A Father At Last Read online

  He swore again. Then, “You don’t think that was a bit cruel?”

  Talking about the funeral was making her feel decidedly tearful, and more than a little angry. Why couldn’t Ben just give up on this?

  “It might have been cruel, but he deserved it. Mum might have been alive if it hadn’t been for him.”

  “How do you figure that?”

  “She had a brush with cancer when I was a pre‐schooler. They caught it in time, but it meant she couldn’t have any more children.”

  “So that’s why it was just you?”

  “Just me, but at least Mum was alive and the cancer was gone. Then all the bad stuff with Dad blew up and her life was very hard. The cancer came back, but I think that if she hadn’t had a broken heart, if she’d had plenty of fight left, she could have overcome it.”

  “Did she visit him in prison?”

  “Every week without fail, until she got too sick to go in. She loved him, you see, and although she was very angry about what he’d done, she stood by him. ‘For better, for worse,’ she always used to say to me.”

  Kelly felt a tear running down her cheek.

  “She loved him and he obviously loved her,” said Ben softly. “If it wasn’t like that, she wouldn’t have kept visiting for all those years. And he wouldn’t have gone to her funeral. And a shared love is more than some couples have in a lifetime. Be thankful, Kelly, that among all the bad stuff, your parents had a love like that.”

  She didn’t remember stopping, but now they were standing on the track, facing each other. He reached out and wiped the tears from her cheeks with his fingertips, and the temptation to sink into the comfort of his strong arms was almost overwhelming. But she’d made a promise to herself.

  Instead she said, “I know. I know they were lucky to have that love, and sometimes I think that if she’d hung on until he got out of prison, she would have been okay. They’d have been together again, and she was living for that day. And they would’ve been together, he would’ve got out sooner if it wasn’t for…”

  She sighed deeply.

  “If it wasn’t for what?” He reached out and gently tilted her chin up so she had to look at him.

  “He should have been paroled a couple of years prior to Mum dying, but he lost all A Father at Last

  chance of getting out early when he thumped a prison guard who’d been persistently bullying the weaker inmates.”

  Ben was silent and the bush suddenly seemed rowdy with birds of all sorts.

  “So the guy wasn’t all bad?”

  Kelly shook her head, and looked away. The sun was slanting low through the bush just here, lighting up the ferns and young nikau palms with greens and golds.

  “He wasn’t all bad, but it was too late for me, Ben.” She looked back and his eyes, steady and somehow comforting, caught hers and held them. “After Mum died, I was his next of kin. I never went to visit, and I had an unlisted phone number so he couldn’t phone me. He got his lawyer to write to me, enclosing letters from him. The lawyer offered to come with me if I’d like to go and see Dad, but I instructed the lawyer to tell him I wanted nothing more to do with him. Ever. I told him I had my own life to live. I’ve never heard anything from him since.”

  “So in your mind, he may as well be dead.”

  “Yes. And that’s what I tell people if they get too nosy. Both my parents are dead. It’s easier that way.”

  She pressed her face into her hands, trying desperately to stem the tears that threatened to flow freely now. And then Ben’s arms were around her, pulling her in close to him, and it felt so right. She let her body meld against the strength of his, wrapped her arms around his waist and tucked her head into the curve of his shoulder.

  He lifted one of his hands to run it down the length of her hair.

  “You wore your hair like this on the night we made love,” he murmured.

  Julie Mac

  Chapter 5

  It was one of the first things he saw when he walked into that party six years, nine months and a few days ago—that sleek fall of shiny gold‐red hair.

  The scene was imprinted on his brain, as clearly as if it was yesterday: a crowded, noisy party in an upstairs bar at the Viaduct Basin on Auckland’s downtown waterfront—

  someone’s twenty‐first birthday celebrations.

  He’d arrived late, around midnight, when the speeches were over, the guest of honour’s aunts and uncles had all gone home, the music was cranked up and the dance floor jumping.

