Nico had stayed with Adam since he’d arrived home. He was a large and gentle old dog, undemanding, content to keep Adam in constant view in much the same way Fala had followed him in the days he stayed at the Dog Sanctuary.

Adam had worked through the cottage, ticking off maintenance tasks as he completed them. The biggest job after the diesel generator had been the water pump, and he’d been without running water for two days as he stripped the pump, ordered new parts from town, and put it back together again.

Never before had he been so busy going nowhere.

He bathed in the surf and rinsed off under the waterfall. At the start of spring, the sea and the waterfall were cold, really cold. His body ached at the memory of the chilly shock that hammered his chest when he plunged into the sea. As if to reinforce the pain, he stayed under the waterfall where the water was colder still.

He started bush running and long ocean swims again, but this time his hurt was different. He needed to build up the strength and fortitude to leave Marlo be. He wanted to be back with her with an intensity that made him weak.

During the times when he was unoccupied, he closed his eyes and willed with all his might for her to phone, to need him too. Whenever he returned to the cottage, he fought the urge to pick up his phone and check for missed calls in the hope that she’d tried to make contact when he’d been out.

Evenings were spent on the small porch looking down the narrow winding track that drew his gaze to the sea.

The old rocker he sat in had been there when he bought the place. Two smoothed grooves tracked the kauri porch floorboards where the chair had been pitched in gentle contemplation for decades. The flooring directly in front was rubbed smooth—in the past by work boots and dress shoes and now by the synthetic soles of his old trainers. Adam wondered how many momentous decisions had been settled in this spot.

He stayed there until it got dark or cold before returning inside the cottage.

Decisions. Every person he met watched him with eyes like an expectant puppy. In them he saw a relentless silent request for a decision, as if his return to this untethered state of limbo held them back. And his indecision had him trapped like an unlaced boot in thick mud.

After a couple of weeks, he wrote his formal resignation letter to the police. Four different versions of varying length. The final draft said that he simply didn’t have the heart to do the job any longer.

He knew he didn’t want to return to the force, but he wasn’t convinced he wanted to stay on at the farm either. He could take over much of the farm’s administrative work, and he was helping out with that, but somehow he wasn’t flipping with joy at the prospect of paperwork and spreadsheets for the rest of his life.

Earlier in the week he’d gone into town to catch up with some mates, have a beer, and a game of pool. There were a few tourists around and the usual locals.

A couple of women he knew had stopped by for a drink but moved on. Nice women who quickly got the message that he wasn’t out hunting for a hookup, let alone a relationship.

His friends invited him to a game of touch rugby and a barbecue the following evening, but he made an excuse. They’d told him he was turning into a hermit, out there alone in his cottage. He had laughed, because inside he knew they were right.

He spent an afternoon at the surf beach, healing his soul in the ocean. You couldn’t beat the indulgence of surfing, just you and the waves. Nothing else mattered.

Except it did.

He had no idea how things were going up in Washington, but so far for him, back in New Zealand, they weren’t that great. He felt like he had returned to a state of mourning. The denial stage, if he was honest. All made worse because Marlo was still alive. He’d walked away from their relationship for reasons he couldn’t even conjure up any more.

He knew he was grieving, and there weren’t any shortcuts just because he’d done it before. Grief wasn’t something he could practice and get better at; it simply sat on his shoulder and refused to laugh with him.

Some days the phone mocked him. If he called Marlo once, how long would it be before he called a second time? Would he wait two days? Would it take a month before he called again and dragged everything back up? Or would it be in the next hour, because he had one more little detail to share…so that he could hear her voice?

Move on.

* * *

Adam dropped the phone on the counter. Fuck it. The surge of accomplishment that had ballooned inside him deflated. His report about the necessity of an animal abuse task force that could be assembled in the early stages of cases such as dog fighting had been well-received. Good.

The case of the Richmond Thirty-Two had highlighted precisely why a Flying Squad for animal abuse was needed. Great.

Unfortunately, neither APAW nor any other organization in New Zealand had funding available for such a setup at this stage. Shit.

Two days later, he was preparing a small patch for vegetables when his phone rang. He had drawn a planting guide the previous evening and only noticed that morning that the plan was a replica of the vegetable garden Marlo had. You sad bastard. He picked up his shovel and started digging.

