Page 98 of Fractured (Not Quite a Billionaire)
“No,” I said. “You shouldn’t. I want you to stay. And never mind. I’ll bring her back, even if I have to go to New Zealand after her. She won’t be alone. And neither will you,” I thought to add. “If I have to leave you here, I’ll get Debra or Inez to come stay. Don’t worry, sweetheart. I’ll take care of it.”
I rang off, then, and tried Hope’s number. Three rings. Four. And voicemail.
The frustration rose, and the anger came with it. “Call me,” I said. “You were going to leave without even telling me? You’re not doing that. We’re talking about this. We’re dealing with it.”
Except we weren’t, because I was saying all that into a box. I rang off once again, but I was out of the apartment, locking the door, and taking the stairs two at a time as my fingers pushed another button.
This time, there was no wait. Two rings, and I heard the slow old voice saying, “Hemi. I wondered how long it would take.”
I reached the bottom of the stairs, pushed my way out of the door, and realized I’d left Charles circling the block.Bloody hell.“Why did you tell Hope to leave me?” I asked, not bothering to hide my anger with him, even though expressing it went against everything I’d ever been taught. But then, I was apparently wrong all over the shop, so what was one more? “Did she tell you she’s ill? Did she mention that? Why would you encourage her?”
“She’s not ill,” he said. “She’s pregnant.”
The breath left my lungs. I stood there, frozen in place on the sticky, dirty Brooklyn sidewalk in the still heat of a summer night. “She told you that?” I finally managed to say.
“Yeh, she did. She needed someplace to go, didn’t she. Nearly two months along, and not feeling too flash. I told her to come to me so I can look after her. I told her to bring Karen as well.”
“That’s meant to be me.” I’d found my voice somehow. “It’s my job to look after her. That’s my baby.” Twomonths?She’d fallen pregnant all the way back in New Zealand, had been pregnant ever since, and hadn’t told me? Why not?
The heavy sigh was a reproach. “I know, my son.”
I would have pursued it, but now wasn’t the time. Now, something else mattered more. “She didn’t bring Karen. Karen wouldn’t come. But which airline did she fly? Do you know?”
A long pause, then, “Air New Zealand. Arriving in about twenty-four hours, and no worries, I’ll be there to meet her.”
Right.“Hang on a tick,” I said, then navigated to my texts and typed in a quick note to Charles.
Come back.
“I’m here,” I told Koro. “I’m on my way to get her.”
“I reckon you’d better think first,” he said, “about what to say to her.”
“I know what I’m going to say to her. I’m going to tell her she’s coming home where she belongs.” There was Charles, pulling up to the curb, and I jumped into the car and told him, “La Guardia. Fast,” and he pulled away.
There was a long pause on the other end of the phone, and I was wondering if I’d lost the connection when Koro said, “What is she to you? Something you own?”
“What? No. Of course not.”
“Something to prove what your own mum didn’t, then. That you can treat a woman any way you like, and she’ll stay.”
“No,” I said again, more impatiently this time. “I’m not treating her any way I like. I’m treating her well. I’m treating her right. I’d give her anything, and she knows it.”
“Won’t give her the choice, though, will you. Won’t give her her freedom.”
Itwastrue. Iwaswrong everywhere, copping it from everybody, when all I wanted to do was love Hope and take care of her. “What did she tellme,then?” I demanded. “That she wanted somebody to be there always, to hold her forever. I want to be that somebody. Now she doesn’t want it after all? Now I’ve done it wrong? That’s rubbish.”
“Is it, eh. How would it feel for you, then? If she told you, ‘I want you, but only if you live where I say, take the kind of job I say, talk to the people I say?’”
“I’m not saying that.”
Another sigh, and the thought that I’d disappointed him, that he didn’t understand…it sliced to the bone. It was all boiling over inside me, and I couldn’t be on this phone anymore. I had to go find Hope. GogetHope.
He was talking again now, and I waited for him to finish so I could go do it. “If you love her,” he said, “if you want her—let her go. If you can believe I’ve learned anything in all these years, that I’m not just hanging about here because I’m too stubborn to die, then believe this. Let her go. That’s the only way you’re going to keep her. Give her the chance to think it through, and yourself the chance to understand what she’s trying so hard to tell you. Give her her freedom, same as she’s giving you. Such a thing as holding too tight, my son. Such a thing as squeezing a woman too hard.”
Hope
When the phone rang, I didn’t answer.
