushed herself back onto her bottom and bowled over flat onto her back.
“You really need to master that whole ‘sitting back’ thing baby,” Hana murmured soothingly to her as she kissed the sore spot on the back of the little girl’s head and rubbed it. She plugged her phone back onto charge in disgust, wondering how she was going to tell Logan the expensive gift was already broken. One-handed, with the baby on her hip, she turned up the heat on the casseroles, one for them and one for Dora Dobbs and went to change her child’s nappy.
Hana walked around the house with Phoenix, exploring properly and imagining the house used as a school in the early days. The walls and floors oozed their history from every knot and mark and it was fascinating. Phoenix was happy in her mother’s arms, content to look out of the high windows at the things Hana pointed out. “Look Phoe,” Hana said, “that ridge of mountains surrounding Hamilton makes it one of the most geologically sound places to live in the whole of the North Island.”
Phoenix screwed her face up without understanding and pushed her nose against Hana’s shoulder. “Ok, maybe a bit advanced for now, then,” Hana said.
In the baby’s bedroom as Hana wandered around, Phoenix pointed hopefully towards her cot and her mother laughed. “You’re such a sloth! You only woke up an hour ago, girlie. It’s nearly lunch time.” Hana retrieved the fluffy horse Tama bought the child and Phoenix cuddled it in tightly to her body, squeezing it hard around the neck and looking as though she was trying to stuff it under her armpit one-handed. She burbled something lovingly at its dangling form and then faced a dilemma of epic proportions. One tiny hand rested around Hana’s back like it always did, fiddling with the red curls and the other, gripped the cuddly horse. The pink lips pursed in dismay as she realised she didn’t have a free thumb to suck. Hana kissed her on the cheek and set off downstairs to make lunch before the little girl grizzled. “No matter how hard I try, Phoe, I can’t sort that one out for you.”
Phoenix sat in the high chair and tore a hastily made cheese sandwich to shreds, pushing tiny chunks into her mouth. At the end of half an hour, there was nothing left to see, apart from a smear of grease on the tray. Hana wondered if the child was having a growth spurt as she devoured a bowl of pureed casserole. “Maybe you’re going to be tall like Daddy,” Hana mused as the spoon went in and out of the little face like a supermarket conveyor belt.
The baby was showing all the signs of wanting to go to sleep, despite Hana’s best efforts to keep her awake. “I wanted you to sleep at Dora’s,” Hana grumbled. “She’ll have all these expensive ornaments and I’m bound to say the wrong thing if I’m trying to stop you crawling all over exploring.” It was futile. The obligatory breastfeed was the final straw and the baby ended up in the car seat out in the hallway, as Hana reasoned she needed to get the duty call over with earlier.
David appeared with a packet of blue airmail envelopes and after borrowing a biro, sat down at the kitchen table and bit the end of the pen. Hana indicated the casserole dish in the oven. “It’s ready now if you want it early. Just leave half for Logan.”
David nodded and turned his eyes to the blank blue page before him. He scratched his head and bit the pen a bit more, still writing nothing.
“Er, sorry for interrupting again. But please would you apologise to Logan for me?”
David’s eyes widened and he raised an eyebrow.
Hana bit her lip. “He promised to come home to do his paperwork instead of doing it in the office. Just tell him I had to go out.” Logan also promised they would talk, although Hana didn’t believe he knew how. She wrote him a note and left it on the side, apologising for her absence but not telling him where she went, her destination seeming irrelevant.
David watched her wrap tea towels around the hot casserole dish and juggle with it because it was still too hot. Hana felt embarrassed. “I’m taking it round to someone who recently lost her husband in an accident. But I’m a dreadful cook, so it’s probably inedible anyway.” She glanced across at its twin nestled on the draining board and cringed as David glanced at his dinner nervously. But he didn’t ask and so she didn’t expand on the topic, leaving him to his blank paper and maudlin thoughts.
