Just in Time (43 page)

And then he’d be saying…something. He wasn’t sure what. But surely he could think of something by then. He had an hour to do it.

Except that he didn’t. An hour later, he was standing outside Security, and the flight had landed twenty minutes ago, and Faith wasn’t here.

He couldn’t have missed her. He’d scanned every face, had tensed with every new group that had come through, had rehearsed what he planned to say again and again. But she’d never come out. He’d rung her twice, and his phone had gone straight to voicemail both times.

Finally, he walked to the Air New Zealand counter, stepped up behind the single person in the queue at Premier Check-in, and waited some more, until the woman behind the counter was looking up and beckoning to him.

“Hi,” he told her. “My partner was meant to be on Flight 2354 from Rotorua, and she didn’t come out. Can you check for me?”

He gave her Faith’s name, and she looked at her monitor. “She’s not listed on the flight,” she told him.

“What?” Cold fingers of dread were creeping up his spine. “I know she was. I saw her make the booking, and she sent me a copy of the itinerary.”

“I’m sorry.” She knew who he was, he could tell. “But she’s not on it.”

“Then…what? Another flight?”

“I can’t check that. Against the rules. Sorry.”

“Please. I’ve rung her, got no answer, and I’m worried.”

“Sorry,” she said again. “I can’t. I would if I could.”

He wasn’t going to get anywhere, and anyway, he didn’t have to, because, he realized, he could just ring his mum. He didn’t know why he hadn’t thought of that.

He did it, and that was when the fun didn’t start. It took ten minutes of listening, of trying to explain, to get her past it.

“So she left early,” he finally said. “Why? And to go where?”

“I don’t know,” his mum said. “We weren’t exactly having a cozy chat, were we.”

He finally rang off in frustration, thought a moment longer, and rang Talia.

“D’you know where Faith is?” he asked her. “She left early, eh. So where did she go? Did she come here? I can’t get her to answer, and I’m worried.”

A long silence on the other end.

“Talia?” he prompted. “You there?”

“Yeh,” she said slowly. “But I’m not sure if I should tell you.”

“Tell me. Tell me what she said.”

“Well…she’s going back to the States.”

“I know that,” he said impatiently. “Of course she is.”

“I mean, she’s going today. She got an earlier flight, so she could. Flying to LA. I saw the boarding pass, when she…when we were in the taxi.”

“What?”

“She gave me an envelope. To post to you.”

“And? Did you post it?”

“No. Not yet.”

“Then get it. Please,” he thought to add. “Open it. Read it to me.”

“I guess if she gave it to me, it doesn’t matter if I post it or open it now. I mean, if it’s for you anyway.”

“Of course it doesn’t.” He did his best to soften his tone. “Please, Tal. Please read it to me. I need to know what it says.”

She exhaled. “Right, then. Hang on.”

He waited, pacing in front of the windows near the ticket counter, oblivious to the occasional curious glance of recognition.

“OK,” he heard at last. “I’m back. I’m opening it.”

A rustle, and he was pacing again.

“Money,” she said.

“Money?
Why money?”

“Dunno. Looks like…six hundred dollars. That’s a
lot
of money. And a note. D’you want me to read it?”

“Yes.”

“OK. Here you go.” She cleared her throat and began.

“Will—

This is all I could take out of the ATM. I’ll get you the rest when I’m home. I shouldn’t have taken it. I shouldn’t have come at all. I know it, and I’m sorry.

I’m flying home tonight. I hope that’ll make it easier for you to do what you have to do.

Faith.”

“Something else,” Talia said. “Written at the bottom. Can hardly read it. It’s a bit—scrawly.”

“Read it,” Will commanded. “Much as you can.”

“Being with you wasn’t about the money, or the books,”
his sister read slowly.
“It was about you.”

“What money?” she asked him when she’d finished. “I don’t understand. Did she steal from you? I can’t believe Faith would do that.”

“No. I’ve got to…” He was having trouble with his voice. “Got to go.”

“I think you should find her,” Talia said. “I think she loves you. When she gave me this…she was crying.”

He rang off, tried to ring Faith again in the hope that she might have turned on her phone. Voicemail again, but he knew where she was now. She was here.

Back to the Air New Zealand counter again, back in the queue, behind two other passengers this time. A middle-aged couple who fumbled for passports, then seemed to be buying a cruise, based on the amount of time the agent was spending tapping details into her computer, and Will was bouncing the phone in his hand, seething.

At last, though, it was his turn.

“I still can’t tell you,” the agent said, eyeing him suspiciously.

“I don’t need you to tell me,” Will said. “I need you to get me on tonight’s flight to LA.”

More tapping from long red-varnished fingernails, while he shifted from foot to foot and waited.

“Sorry,” she finally said. “Sold out.”

“What? No.”

“Sold out,” she repeated. And then, as if he might be too dim to get that, “No seats left.”

“I know what sold out means. Sell me one anyway. Somebody can volunteer to be bumped, right? Get a lovely voucher for a free journey. Happens all the time. I’ll pay for it myself, but I need to get on there.”

