A Father At Last Read online

  He’d taken more precautions than he really needed to. But then, he’d never forgive himself if somehow Kelly came to any harm because of her association with him. He checked his rear vision mirror frequently as he headed north over the harbour bridge. The stakes had got a whole lot higher in the last week or so.

  The deals were bigger, so was the danger. For the moment, those scumbags in whose world he was forced to operate were quiet. But they were mad dogs and if things went wrong, they’d destroy anything or anyone who got in the way.

  He was taking a calculated risk seeing Kelly, but if he had to disappear quickly, he wanted some memories to take with him. And there was still something he needed to tell her.

  Kelly found the place easily and knew immediately why he’d chosen this spot. The private show garden was out in the country, just north of the city in an exclusive lifestyle block belt where plush, oversized houses stood in grand splendour, surrounded by five or ten acres of pasture, usually with a pony or two and maybe some sheep grazing in the paddocks.

  Here, there was almost zero chance of running into any of the crooks he dealt with—

  not like there would have been if they’d met at a bar or restaurant in the city.

  She paid an entry fee at the gate and drove down the long, liquidambar‐lined drive to a parking area beside a cute little café. The gardens and café were open to the public late on summer evenings, and there were half a dozen other cars in the car park, none of which seemed to contain Ben.

  Julie Mac

  She parked and walked over to the café to study the blackboard menu outside.

  Suddenly, he was beside her.

  She jumped. “Do you always just appear like that, from nowhere?”

  “Not always.” He kissed her on the cheek and then took her hand, his touch sparking a thousand delicious memories. “Come on, let’s go and look at the gardens. We can come back to the café later.”

  He started walking before she had a chance to kiss him back, or even agree—not that she objected to walking with him. It felt good to have a man take her hand so confidently, and what red‐blooded woman in her right mind would turn down the chance to stroll hand in hand through a beautiful garden on a lovely summer’s evening with a good-looking man?

  She was glad she’d left work early so she had time to shower and change before she came here. She wore her new blue silk top, teamed with a pair of summery white three-quarter pants and her pretty strappy sandals, and she’d spent a good ten minutes with the straightening iron on her humidity‐frizzed hair.

  A couple of young women passed them, heading in the opposite direction, and Kelly saw the looks of appreciation they shot Ben’s way.

  When they’d gone, she turned to him, smirking. “Still turning heads, I see.”

  He pretended not to have noticed. “Why would I look at other women when I’ve got you by my side?” he asked, gripping a little tighter on her hand and pulling her closer to steer her past a rough spot on the path. He wasn’t laughing and Kelly experienced a rush of pure pleasure. The memories were there, hot, strong and undiluted by the passage of time—his skin against hers, his mouth on hers, their bodies moving as one.

  She gave herself up to the sensations washing over her. This wasn’t real and couldn’t last, but for now it was nice—yes, nice, she thought, remembering the word she’d scribbled on her desk pad—to have at her side someone who was good‐looking and desirable.

  Someone who cared, someone admiring, someone protective. She thought of all those growing‐up years she’d gone through without a dad there when she needed him, or even a big brother or an uncle.

  But Ben had been there, right beside her, standing up for her when the other kids at school teased her in those early days of her father’s trouble. He’d got into a few fights on her behalf, too.

  She squeezed on his hand and sighed.

  “What are you thinking, Kelly?” He turned to look at her, frowning as he studied her face.

  “Nothing in particular.” She plastered on a smile, looked away from too‐knowing eyes and kept walking.

  “I believe you are thinking about something in particular. You’ve got that sad look A Father at Last

  you used to get when you had to think about your father.”

  She shot him an involuntary look. Was this man a mind reader? “Do I?”

  “Mm, you certainly do.”

  Annoyed, she tried to shift her hand from his, but he was holding tight. She’d been happy enough enjoying the tranquillity of the gardens, and okay, she had thought about her father, but Ben didn’t have to go spoiling the moment by mentioning him.

  The shell path they’d been following through a quiet woodland of lush ferns and taller trees turned a corner and opened out in front of a large pond, pretty with water lilies and tall, furry‐flower‐spiked raupo.

  He steered her towards a weathered wooden park bench, set back from the edge a little, under a big old oak tree.

  “Want to talk about it?”

  He sat down, and, because he still had hold of her hand and she didn’t have much choice without making a fuss, she sat on the bench beside him, but made sure there was a good gap between them.

  “Nope. There’s no need.”

  “I think there’s every need.” His eyes were holding hers, steady, golden, unrelenting.

  She shrugged.

  “What’s there to tell, anyway? You know what happened—all the gory details. What else do you want to know?”

  He said nothing, just kept watching her patiently, and she knew she sounded like a petulant, defiant child.

  She shook her head slowly. “I’m sorry, Ben, but I don’t see how dragging up the past ever helps anybody. He stopped being a father to me when I was ten.” She crossed one leg over the other and stared out at the pond. But instead of seeing water lilies with their pretty pink and white flowers, she saw a man’s face. He was smiling, his blue eyes merry, his fair curly hair tousled, his red beard neatly trimmed. She blinked, and when she looked again, all she saw were water lilies and a couple of ducks.