The caller id on the phone showed the call was from CRAR, and he lost his breath for the moment he answered. Marlo? But the caller was CRAR’s head, James Mansell. He was disappointed, too, that the funding wasn’t available in New Zealand for a Flying Squad, but the news wasn’t all bad. CRAR was angling to go international, and the Asia/Pacific area had been highlighted as a place in need of help.

He wasn’t holding his breath. For now, the proverbial ambulance would sit at the bottom of the cliff alongside a bunch of guys with shotguns who would destroy any dog that landed alive.

It had been a contract job, and he’d only been asked to go in, observe, and report. Why did he now feel such a failure? The failure in the outcome had simply been a lack of funds. But that was irrelevant. Now he had two things he’d started this year that hadn’t reached a satisfactory conclusion.

* * *

“Mum sent you some food, seeing as you won’t go up to the house for meals.” Clive handed over a bag packed with containers of home cooking.

“I can cook.”

“Don’t be ungrateful.”

Adam grabbed a couple of beers from the fridge, and they went and sat on the porch.

“So are you going to tell me about the person who put the bug up your ass in America?”

Adam picked at the label on the beer bottle with his thumb. “Nope.”

“You’re depressed, do you know that?”

“I’m not depressed.”

“Well, you’ve been behaving like a total ass since you’ve been home. Depression was a gift—I was giving you the benefit of doubt. You won’t communicate, you’ve locked yourself out here.” He spread his arms. “It’s a beautiful spot, Adam, but hell, you’re living like a hermit.”

“So I’ve been told.”

“What? Are you going to stay here in your shack, grow your hair long, and stop washing?”

He ignored his brother until he caught Clive staring at his feet. “What now?”

“I’m checking for sandals.”

“I’m not becoming a hermit! I’m just getting my shit together, and I’ll stay out of everyone’s way until I do.”

“You took that contract in the States to ‘get your shit together’, and you’ve returned in a shittier shape than when you left.”

Adam shrugged. “Shit happens.”

Clive shifted his size-14 boot onto the back end of the rocker on Adam’s chair and stopped the movement. “What’s her name?”

“I’m not talking about it. It’s over.”

“You fight?”

“No.”

“You love her?”

Jesus, did he love Marlo? Yes, he loved her in all kinds of ways, but he wasn’t going to admit that to anyone while he was doing his best not to love her. “That’s not the point.”

“Dickhead. I think that’s a pretty big point. Go back to her.”

“Visa, job, green card…I don’t have any of those.”

“Why don’t you bring her out here?”

“It’s complicated—she can’t leave. And it’s over. She made that clear.”

Clive took a long draw on his beer before placing the empty bottle back on the table. “This is life, mate. Nothing’s ever clear. Have you phoned her since you got back?”

“Nope. She didn’t want that. No phone, no email…” Even to his ears this was starting to sound stupid.

“And you believed her? Fuck, Adam, is it any wonder you married the girl you’d been friends with since, when, kindergarten? If this is the way you do relationships, no other woman would have stuck with you.”

He knocked Clive’s leg away, dislodging his foot from the rocker. “Okay, now you’re pissing me off. This has nothing to do with Emma.”

Clive stood and moved himself to the porch railing, blocking Adam’s view of the sea. “Good. Good, and you’re right. That was out of line. But you need to get angry instead of being so fucking passive all the time.”

“You’re ruining the view.” Adam’s voice was low and carried a wind-chill factor that took away any warmth.

“Tough. The view’s not going anywhere. You can spend the rest of your life staring at it when I leave.” Clive rubbed a large hand around the back of his neck for a moment before continuing. “Listen, Adam, I’m glad this has nothing to do with Emma. I’m glad you tried out a relationship with someone else. I’m glad you’ve been getting laid. I’m totally pissed that you’ve walked away from a woman who you apparently really care about, even though you won’t admit it. We don’t want you back here that much. Sort yourself out.”

“That’s what I’m trying to do! Now it’s your turn to listen…this does not come up for discussion with Mum and Dad, okay?”

“Phone the girl, and I’ll think about it.”

Adam picked up the magazine he’d been reading and threw it at Clive.

“Phone. The. Girl.”

“Okay, Dr. Phil, now lay off.”

Adam let the silence ride. Clive really didn’t know what he was stirring up. Being home raised pangs of guilt over Marlo. To make it worse, every time he entered his bedroom and saw Em’s face smiling at him from the photo by his bed, it was as though he’d cheated on her, making him feel guilty about Em, too. It became so bad he’d moved the photo to the living room, because somehow, shifting it from the intimacy of his bedroom was going to make it better. Nice try.