  It was a happy, relaxed crowd; because the party boy’s parents had booked out the venue for a private function, most of the people there knew each other. Several of the young men came over and clapped him on the back, with a friendly ‘Hey, man, how’s it going?’

  Some he recognised, some he didn’t—but they knew him and he understood why.

  He’d gained some sort of perverse hero status for his computer hacking activities, not just among his contemporaries at his own school, but at neighbouring high schools too. It was misplaced admiration, he reflected, as yet another young guy offered to buy him a beer.

  “Hi, Ben, good to see you.” A pretty blonde girl smiled up at him, her body pressed in close to his. “You wanna dance with me?”

  “Later,” he murmured, returning her smile as he sidestepped her on the way to the bar. She was one of a steady stream of girls who recognised him, coming up to throw their arms around him and plaster kisses on his cheeks. Most were more than a little tipsy and a couple managed to score direct hits on his lips.

  But Ben was stone‐cold sober and he extricated himself from their clutches politely but firmly.

  There was only one girl he was interested in seeing at this party.

  Then he spotted that head of hair at the bar. Its owner was sitting on a stool with her back to him, but something about the straightness of her back, the set of her bare shoulders, told him it was her. For a moment he was confused. The colour was right, but Kelly’s hair was curly and kind of tangly. This hair was straight and smooth as polished kauri gum. Briefly, she turned to say something to the man beside her and he saw her profile.

  It was her!

  A Father at Last

  He headed for the opposite end of the bar, bought a beer and went to talk to a group of former classmates standing a few metres away. He positioned himself so he could observe her, and tried to work out if the guy at her side was a date or a sleazy opportunist trying to hit on her.

  “Who’s that greasy looking dude with Kelly?” He’d moved around the group to stand beside former classmate and openly gay Leighton, who’d always seemed to know a heck of a lot more about females and relationships than any of the other guys did.

  Leighton sent him a smirk. “Jealous, are we, Benjamin?”

  “No way.” Ben knew he was lying, and by the look on Leighton’s face, so did he.

  “Yeah, right, matey.” His schooldays buddy grinned widely now. “Everyone knows you and Kelly had a thing for each other all through high school.”

  “We were friends. That’s all.” Ben took a swig of beer and tried to quell a surge of pure jealousy as he observed the man leaning in close to whisper something in her ear. Or kiss her on the neck. He didn’t know whether to look away and walk out or march on over there and make his presence known.

  “Friends, maybe, in third form and fourth form,” said Leighton, “but by the time you two hit fifth, sixth and seventh form, it was luurve, baby. Everyone knew that.”

  Ben was shocked. It was true—his feelings for Kelly had grown way beyond simple friendship, and the older he’d got, the more intense those emotions became.

  But he never thought she felt the same way, and he’d done his best to hide his deep attraction to her. Had everyone else really known? Had she known? He couldn’t think of anything to say to Leighton’s revelation.

  Leighton was watching Kelly. “Don’t worry, mate, you’re in with a chance. She’s not interested in him. Read the body language—see how
she’s leaning away from him?

  Anyway—” he looked back at Ben, “did you two keep in touch after—you know…?”

  “After I got in trouble? Yes and no. She came with me to court, then I went down to Wellington and she moved to Dunedin to do her law degree so we were in different cities.

  She wrote to me a few times.”

  He lifted his bottle to his mouth and took a long swallow. “Then we mostly lost touch.” He shrugged. “We’ve been getting on with life, I guess. I was in Sydney for the last couple of years. We exchanged texts every now and then, like Christmas and birthdays, and I’ve seen her once or twice since I’ve been back.”

  Twice to be exact. The first time on a Sunday in a busy shopping mall when he’d seen her looking in a shoe shop window. He’d watched her for a few seconds before moving on, glad she hadn’t seen him, because he was on a job and about to meet a contact.