Fortunately, the dish sat firmly on the tea towel underneath it, without spreading its contents on the carpeted floor of the Honda. Phoenix snored in her car seat. “If I get this casserole to Mrs Dobbs in one piece, it’ll be a miracle,” Hana groaned as it tipped dangerously pulling off the driveway.
“Hello.” The voice sounded disjointed and at first, Hana couldn’t work out where it came from. She looked around, noticing the dark saloon car pulled over on the school driveway. Winding her window down, Hana smiled at Detective Inspector Odering and he smiled back in his clipped, uptight way. It was apparent he wanted to speak to her. “I’m just nipping out,” Hana called, feeling her shoulders slump as he crooked his finger and beckoned her over.
“It won’t take a minute,” he said with authority.
Feeling huffy and irritated, Hana got out and walked the few metres over to him, waiting next to his open window like a naughty teenager caught vandalising a bus stop. “I do have a baby in my vehicle!” she said crossly. “You could have walked across to me.”
Odering ignored her barbed comment and waited. “How’s your day going?” he said, smiling pleasantly as Hana grew nervous.
“Good, thanks. Until some cop made me stop what I was doing.”
“Awesome,” he said and looking down, put his gear lever back into drive.
Hana was surprised. The detective wasn’t one for small talk and eyed the Du Roses in general with mild distain. Why on earth would he care how her day was going? “How’s the investigation going?” she allowed herself to ask.
“Which one?” he replied, facetiously.
“I wondered if you’d caught Lachie’s killer yet,” Hana asked, tossing her red hair and showing her annoyance.
“Who?” Odering screwed up his face in confusion, rubbing his hand over a smoothly shaven chin. Looking at her, he struggled to achieve some level of professionalism. “Oh, fine thanks. We’ll get to the bottom of it. Is that son of yours not keeping you informed?”
“No!” Hana’s reply was indignant, aware the senior officer was trying to catch his lackey out for disclosing confidential information.
Odering waved his hand dismissively, knowing he had gotten on the wrong side of her. “Tell me,” he asked, seeming uncharacteristically nervous. “Do you get fed up when your husband works long hours and does night duties over at the boarding house?”
“Yeees,” Hana replied slowly, wondering if he was insinuating something about Logan. Her emotions began to work overtime. “Why?” She’d been here before with Vik, not realising he was having an affair until after his death, by which time saying her piece became irrelevant.
“So if it got too much for you...would you...do you think...?” Odering’s cheeks flushed and his usually steady hand gripped the rim of the open window with an unexpected tremor. “Well, would you call it quits and divorce him?”
It was a weird question to ask a comparative stranger. Hana wasn’t quite sure how to answer. “I hope I’d talk to him first,” she replied with a smile, trying not to betray the cracks in her own marital armour.
Odering looked hard at her, as though trying to read something unseen in her face. “What if you’d already done that, but he hadn’t realised how serious it was?”
His face was so earnest Hana felt pity for him. “If it was because I was struggling with Phoenix and couldn’t cope alone, divorcing Logan wouldn’t help, would it? Because then instead of being alone a lot, I’d be alone all the time. So there would have to be other factors. We’d probably try couples’ counselling first.”
Odering’s face broke into a broad grin at the thought of the tall Māori sitting in a counsellor’s office, talking about his ‘inner feelings.’ It cheered him up left him with a snigger on his lips. With a nod of acknowledgement, he put the car in gear and sped off towards the main office and his meeting with the principal.
Hana wandered back to her vehicle, feeling fairly sure the policeman had marriage problems. She remembered how she coped with Bo and Izzie while Vik worked exceedingly long hours after they first arrived in New Zealand. It was important to him and there was always someone new to impress. She ran around after work with this club and that group, baking for shared lunches like a maniac whilst trying to hold down a job of her own. Vik’s job always took precedence. It became part of his makeup - the workaholic image. There was no wonder Hana missed the indicators when he had his affair. Although, she chastised herself, until then, he had been better after becoming a Christian and he did keep coaching the tennis club. With a sigh, she turned back to the Honda and climbed in. Phoenix sniffed and blew out a snort as Hana put her seat belt back on. The hysterical giggle began in Hana’s chest and burst out through her lips, making the baby jump in her sleep. “Couples’ counselling!” she sniggered. “Whatever possessed me to say it? Like Logan would ever agree to that!”