  “That part of my life is over and done with now. I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Try.”

  Kelly said nothing. Picturing Dad’s face like that, happy and relaxed, before all the trouble, was unnerving. She hadn’t thought of him in that way for years. She swallowed hard.

  “Tell me about now,” Ben prompted quietly. “Where is he? Do you know what he’s doing? Is he part of your life?”

  Julie Mac

  “Is he part of my life?” She snatched her hand from his and glared at him, anger bubbling up. “Are you crazy? I’ve got a little boy. Why would he want a criminal for a grandfather?”

  And why would he want a criminal for a father?

  She wanted to say it, out loud, but that would just make things a whole lot worse.

  “Ex‐criminal. He did his time, he paid his dues. Isn’t it time you forgave him?” Ben said it gently.

  “Forgave him?” She almost shrieked the words, and then she looked around guiltily to make sure there were no other garden visitors in earshot.

  “Don’t you remember what he did, Ben? You were there. Sure, you were only a kid like me, but you must remember how it was for me—for us, for Mum and me.” She was staring at him, aware her breathing had cranked up a notch.

  “You’re not a kid anymore, Kelly. You’re a lawyer. You’re dealing all the time with people who’ve done things wrong.” He was watching her, his eyes serious. “An important part of our justice system is to let people atone for their crimes by being punished. And when the punishment is over, they can start again as free men—or women. You must believe in that, otherwise how could you do the job you do when you’re in court?”

  “I do. I do believe in that—passionately. But not…not…”

  “Not for him? Not for your father?”

  She looked away again because she couldn’t bear the truth staring at her from those all‐seeing ey
es.

  “Your father did a stupid thing, sweetheart. He committed a crime, but the only reason he did that was because he had an addiction. That’s not an excuse, but it’s a reason.

  If he’s been able to overcome that addiction, served his punishment and stayed on the right side of the law since, surely he deserves some redemption?”

  She looked back at him and felt the old mixture of anger and despair threatening to shatter her equilibrium. She hadn’t felt like that for years. She thought she’d matured past such emotions, and he was making her feel like a helpless kid again.

  “You don’t understand. How could you understand? You had a normal family—a mum, a dad, all your sisters.”

  “Yeah, I did. I was lucky.” He had a funny look on his face that she couldn’t decipher, but then he continued, “You had a mum and a dad too, and even if you didn’t have any brothers and sisters, you always had friends. And those cousins that used to come up from the South Island. It wasn’t all bad.”

  “That’s just it! Don’t you see, Ben?” She clenched her hands into tight fists. “It was good, so good when I was little—until I was ten. I had it all. Mum was…well, she was what mums should be, loving and kind and always teaching me things. And Dad—he was the best dad. When he and Mum came up from the South Island after they got married, they bought A Father at Last

  that lifestyle block where we lived when I first knew you at intermediate school—

  remember?”

  “Yeah, I remember. Nice place.”

  “Yes, it was nice, not an ultra‐flash, six‐bedroom, six‐bathroom place like the ones around here, but then none of the lifestyle blocks were twenty or thirty years ago. We had a modest house and paddocks for animals and plenty of room for games when my friends came over. Dad used to make us huts in the trees, and take us kayaking down the creek.”

  The words were in a rush to get out, now.

  “He taught me to grow veggies, and helped me rear calves and lambs for ag day at primary school, and even though he didn’t like horses, he got me a pony and used to walk beside me down to pony club every week. It was the good life with capital letters.”

  “I remember that old pony. Big feet and a sway back, but friendly.” Ben exhaled a long breath. “And then it all turned to custard?”

  “Oh yeah. Big time.” Kelly unclenched her hands and flexed her fingers. “But you know all of this, Ben. I don’t talk about this with other people—ever—but you…you knew all this stuff before.”

  “There are bits I’ve forgotten. And before, you only used to tell me the bad bits—you never talked about the good bits.”

  Kelly closed her eyes briefly and nodded.

  “Do you want to keep talking?”

  She sent him a tiny smile. In a funny way, saying all this out loud now to Ben was almost a relief. She gave the briefest nod.

  “I was so proud of my Dad—I loved him, Ben. The saddest thing was, when everything went wrong, it was made worse because Dad had quite a high profile in the district. People sort of looked up to him because he was the leader of the volunteer firemen, and served on the community board and the district council. And his trucking business was really successful—”

  “And everyone loves to cut down a tall poppy,” interjected Ben.

  “Exactly. But he deserved their disdain.” She looked away, across the pond to the undulating lawn beyond and the low‐slung house, surrounded by verandas. It was a peaceful scene. “When I was young, Mum and Dad often talked about having a property like this, with sweeping lawns and a big house. It was their dream.”

  She drew a deep breath and turned back to Ben. “You know I said the trucking business was really successful?”

  He nodded.

  “Well, that was the beginning of the problems, but I didn’t know that at the time. I was too young to understand. All I knew then was that he’d been selling drugs and that’s Julie Mac

  why he was arrested, but Mum explained it to me in more detail when I was older. There was a fairly major downturn in the economy and Dad couldn’t afford to keep on all the drivers he’d employed to fulfil his contracts. So he started doing more and more driving.”

