Finley Embraces Heart and Home (Love Austen 4)

A few seconds later, the hallway door widens.

Tom looms before me, thumbs casually hooked into his suit pants. “Caught all that, did you?”

“You’re getting married?”

“End of March. Start calling me Dad whenever you want.”

It might be a joke, but I want to punch the smile off his face.

He grimaces.

I fold my arms, a shield. A message: I’ll never more than tolerate him. “When’re we moving?” I mumble.

“Soon as school’s out.”

“But that’s next week!”

The slam of my bedroom door rattles the bones of the house. I sink to the floor against it and the roll of paper pops free from my pocket. I sniff.

Mum’s footsteps pad urgently down the hall. I’d know the sound anywhere. “Fin?” She knocks softly. “Oh, honey.”

The pages are bright through my blurring eyes.

Oh, how quickly things changed! Why didn’t happiness last forever? Forever wasn’t a bit too long.

K. Mansfield, “Her First Ball”

Red brick and shingles and intricate white latticework.

Someone is up on the turret, looking down on us. I can’t stare back long against the glare of the sun. Male, sports cap.

Mum loads a duffel bag into my arms.

She takes the last two suitcases of our clothes—in mine, the picture of Dad—from her fender-bent hatchback. This is all we’ve got.

Mansfield has everything else we need, she said.

The car, Mum and I—our whole lives—are dwarfed by the historic mansion that looms before us.

It should be raining. There should be thunder and lightning cracking the sky the way my heart is cracking.

“I want to go home.”

“I know it’ll take time to adjust,” she coos in my ear. “But I promise, it’ll all turn out in the end. You’ll see.”

My throat is sore. “Couldn’t you have waited?” I know my whine is unreasonable, but I want her to feel my pain. Want her to feel guilty. “It’s only three more years until I leave school.”

Tom emerges from the massive entrance in a short-sleeved shirt and crisply pressed shorts. All that’s missing is a golf bag and a flash of his overly-whitened teeth.

Mum melts into a smile at the sight of him, then settles her warm eyes on me. She speaks a proverb; I know it, but I’ve never understood it before. I don’t really now, either. “Ka mate te kainga tahi, ka ora te kainga rua.”

When one house dies, a second lives.

But our home wasn’t dead. And leaving the refuge he made for us feels like leaving his memory behind. It feels worse.

Tears leak out the corners of my eyes. I want to sing and cry like we did at his tangi.

Mum pulls the duffel from my arms and hoists me into her embrace. She clutches me tightly, her bright dress wrinkling between us. “He is our past, he is always a part of us.”

Now we must concentrate on the present and build a future.

She lets me go and opens her arms for Tom.

I kick at the sun-gleaming grass. A black cat scampers from behind a tree and hisses as it avoids my arcing foot.

“Oi,” Tom scolds. “Careful of Mrs Norris.”

“I didn’t . . .” It was an accident! I’d never hurt a cat.

“Why don’t you take your bag inside and look around? Help yourself to a scone, there’s some on the dining table.”

I don’t want to listen to him. I fold my arms.

He starts kissing my mum.

I grab my suitcase and stalk across the manicured lawn to the stupid, pretty house. I hope I leave mud over the pristine polished marble floor.

My belongings, I drop in the middle of the entranceway. Where it’s most annoying. Only the duffel and suitcase are so small in the wide space they look ridiculous.

The dining room is as big as our old home. Sun streams in through the gridded windows and across the table set with modern plates and cups with saucers and matching navy teapots and two silver platters of scones. Some clotted cream.

I sit down on a leather-upholstered chair. I like scones. But now I don’t ever want to touch one again.

Tears track down my cheeks, hot and heavy. I swipe at them with the back of my hand, sniffing.

Footsteps.

I shoot my head up, expecting to see Mum and Tom, but it’s neither. A guy strides into the room wearing a blue cap. He’s about my age, a little older, maybe. Broad shouldered like me and toned. But I don’t know where he gets his from, living in a mansion. Okay, Mansfield is on the outskirts of Port Ratapu, and the property looked big. But it’s no farm. I can’t imagine anyone living here doing any heavy lifting.

“I guess you’re Finley?” he says.

“I guess you’re Ethan,” I say back.

He would sit very still on the doorstep

And dream—O, that he had a friend!

K. Mansfield, “Fairy Tale”

I won’t like him. I won’t like anything here at Mansfield. For all I care, he and this place can suck my dick.