  The second time, on a Friday night outside a bar in Takapuna, she and a group of girlfriends were out on the town. He’d been going into the bar when he spotted the girls getting into a maxi cab to be whisked away to their next destination. She’d said ‘Hello’, Julie Mac

  given him a hug and looked pleased to see him, and then she left. He’d been left feeling oddly bereft, with just her lingering fragrance to tell him the fleeting encounter was real.

  And then tonight, here she was again. Real, beautiful, and just five paces away.

  He listened to Leighton talking about his job as a graphic designer for a company that built websites.

  He heard Leighton’s words and nodded, and all the time, he was watching her; watching the way her burnished hair swept against her shoulders, watching the way the revolving lights above the dance floor sent kaleidoscopic waves of colour through that hair and the shimmery, silvery dress she wore, watching the endearing way the muscles in her upper arm flexed slightly every time she picked up her glass from the bar top. He also saw her surreptitiously glance at her watch, twice in as many minutes.

  “You’re not listening, are you?” Leighton gave a theatrical sigh.

  “Not really, mate. Sorry.” Ben sent a rueful grin his way. “You reckon she doesn’t want that guy hanging around?”

  “Uh‐uh. Go do your stuff, tiger. And remember, don’t act too keen.”

  So he walked up to the bar, edging into a gap on the left side of her stool. Her companion was on her other side, and both turned to look up at Ben. Kelly’s eyes lit up but her admirer, thickset, shaven‐headed and thirty‐ish, looked far from pleased.

  Good. He didn’t recognise the man—he certainly wasn’t one of their contemporaries; most likely he was a relative of the birthday boy or a workmate.

  She jumped off the stool to hug Ben and kiss his cheek. Deliberately, he kissed her briefly, intimately, on the lips, and as he did, he glanced at the man behind her. Scowling, the man turned away from them and called out to the barman for another drink.

  “Dance with me, Kelly,” Ben whispered in her ear, and without waiting for her answer, he took her hand and walked towards the dance floor. She turned her head to call over her shoulder to the man, “Excuse me, I’m going to dance,” and then she was in his arms, moving with him and talking close to his ear so he could hear above the music.

  “Thank God you came along. I didn’t even know his name, but he was really persistent, even though I kept dropping hints that I wanted to go and talk to my friends.”

  “Is that the only reason you’re dancing with me?” He pulled her in tighter. The perfume she wore was subtle but intoxicating.

  “No.” She smiled up at him. “I thought you were never going to ask me.”

  He danced with her to a slow tune and when he held her close, he knew he hadn’t imagined the longing she’d provoked in him over all these years. He resolved to tell her how he felt. Tonight.

  They’d dance some more, then he’d call a taxi, and deliver her home, but first he’d see if she wanted to stroll along the waterfront with him, and they could talk.

  A Father at Last

  When the music finished, he deposited her with a group of mutual friends, while he went to the find the sober‐driver mate he’d arranged to get a lift home with, to tell him there’d been a change of plan. He did a quick reconnaissance of the main rooms of the venue, but couldn’t find his friend, so he headed downstairs and outside where some of the guests relaxed in the cool air in the wide boulevard area. He quickly spotted his mate, delivered his message and was heading back when he noticed an altercation between the bar’s security guard and two young men.

  Obviously gate crashers, they wouldn’t be getting in. Sure enough, they soon gave up, sauntering away as Ben approached the bar entrance. He recognised them as the losers who’d spent a large part of their high school years peddling marijuana and party pills to the other students. Experience told him they’d have moved on to much harder stuff now.

  They recognised him too, and keen to talk, they moved away from the brightness of the streetlights. Ben followed. This could be interesting.

  Five minutes later, back upstairs, he put his arm around Kelly. Her body was warm and her eyes trusting.

  And now, nearly seven years later, he held her again, her body still warm but the trust gone from her eyes. And who could blame her?

  Kelly listened to the tui singing in the cool green bush, and let Ben’s strength flow through her. She started counting in her head. For thirty more seconds she’d give herself up to the safe haven his arms—his body—represented, and then she’d pull herself together. God, how had this simple visit to these lovely gardens turned so quickly into a total emotional roller coaster? He’d dragged her down to the black depths with all his talk about her father.

