Accepted! The precious work visa was granted. Adam struggled not to share the news with Marlo, because he had made a pact with himself that he wouldn’t jinx this. He laughed at his superstition, out of character, but he wanted this so badly it hurt.

In those wakeful middle-of-the-night moments when logic stayed asleep, small bursts of fear made him worry that maybe Marlo had found a boyfriend, a lover. Their relationship had ended with a full stop the size of a black hole. There hadn’t been a single hint or promise of a future together. Once you go, it’s over. God, he’d lived with those words echoing in his head for months now. Their familiarity never made them any easier to bear.

Adam couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Please, Mum, I said no party, I really wanted to quietly slip away.”

His mother laughed. “Quietly slipping away is something old people wish for when they’re contemplating death.”

“Well, a party will kill me.”

“Now you’re being dramatic.”

“I mean it.”

His mother sighed. “Okay, no party. We’ll have a family dinner.”

* * *

Judging by the cars lining his parent’s driveway, his ‘family’ had grown some since the last dinner they’d had together. He had expected it would be himself, his parents and Clive and Karen. Instead, the place looked like a car sales yard. He contemplated going around the back, catching Clive’s attention and sneaking off with him, the way they had as teenagers during these events.

He would be home for holidays, and, since he’d accepted the job offer, he had promised the family—his mother, almost daily— that he would bring Marlo back to meet them as soon as he could. He hesitated on the porch, listening to the rumble of voices inside. This was madness.

If only he could ditch the unease. The farewell dinner, the questions about his new job, the hints about a new woman in his life…all these things made him feel as if he was gun-jumping on his future. And what was going on with these superstitious feelings?

He rubbed the back of his head, fixed himself a smile, and stepped into the house. Aunties assailed him with bosoms, beads, powdered faces, and bee-sting lips while uncles with ruddy cheeks stood back clutching beers.

Children had become surly teenagers since their last big gathering, and new children had arrived to play with the old toys. He was astounded, really, that he was blood-linked to the connecting people in this enormous group. When the realization hit him, he wondered why it had taken so long to appreciate how lucky he was.

Under similar circumstances, Marlo wouldn’t have had a single person at her side. Damn, he had to get her and show her all of this, make her part of it, too.

Suddenly the idea of not having this rowdy gang of people who spanned generations, this support network who were there for crises and celebrations, was fearsome. Was it any wonder Marlo had no idea how to ask for or accept help? God, he couldn’t bring her into the fold fast enough.

From outside came the aroma of the free-range pig turning slowly on the spit. In the kitchen, salads, vegetables, and freshly baked bread were dished onto enormous serving platters. As he relaxed into the scene, his earlier anxiety left him. Yeah, they could turn on comfort and a feast in the country.

He accepted a beer from a young lad, a cousin’s son—Tyler? Taylor?—who, before relinquishing his grasp on the bottle, asked if he could have a quick sip.

“Daddy lets me,” he assured Adam, the earnestness on his face doing a poor job of covering the lie.

Adam ruffled his hair. “Daddy would have my bal–brains on a plate if I let you do that.”

An inconsolable baby was passed around like a hot potato until its mother arrived to take it and feed. Clive appeared, and Adam nudged him in the ribs. “That’ll be you, soon, mate.”

“Wrong. That’ll be Karen. I don’t have the right equipment.”

“Fathers are just as involved these days, caveman.”

“I’ll take over when it’s time for quad-bike lessons and learning how to work a dog.”

Adam laughed. “We’ll see.”

When dinner finished, Adam’s father stood, hit his glass with his fork to summon some quiet, raising himself another inch before starting his speech. He said how proud he was of Adam and how much they would all miss him. Customary words from a man who never wasted them. Most of all he hammered in the fact that if Marlo wasn’t brought home to meet them all by the following Christmas, he’d be on a plane to haul them back.

Hell, no pressure.