  She felt the same old scared feeling starting deep in her gut, the feeling she’d come to know so well as a child.

  “And then he had his council meetings and that year there was a long hot summer, so there were a lot of fire call‐outs. He was struggling to stay awake on the long hauls with his trucks. That’s when he started to take illegal stuff to keep himself going.”

  Kelly stopped and stared again at the pond. If only he’d sold the business. They could have quit the lifestyle block too and rented maybe, and then they’d have had enough money to repay the bank loans. Her mother had said that a hundred times.

  “He should have sold everything up, but he was too proud to admit defeat and so he continued working longer and longer hours to make ends meet and of course, he became addicted to the drugs he was taking to stay awake. He needed more and more, and struggled to pay for them, and his dealer came up with an easy solution—he could sell the drugs to other people and earn cash to pay for his own.”

  She felt suddenly foolish. Why was she explaining the process of using and dealing to Ben? She’d thought about him a lot in the last few days, and had come to the conclusion that he was very possibly a dealer himself. It all fitted—he could assimilate easily enough with the gang members she’d seen him with at court, but he could just as easily change his appearance to look perfectly respectable. That he was mixing with A‐listers and the upwardly mobile and supplying their methamphetamine or whatever other illegal recreational stimulants they wanted was quite within the realms of possibilities.

  “So he became an addict, then he became a drug supplier,” Ben prompted.

  Kelly looked at him and experienced an awful, sickening sense of déjà vu. Ben was young, healthy and smart, and obviously on the road to destruction, of his as well as other people’s lives.

  She was reminded of the vow she’d made to herself when she’d agreed to meet Ben tonight: she was here to help him. Not to talk about her past. She breathed deeply again and straightened her spine.

  “He was selling big amounts, often to other truckies, who were also in trouble. One day the police came to our house, and three lives were shattered in an instant. And goodness knows how many others were wrecked by the drugs he sold.”

  She took one of his hands in both of hers. “And I don’t want to see your life shattered, Ben. If you’re into the drug scene—or into any other criminal scene, and I think you are—I want you to stop it, now. You’re not just hurting yourself, you’re hurting other people. I’ll help you. I’ll do whatever I can.”

  She spoke low and urgently, watching his eyes. What she saw puzzled her.

  She’d expected to see shame, maybe anger. But she saw a flash of pure disgust and he was pulling his hand from hers and looking away from her. His shoulders rose as he took A Father at Last

  a deep breath, then he turned back to her, closed his eyes as if searching for patience, and opened them again.

  “We’re not here to talk about me. If you really want to do that we can do it some other time, okay? Right now, I want to talk about you, your father and Dylan.”

  “Dylan’s got nothing whatever to do with this discussion!” Dylan was an innocent, a young child. Hearing his name spoken in the same sentence as her father’s was all wrong. It was sending her emotions crazy, making her want to cry—or run. She jumped up and started walking along the path that would take her around the pond towards the lawn.

  Beside her in a flash, Ben grabbed her hand, but didn’t stop her. They kept walking in silence, the only sounds a tui singing melodically in the thick native bush at the bottom of the lawn and the crunch of their shoes on the shell path. They left the pond behind and followed the path across the neatly mown grass and under the edge of the bush beside a small creek.

  The path wound its way past the
smooth, tall trunks of kauri and kahikatea trees. It was cool and dark under the trees, and the tui’s song was louder. Normally, hearing one of these cheeky, friendly birds made her feel light‐hearted. But tonight, the haunting call of the lone bird sounded decidedly sad.

  “What do you tell Dylan about his grandad?” Ben’s voice was low.

  She whirled to face him. “What do you think I tell him? He believes his grandfather is dead. It’s better to let him go on thinking that.”

  Ben swore under his breath. “You can’t bring up a child on lies, Kelly! I suppose you’ll tell the poor little fellow that his own daddy’s dead too, in due course, will you?”

  Immediately he held up his hand. “No, don’t answer that!”

  She looked past him, through the edge of the bush, across the lawn and up past the house. The car park can’t be too far away. Or she could double back the way she came. For a few minutes, this evening out with Ben had seemed fun, pleasant and easy. But it had turned into a nightmare. Leaving now seemed a good option.

  “You’re not thinking of doing a runner on me, are you?”

  He was a mind reader. She fiddled with her hair, which she’d left long and loose tonight. “Of course not.” She started walking again and he fell into step beside her.

  “So—back to your father: when did you last see him?”

  She’d give him ten out of ten for persistence, but at least his tone was kind again.

  And anyway, uncomfortable though it was, she was on safer ground keeping the conversation on her own father rather than on Dylan’s.

  “I saw him at Mum’s funeral when I was eighteen. That was the last time.”

  “Nine years ago? Nothing since?”

  Kelly shrugged. “Why should there be? He was like a stranger to me at the funeral. It Julie Mac

  was private—mainly just Mum’s family and a few close friends. A prison guard came with Dad and they sat in the front seat on their own on one side of the chapel and I sat on the other side with Mum’s brothers and sisters. He tried to talk to me, but I turned away.”