  She didn’t want to go there again, ever.

  Then, in a heartbeat, he’d whisked her up to the golden light of that night they’d spent together.

  ‘You wore your hair like this on the night we made love.’

  He remembered that tiny detail! That day in the lift—less than two weeks ago, but it seemed like a lifetime—he said he remembered a lot. Well, she remembered, too.

  That was the night she’d crossed the line from girl to woman, the night she’d learnt the true meaning of the words ‘making love’. She was glad he remembered it that way, too.

  He could have said ‘the night we slept together’ or ‘the night we had sex.’ But he hadn’t; he’d said ‘the night we made love.’

  That night, the night they’d made love, they’d walked along the waterfront, holding hands, laughing and talking, and then Ben had taken her in his arms and kissed her.

  Somehow, they’d ended up at his little studio apartment in a new block not far from the waterfront.

  Julie Mac

  When he asked if she’d like to stay, she answered by unbuttoning his shirt and plying little kisses from his neck to the waistband of his trousers, and when he could stand it no longer he took her hand and led her to his bed.

  Nothing could mar the beauty of the night.

  In the morning, she’d woken, happier than she’d been for years. She heard the shower going, and planned to surprise him by joining him in there. But first, she gathered up their discarded clothes from the floor.

  That’s when reality crashed home. She picked up his jeans, and a small plastic snap-lock bag holding about half a teaspoon of sugar‐like white crystals fell from the pocket.

  She stared at the bag, sickened to the core. Quickly, she stuffed it back into the pocket, dressed and left his apartment.

  Now, as she stood encircled by his arms in the quiet stillness at the edge of the bush, the memory of that evil little plastic bag of crystals was a timely reminder. Ben was a law-breaker. She could never inhabit his world, just as much as he could never inhabit hers and Dylan’s.

  She eased back from his embrace—although to do so felt a bit like ripping out a piece of her heart.

  She raised her eyes to his. “We need to move on, Ben.”

 
“We do,” he agreed, dropping his arms from around her. “But first…” He was studying her eyes and frowning a little. “That…stuff you’ve got round your eyes is smudged.”

  She couldn’t help smiling; men never seemed to get to grips with the intricacies of eyeliner and mascara. She fished around in her shoulder bag for a little mirror, licked a finger to remove the worst of the smudges, completed the tidy up with a tissue and added a fresh coat of mascara.

  “Better?” she asked, looking up at him and sending her eyelids into a deliberate flutter.

  “Much.” He grinned and took her hand.

  Her tension had eased. They made small talk as they followed the path through the bush along the creek, until they came to a natural rocky waterfall where the creek dropped in level by about a metre. They stood on the viewing platform and admired a lazy eel swimming just under the surface of the water in the pool below the waterfall.

  Then they headed back up towards the homestead, through a small grove of olives and past stands of big old trees in the park‐like grounds.

  The path skirted the side of the house on the way to the café, far enough away to ensure the occupants’ privacy, but close enough for Kelly to see the place had a relaxed, homely look to it. She especially loved the all‐around verandas, draped in purple wisteria.

  “Nice, isn’t it?” she commented. “You could imagine a family with lots of kids in a A Father at Last

  house like this.”

  “I read somewhere that the same family have owned it for thirty years or so,” said Ben. “They brought up their children here, but now the kids have grown and left, the owners have converted it to a bed and breakfast.”

  “Makes sense.” She thought again of her parents and their dream, back in the good days.

  “If things had been different, if Mum was still alive, if Dad hadn’t got himself into trouble, they could have had a place like this, with lawns and space and an income when they got a bit older.”

  She turned to face him. “Even after he’d been in prison, if Mum had still been alive…or even after she died, he could have…” She stopped, and wondered where on earth that thought had come from. After that last time she’d seen him, at her mother’s funeral, she hadn’t cared or even thought about what her father might do next.