Adam scanned the room as he stood to reply, lucky and loved by the lottery of birth. The drive to show Marlo what a family could be roared through him like a rush of heat. As he faced his father to tell him of his gratitude, emotion dampened the heat so that, dammit, those lilies were making his eyes water. He shifted the vase, rubbed his forehead, thought of Clive, and raised his head to look his father in the eye.

“Dad?” Oh, God, Dad! He pushed through the stunned people to catch him before he hit the floor.

The waiting room of the hospital Intensive Care Unit was familiar to Adam. He’d been in this same spot many times as a police officer, attending road accident victims, assault victims, victims of life in general, forced to behave as dispassionately as he could around the blank-faced, family members who gathered. For most of them, this environment was as foreign as a lunar landscape.

Being one of them didn’t feel great at all. He took his mother in his arms, and she held him tight. When she released him, he looked at the same staring eyes, that lost-look mask that people wore as they passed through the ICU waiting room doors. “He’s strong, Mum. He’ll pull through.”

She managed a tiny smile. “Yes, darling, I know.”

When they were finally allowed in to see him, they couldn’t tell where they could touch him. The light was low, and the tubes and wires made him look as if he were under attack from some sort of electronic jungle vine.

A doctor spoke to them in low, economical tones, and they nodded politely and agreed they should all get home to take some rest.

A couple of days on, angioplasty had cleared his father’s blocked arteries, but Adam knew the crisis wasn’t over. His father was mortal. The thought shocked him when it shouldn’t have. His mother would need his support, and if, God forbid, his father had a relapse…no, that didn’t bear thinking about.

He sat on the beach contemplating the certainty of the next wave rolling in versus the uncertainty of his future. He couldn’t leave the family in this mess. Not right now with his father unable to work for some time, and Clive and Karen with their baby on the way. They all needed his help and support.

Marlo. Fuck it. When was she going to get a break? At least he’d had the sense not to tell her about his return to the U.S. She had no idea he’d let her down, again. He found nothing harder to accept than a decision made for him.

Welcome to the other side.

He’d made a decision on Emma’s behalf that had ultimately led to her death. Why hadn’t he trusted her, been more upfront about the work he was doing? She would have understood. But he hadn’t wanted her to worry, so he’d hidden the bad stuff. Had she known he had infiltrated a local gang chapter she would have kept well away. She would have stayed at the farm that night rather than hurrying to him, to share the news of the baby they were going to have.

Instead, while he was out driving around the countryside to find the place the gangs were allegedly going to stage a dogfight, Emma had slipped in to the house he was renting, probably to surprise him, in bed. She’d done that before on other, safer jobs.

She must have fallen asleep, and, without smoke alarms, she would have been completely unaware the house had caught fire.

He got up and walked to the shoreline, picking up flat stones and trying to skim them through the waves. Not being honest with Em because he was trying to protect her was a bad, bad decision.

And all those decisions he’d made for Marlo had ultimately finished with Justice running loose in some Washington state park. If he was even alive.

No doubt about it, karma sucked.

He headed back to his cottage. He needed to shower and get up to the house for his mother.

His family saw the obvious solution for Marlo and him. Bring her to New Zealand. However, with the dogs this clearly wasn’t an option. Fala’s failing kidneys meant a long-haul plane trip would be intolerable. Marlo wouldn’t leave the U.S. while Justice was still at large, and, even if Justice was found, he couldn’t come to New Zealand. He was a pit bull, and they were a breed banned from importation.

CRAR told him the position didn’t need to be filled immediately, so the job was his if he wanted to reconsider it at another time. But Adam only had to take a quick look around, see the worry his mother wasn’t always capable of hiding, watch his father who was, for the moment, a shell of the man he used to be. He knew he wouldn’t be leaving the farm for some time.

He was back to medicating himself with long swims, made uncomfortable by the fact that when he closed his eyes he could see Marlo, floating in the lake. If anything, that little want was growing by the day.