Guilt hit him again when he scrolled through the images of Marlo on his phone. He was finding it difficult to pinpoint whether he was being disloyal to Em, Marlo, or both of them. Probably both.

“There’s something else…there’s no easy way to tell you this.”

Tightness gripped his stomach. “Just say it, mate.” He hadn’t meant to sound so terse. He met Clive’s gaze, the eyes a mirror of his own, the face tinged with caution.

“We’re having a baby. Karen’s four months pregnant.”

Adam took a deep breath and stood. “Wow. Congratulations.” He reached for Clive and gave him a back-thumping hug. “Wow. I’ll grab another beer. We should celebrate.” He pulled from his brother’s clasp and headed inside, trying to calm the turmoil surging through him. He was thrilled for Karen and Clive and touched in an odd way that it had been difficult for him to share the news. Yet, despite his pleasure, he still had to take that moment to steady himself as he opened the beers.

Back outside, he passed one to Clive who watched him intently. “You okay, mate?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. Really happy for you and Karen.” He knocked his beer bottle against Clive’s. “Here’s to a healthy baby who’s going to give you years of torment.”

“Nice.” Clive laughed. “Cheers, mate.”

Adam placed his bottle on the floor by his rocker. “Have you told Mom and Dad?”

“Yeah, they’re thrilled. Excited. You can imagine.”

“They’ve known for some time, huh?”

“A few weeks. I didn’t want to spring it on you the minute you got home. I wanted you to get settled.”

“Tell me…” Adam hesitated, hoping he could trust his voice. “Tell me…what was it like when she told you…when Karen told you she was pregnant? How did you feel?”

“Fuck, Adam…mate, I don’t want to do this to you.”

“Please, I’d like to know.” Because Em came to tell me, and I never got that chance to hear her words. He watched Clive rubbing at his forehead. When he did that as a kid, he used to say he was trying to push his words into the right order.

“Okay. Ah, the moment was unbelievable. I felt like the luckiest guy in the world. It was as if I fell in love with Karen all over again.”

Adam nodded. “I bet.”

“I cried.”

“You cried!” Adam grinned. “You big girl’s blouse.”

Clive moved in a flash and grabbed the front of Adam’s shirt. “That piece of information doesn’t leave this porch.”

Adam shook his head. “That piece of information, little brother, is gold.”

Back inside, Adam unpacked his mother’s care package. Seven meals, named, dated, ready to heat. God, if Marlo could see him now.

He stacked the meals away in his small chest freezer, closed the lid and leaned across it. Clive and Karen’s baby news had shaken him. His child would have been four now, old enough to appreciate the arrival of a cousin. Maybe he and Em would already have had a second child. He pushed the thoughts away. What was the point in imagining a life with Em and their children?

He grabbed a towel and set off for the beach. The wind had dropped completely, and it was nearly dusk—shark time.

As teenagers, he and Clive used to goad each other into the water at dusk while humming the Jaws theme music. It quickly became a favorite time to swim. The birds had hunkered down for the day, and an easy surf rolled in, unruffled so that in the low light, the surface of the water looked platinum. A swim would shake this mood. Drown his sorrows.

* * *

Adam stood up from the dinner table and started to clear away the dishes. In the kitchen, he stacked the dishwasher. His mother, who had followed him out, took him by the arm.

“Leave those, darling, I’ll fix them in a minute. Come and sit down. I want to talk to you.”

There was that uneasy grip on his chest that always came when a woman, any woman, announced she wanted to talk. After his session with Clive the other night, he’d decided to make the effort to eat with his parents a couple of times a week. He questioned the wisdom of that decision as he sat at the small breakfast table opposite his mother. Her blue eyes were steady but held the concern that had bloomed in the early days since his return.

“Where’s the rest of you, son?” She’d clasped her hands together on the table in that way that said she was holding advice she needed to share.

“What do you mean?”

“Not all of you came home from America.”

Silence. Hell, blindsided by my own mother. His heart changed gear, and his gaze skittered around the kitchen. Now he had empathy for Marlo’s need to pace.

Clive must have talked.

His system flooded with every emotion he’d suppressed since he had arrived home and driving the surge was the anger that now it seemed Clive had betrayed his confidence.

