Page 82 of Just Watch Me
The relief when he turned up the walk to the big white house, looming up out of the dark. When the door opened and a man said, “You’re here, then. Good,” as if they’d poppedover for a cup of tea, exactly as expected. That had to be Zane’s dad.
Then there were people crowding around. Candles held up, and faces behind them. Laughter, possibly some tears, and cuddles. A striking middle-aged woman, her face looking carved in the flickering yellow light. The man, his face broad and tough. Jade, full of relief. Maureen, giving Georgia yet another cuddle.
And Granddad. Granddad, with tears in his eyes, saying, “Thank God. Thank God.”
Scarlett, then, cutting through all of that. The questions. The excitement. The relief. “Is there anything to eat? The kids are all really hungry. And I think most of them need the loo.”
Which was all good. So why couldn’t she sleep?
She knew why.
Zane shifted position on the couch again. It wasn’t that it was so uncomfortable—it was a pretty nice couch—but that there was too much running through his head. Too many “what-ifs.” Too much delayed reaction after the very earth hadshifted beneath your feet like it wasn’t meant to do, and you’d known you could lose everything that mattered most.
Everybodythat mattered most.
It had taken a while to get it all sorted tonight. Food—bread and jam, satsumas and apples and pears, sliced ham and cheese, glasses of milk, eaten by candlelight as the kids all tried to tell the story at once.
All except Forrest, who’d been silent.
At last, Skylar had said, “Can you tell me your address again, Forrest? Maybe somebody can go out to the car and use the GPS to see where it is.”
“I’ll do that,” Zane’s dad volunteered, and did, then came back in and said, “Less than ten kilometers from here. Good as gold. We’ll take you there in the morning, mate, when it’s light enough to see how to get around any blocked streets. We’ll have you back with your mum and dad in two shakes of a lamb’s tail, no worries.” Which could have sounded too hearty, but didn’t, because Dad’s voice was the same as always: slow, calm, and deliberate.
“Oh,” Forrest said. “OK.” And swallowed.
“You’re wondering where your sister is,” Skylar said. Zane wouldn’t have mentioned it, personally; wouldn’t that just get the kid more worried? But Skylar was the child expert, not him. She’d kept seven kids calm and together through all of that. He wouldn’t be questioning her anytime soon. “We’ll find out tomorrow,” she told the kid. “It’s worrisome not knowing, and being in a strange place, too, but it’s normal for people to get separated in a disaster like this and to take a while to find each other again. For tonight, you’re going to stay with us and sleep in a nice clean bed.”
“You can sleep in the top bunk with me,” George said. “Georgia’s on the bottom bunk, but the top bunk is funner, and it’ll be cozier with two.”
“I don’t have my toothbrush, though,” Forrest said. “Or my PJs.”
“You can borrow mine,” George said. “Both things. You can have the first bath, too. Mum says you always feel better after a bath.” George was a good wee man. Had his mum’s kindness, maybe, and her surprising toughness, too, because he’d walked uphill all that way in the dark without faltering or complaint.
“Yes,” Georgia said. “Baths feel very nice when you’re cold and tired. I’m glad I don’t have to be in my bedroom alone. It’s good to have one more person, and it’s even more good to have two more people, so it’s more friendly and not scary.”
“Yeh,” Forrest said, his voice still a little timid, but stronger. “I was a bit scared in the earthquake. Because I didn’t know where Fiona was, and I didn’t know where to go. But then your mum told me to come with you. I was still a bit scared then, but not as much.”
“She’s George’s mum,” Georgia said, “but not my mum. She’s only some of our mum.”
“Oh,” Forrest said. “I thought you were all in one family.”
“No,” Olive said. “We probably just seemed like that because it was an emergency. People get closer together in emergencies. That’s in heaps of books.”
“It’s probably a good thing you were with the All Blacks, Dad,” Duncan said. “You always say that’s kind of like a family too. You guys probably weren’t scared at all, though.”
“Nah, mate,” Zane said, “we were scared. Scared for our families, and scared for the people around us, too.”
“Everybody’s scared during a quake,” his mum said. “Course they are. Only natural. Who expects to feel the ground shaking under their feet? Let alone a wall of water coming at them. Where were you when it happened, Zane?”
This was telling stories, he guessed. Processing, or something like that. Making sense of it. Probably good for the kids, so he said, keeping it calm, “On the coast road, on the bus. Nothing too bad for us, because that bus is big, eh. But some cars turned over and so forth, and we knew we needed to get up the hill straight away, of course, and take the other people around along with us. It was a bit of a puff, climbing that hill, but not as much as a test match. All good.”
“How come you were with the All Blacks?” Forrest asked. “Do youknowthe All Blacks?”
“Heisan All Black, silly,” Scarlett said.
“Oh,” Forrest said. “I never met an All Black before.”
That was a good topic of conversation, Zane guessed. Normal. Not scary. But still, there was that processing, right?He said, “Yeh, scary knowing there could be a tsunami coming, and seeing it. Did you lot see it coming, up there in Te Papa?” He only hoped they hadn’t seen anybody washed away. That they’d been facing the other way or something. “If I’d known you were up there, I wouldn’t have been as scared.”