The journey across town was uneventful and despite some obtuse angles, the casserole stayed in the dish. Deciding she would pull onto Dora’s driveway so she could keep her child in view and drop the meal off, Hana felt damned. She didn’t really want to hold a lengthy conversation with the grieving widow, certain the woman must know she and Alan Dobbs never got along. But nor did she want to seem shallow and unfeeling either. When Vik died, people were kind to her and it was a way of paying it forward.
Hana found the Dobbs’ house and pulled carefully onto the driveway, one eye on the slopping liquid as she traversed the kerb. The driveway was steep and long and she stopped half way down, next to the steps up to the house. To her dismay, another car pulled in behind her, forcing her down towards the red garage doors below. The Honda came to rest at a jaunty angle and gravity pulled the liquid in the dish towards the lidded rim. Hana sighed. “Nothing’s going right for me today!” Even her phone refused to charge and she left it sitting on the work surface in the kitchen, sucking in electricity that seemed to have no effect as soon as the device was unplugged.
A tiny woman about Hana’s age plunged from the cockpit of the huge SUV which forced Hana down the driveway. She was miniscule. She practically abseiled from the driver’s seat and hefted a large pie tin out with her, bustling up the front steps in a business-like manner. Hana sat in her seat, contemplating her next move. It seemed she was destined to drop and run and the idea was appealing, despite the guilt. She waited a while in case the little lady came out. Morbid curiosity made her want to see how the woman climbed back into the huge truck. When she didn’t reappear, Hana chided herself for her misplaced nosiness, surmising the other visitor was staying and would allow her to escape. She reached into the passenger side for the casserole, almost upending it totally as she overbalanced whilst trying not to wake the baby. Clicking the door closed with her hip she lumped crossly up the steep steps, finding herself on a porch next to the front door.
Here goes. After knocking, Hana tried to prepare her face appropriately to greet Alan Dobbs’ widow, despite the urge to hand over the dinner and run away. But it wasn’t Dora Dobbs who opened the door but the tiny lady. Up close, she was very attractive, a mop of curly dark hair around an open face. “Come in, come in,” she cried merrily, waving her arms behind her to indicate a long hallway with various rooms either side. Hana felt like a party guest, rather than a sombre visitor following a traumatic death. A little spaniel appeared from the kitchen door and wagged his flag-like tail at her hopefully.
“My baby’s in the car,” Hana smiled apologetically, her nerve finally abandoning her. She pushed the dish at the woman, who neatly sidestepped it.
“I need to go too. Bye Dora,” she called over her shoulder and leapt down the steps as fast as her little legs could carry her. Hana stood in the open doorway, a winter wind attacking her jeans and a hot casserole dish balanced between two tea towels. Awkward.
The SUV roared to life in a haze of exhaust fumes that threatened the ozone layer a bit more and backed up the driveway. When Hana looked back, the tired face of Dora Dobbs arrested her from the end of the hallway. The skin on her face was pale and ashen, betraying a woman who hadn’t slept for weeks. Her blonde hair was scraped back from her face into a bun, severe and school ma’am like. The smiling happy face of the woman who seemed like such an incongruous match for the stern Alan Dobbs, was gone. Hana relented. “Would you like me to stay?” she asked and Dora nodded.