“You left part of you behind. She must be very important to have unsettled you this way.” His mother’s cool dry fingers curled around his hand, covering his wedding ring, giving him a small squeeze of encouragement.

So, not Clive, but a mother’s intuition. This was worse.

“What’s her name?”

He didn’t want to think about Marlo and sure didn’t want to discuss her, so he shrugged. The look his mother gave him made him feel about ten years old.

Tell her, idiot. Don’t denigrate Marlo by denying her existence. “Marlo. Her name is Marlo.” His voice was unsteady.

“That’s a pretty name.”

“Yeah.” He stayed focused on her hand. Was she deliberately covering his wedding ring?

“Does Marlo feel the same way about you?”

“I don’t know anymore. We haven’t had contact since I came back to New Zealand. She’s getting on with her life, and I’m getting on with mine. It’s the way she wanted it. I have to respect that.”

“Except she has something of yours, and it’s a mother’s guess that you have something of hers, too. What’s holding you back? Is it Emma? Because she wouldn’t—”

He pulled his hand from her grasp. “Please don’t say Emma wouldn’t want me to be single forever, or unhappy, or alone, or whatever you were going to say, because no one knows what Emma would have wanted. We were a bit young to have had those ‘when I die…’ conversations. Speculating is pointless. When the time is right for me, when the right person is in my life, it won’t be a matter of what Emma would have wanted, because it will simply be right.” He fingered his wedding ring. “If you think for one minute I’m backing off because of Emma, you’re wrong. I’m alive, Emma is dead, and I intend to keep living, so I don’t need my future sanctioned by somebody’s idea of what Emma would have wanted.”

When he looked up, his mother was still watching him with those steady blue eyes into which he’d managed to squeeze a little drop of pain. Because I’m a prick, to my own mother.

“Hurting all over again, Adam?” Her voice was gentle.

Hurting? Yeah, she could still land an emotional blow to a cold heart when necessary. “Listen, Ma, I’m fine. Marlo and I, we had a bit of a fling. We had fun. I miss her.”

Great, now he’d grabbed the chance to act like a prick about Marlo, too. Jesus, if his heart would slow down, he might be able to get a handle on things.

“It’s taking me a bit to settle in back here, on the farm, but I’ll be right in a week or two.” He gave her a smile that flashed like a fifty-dollar fake Rolex—sparkling on the outside and cheap underneath.

She went to the dishwasher. “You’re not fooling anyone, Adam. You of all people know how quickly life is extinguished. Don’t shortchange yourself. And if this Marlo means to you what she appears to, well, you’re shortchanging her, too.”

“I’m needed here on the farm. I want to help out, take some of the stress off you and Dad and Clive.”

“You don’t think it’s stressful watching an unhappy son?”

“I’m not unhappy.”

“Listen to me.” Her face was stern, and he was ten year’s old all over again. “You’re not like Clive. Clive’s a farmer. You’ll never be happy on the farm. You always looked for something more, something a bit meatier to get your teeth into. Your father and I realized that about you at a very early age. It’s why we encouraged you to join the police. You like helping people and you’re good at that, but don’t confuse that desire to help with a misplaced sense of duty to your family.”

He could feel the emotion swelling in his chest, and he dealt with it quickly to stop himself saying anything else that could hurt his mother. He pushed his chair back and went to her. “I’ll get going. Thanks for dinner.” He pressed his lips on her dry cheek.

She caught him with a steely tone when she said his name. “Adam.”

He stopped by the door.

“Contact Marlo. Find a way to sort this out.”

Like I haven’t thought hard enough about that, already.

* * *

Adam stood and stretched. He hadn’t dealt with so much bureaucracy and paperwork since he was in the Police. CRAR had secured funding for a year’s trial to set up the quick response unit for dog fighting in the Asia/Pacific region. In between times, they wanted him in the U.S. to continue to fine tune their operations there. They had also secured use of another thousand acres bordering on Dog Haven Sanctuary. Not only were their plans astonishing, they included Adam.

The little buzz of excitement since the job offer over a week earlier never faded. He worked with the idea of telling Marlo he was coming back, but he was scared. Afraid that he would let her down again. And if he did, that small hope he nurtured that they might one day have a life together, would be defeated. She would never take the risk of letting him hurt her again.

His future was at the mercy of a faceless Immigration Department, and that was almost more than he could bear.