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“You’re not his usual type,” the one with the silver earrings—Faith—threw into the middle of an argument about the men in True Blood.
Nate’s older sister, Jasmine, pinched Faith till she cried out, and then looked sweetly at Saskia. “What she meant was you’re a real woman.”
Hope rolled her eyes and stuck a rum ball in her mouth.
Saskia said, “As opposed to an imaginary one?”
Faith stopped rubbing at the pink mark on her arm, her eyes cutting to Saskia before she barked out a round of raucous laughter. “You know something we don’t?”
Sure do, Saskia thought. But she just shrugged, looked Faith right in her big blue eyes, and said, “Nothing I’d share even upon threat of torture.”
Faith grinned. “I like you. Stick around, if you can manage it.”
They liked her, Saskia thought, making her wonder how they treated those they were less than keen on.
Later, cradling a much-needed coffee, she found a quiet corner, slowly sweeping her eyes over the great room at the rear of the house. The women were chatting, gossiping, sharing their favourite books. Saskia felt herself watching them as if they were the subject of a nature documentary: Women of the Mackenziegeti...
The guys were watching footy—black and white versus blue. Jasmine’s twin boys had turned the dining table into a fort. Nate, on the other hand, was nowhere to be seen.
The whole afternoon he’d kept himself apart, just beyond the edges of conversations, hiding behind a coffee, or a beer, or a nephew. While she’d watched them all in open-mouthed awe.
Growing up, she’d wondered what it might be like to have a big family, and watching the shifting dynamic of this group of people, the vibrant debate beneath the warm glow of the beautiful home, she felt a twinge of envy. A kick of regret. And her first pang of guilt.
She was on Nate’s team. No matter what. But she wasn’t sure Nate’s team was doing the right thing. Whatever it was that kept him at arm’s length from his family, that made him think he had to lie to them rather than have it out with them, he certainly didn’t seem willing, or able, to fix it himself. The only outcome she could see was that one day he’d be so far removed he’d be the one feeling he was on the outside looking in.
She found him in the kitchen, which was surprisingly devoid of action. He was swishing his thumb over his phone, brow furrowed. His other thumb was pressed into his temple, and not for the first time that day.
Her fingers itched to rub it for him. To make everything all better.
Instead she leant in the doorway and said, “Howdy, stranger.”
Nate looked up from his phone, expecting his mother, or one of his sisters. He could never seem to go five minutes without one of them tracking him down, making sure he was happy, that he hadn’t disappeared.
When he saw it was Saskia, her soft mouth smiling indulgently, the clench in his stomach unwound and he put his phone away. “Howdy yourself.”
“I wasn’t sure if you trusted me to hold my own or if you’d just gone into hiding.”
“We can go any time you please.”
“I’m fine. Honestly. They worship you.”
“Hmm.”
She leant a hip against the sink. “Poor Nate. To be so adored.”
He turned to face her. “Want to swap?”
She glanced back to the swing door, where noise poured through the fretwork above. All too late he remembered she had no-one.
“Saskia—” he said.
But Faith bustled into the kitchen before he had the chance to take it back.
“Nate? Oh, there you are,” said Faith. “Half-time. Game-time.”
“No.”
“What’s game-time?” Saskia asked.
Nate held out a hand to shield Saskia, but it was too late. Faith took her by the hand and dragged her through the door. “You’re going to love this.”
Faith shot him one last look before the door swung closed—and a grin that left him worried for Saskia’s safety.
Knowing he’d left her alone too long already, he followed, leaning quietly in the doorway of the lounge, arms crossed, nursing a beer as his family went about their loud business around him.
Usually he took these moments to think about work, to disappear inside his head and pull himself away from all that energy. And history. And emotion so thick it clogged his throat.
This time they seemed to have forgotten to try to include him, now that they had a new victim to bat about, so he let his eyes rove over the scene, taking it in.
Hope was midargument with her girlfriend Tanya—a wholefoods wholesaler—about which kinds of flour were gluten-free and which weren’t. Poor Tanya, so earnest, while Hope’s eyes were gleaming, her Mackenzie genes loving every second of the battle.