Phoenix snoozed in the car seat on the kitchen floor and the casserole joined the other food items on the table. “I forgot it was like this,” Hana commented sadly. “It’s the kiwi-way isn’t it? Bring a meal and a platitude and hope it makes everything better. After Vik died we didn’t need to shop for a month. The first thing we ran out of was toilet rolls.” She chuckled, but Dora didn’t. “It’s a way of showing love,” Hana concluded and finally Dora nodded. Hana continued making noise for the sake of it. “I had hungry teenagers, so I was actually really grateful. When I went back to work, everyone assumed I was ‘over it’ so it’s good that people are still thinking about you a few weeks on.”
Shut up! Hana told herself as she ground to a sudden halt. The atmosphere crackled with black depression as Dora sat opposite her at the kitchen table, peering over the mountain of cake, cookies, pies and casseroles. A woman on her own was never going to eat it all. Hana looked around, noticing another door in the kitchen leading through to a lounge. Huge, well stuffed chintz sofas and armchairs peeked back at her from their set places. It looked like a pretty room, sideways on to the rest of the house and gathering the last rays of a watery sun.
“Have you seen him?” Dora asked and her voice came as a plea. Hana shook her head, wanting to say she only saw the vertically challenged person on the doormat but it sounded rude so she clamped her jaw closed. Dora looked sad and dazed. It was surely only to be expected. “I’ve been looking for him at the school,” she said. “That’s where he said he was going. Nobody’s seen him since.” A sob escaped her, causing her chest to heave and Hana’s eyes widened in fear.
It was possible the woman was heavily medicated. It was common to prescribe ‘a little something’ to people suffering from shock. But for Dora to be scouring the school grounds for her dead husband was more than weird. It smacked of a deeper problem. Hana didn’t know what to do and wracked her brains for someone suitable to call, groaning inwardly as she remembered her mobile phone endlessly charging in the kitchen at home.
Hana glanced down at Phoenix, hoping for once she would wake up and then they could make their excuses and leave. You’re so selfish, she chided herself. Hana shook her head at the internal argument. No, perhaps I can summon help once I’m home. Angus would know what to do.
Dora followed her gaze and sighed. “She’s like Logan,” she said softly. “Alan thought the world of him. He was scathing when Angus recommended him so highly, but then he was suspicious of everything Angus said or did.” Dora stopped herself abruptly and Hana got the feeling the woman thought she already said too much. It was the first indication she ever heard of an issue between the principal and his deputy. Whatever it was, they had kept it well hidden.
Hana worked to keep her inappropriate curiosity under control. “How’s your son coping?” she asked gently, remembering a blonde boy a few years younger than Bodie.
Dora leaned forward in her seat and her face became hopeful. “Have you seen him?” she asked again.
Hana shook her head and the other woman visibly slumped in her seat. “I don’t know what to do,” she began to weep. “I’m getting really worried. He was devastated by Alan’s death but he seemed ok in himself. It’s been over a week. I just don’t understand.”
“Oh,” Hana breathed with sudden realisation. The woman’s haggard appearance and sleepless nights became quickly obvious. She was talking about her son, not her husband. “Do you mean you’ve been looking for your son at school?” Hana asked. “Why would he be there?”
“He went there all the time. You know he did!” Dora spat, plucking at a button on her cardigan with frenzied fingers. Hana wondered again if she was losing the plot and wished the small person had remained behind with her; for moral support. That woman seemed capable and practical; she would have known what to do. Hana didn’t.
“I don’t really know your son,” she ventured, speaking to the overwrought woman opposite as though she had made a completely understandable error.
“Of course you do!” Dora retorted, her eyes flashing in anger. “He was so excited when he met you - he adored your husband.”
“Logan?” Hana asked, feeling thick. Odd Logan never mentioned it.
“NO!” Dora was on her feet, yelling across the abandoned food. Hana felt afraid, leaning back in her chair to put distance between them and feeling trapped. “The other one! The Indian man. He coached him at tennis club. He told me. You practiced with him in the tennis courts. Renton said so!” Dora put her hands up to her ears and sank into the kitchen chair, the high pitched keening filling the kitchen. “Where is he? Where’s my Renton?” she wailed.