She stared at him. “No.”

“Look,” he said. “My girlfriend’s on that flight. She’s leaving me. I need to get on there and get her back.”

“You think that’s making it better,” the woman said, “but you’re wrong, because you just escalated from Potentially Scary to Security Risk, and I’m about two seconds away from getting them over here. If I didn’t know who you were, I’d have done it already, but that blue shirt’s only going to take you so far, and you’ve just reached it. I can’t sell you a ticket I don’t have. No.”

“Right,” he said. “Plan B.” There was always a Plan B, and a Plan C, and on down the list. “Sell me a ticket to Las Vegas however you can do it, the one that gets in at the closest time to the flight that connects from LA.”

More endless clicking. “Have to connect through San Francisco,” she said. “And a three-hour layover.”

“Fine. Good. Do it.” He pulled out his credit card and shoved it across the counter together with his passport. “Go.” He glanced at the monitor above the woman’s head that listed the departing flights. San Francisco in two hours. And LA in one. He hefted his duffel onto the platform. Sacrificed to the cause.

“You know,” she said as she began the insanely tedious process of booking him in, “if she doesn’t want you, there’s no point.”

“That’s helpful. Cheers.”

“Sometimes a man has to take no for an answer,” she said, “no matter who he is.”

And sometimes,
Will didn’t say, because that would have brought Security running for sure,
he has to die trying.

After that, it was passport control, and security, and all the rest of it. And then he was running, because the flight for LA left in forty-five minutes, and they’d be boarding any minute. Up the stairs, taking them three at a time, past the wine bar, all the way to the end of the corridor.

Where he stopped. Because he’d forgotten this. Completely forgotten.

Another security gate, a cobbled-together one just beyond the seating area where the passengers waited to board. Two little tables, each manned by an agent. One last scanner to walk through. One final inspection before boarding a flight to the States.

Maybe, though…He pulled out his passport and boarding pass, chose the table with a woman at it, and handed them over. He gave her his best smile in hopes that it would distract her, keep her from looking too closely at what was on that boarding pass. Who knew, maybe she liked big, wild-eyed, sweating Maori blokes.

Or maybe not, because she was handing his documents straight back to him. “Wrong gate, love,” she said. “You want 13 for San Fran.”

“Actually,” he said, trying, this time, for something that sounded more confiding and less like a mad, scary ex, “I was hoping to nip in for just a moment. My partner and I got separated. Flight’s sold out, eh. She’s on this one, and I need a quick word.”

“Can’t do it, sorry. Why don’t you call her, have her come out? They haven’t started boarding them yet.”

“See, that’s the silly thing. Her phone’s off. If I could—just for a minute.”

“Can’t,” she said again. “It’d be my job.” She glanced at the fella at the other table, and he nodded.

“Can’t,” he told Will, as if he wouldn’t have heard it the first time. “Will Tawera, aren’t you?” he asked. “Well done last night, by the way.”

“Cheers,” Will said. “So you see, not a security risk. Tell you what, you can hold my passport and boarding pass,” he thought to add. “I won’t be going anywhere without them. Five minutes. That’s all.”

“Nah, mate,” the man said. “Sorry. Can’t.”

Will could hear the announcement coming over the loudspeaker. They were about to start boarding, and it was now or never.

Die trying.

He filled his lungs with the training of years spent shouting to his backline over the voices of sixty thousand rabid fans.

“Faith!”

Both agents jumped, and he heaved in another breath and did it again.

“FAITH!”

“What are you doing?” the woman exclaimed as the man began to rise, his radio in his hand.

“What you said,” Will said. “I’m calling her.”

Faith sat with her forehead pressed against the little oval window and watched the ground fall away beneath her. The ribbons of rain that streaked horizontally across the glass were a perfect match for the tears that ran down her cheeks. She’d tried so hard not to give into them, but it wasn’t possible anymore, not now that she was here. Not now that she was leaving.

She had one last brief glimpse of silver lake, the green folds of the hills. The emerald of fern trees, and the darker color of the mighty giants through whose tops she and Will had walked, on a carefree day that felt like a lifetime ago.

Just one glimpse, and then it was all gone, lost beneath a layer of gray cloud that lay between her and her last moments in Rotorua.

Kua hinga te totara i te wao nui a Tane.
A totara had fallen in the forest of Tane. When it fell, it left a hole in your life. In your heart.

A mercifully short flight, this one, and they were through the cloud cover again, descending over the western suburbs of Auckland, and touching down. Passport control, security, one last polite Kiwi smiling at her and telling her to have a pleasant flight, and that was goodbye. She was at the gate for Flight NZ6 to Los Angeles, almost the only passenger here this early, sitting for two hours as the seats gradually filled around her. Sitting looking out at the big white jets lined up on the tarmac,
Air New Zealand
emblazoned on their sides, the stylized swirl of the koru on their tails.

The symbol of life, of hope, of new beginnings. Of everything that was New Zealand, but not for her. Not anymore. Not ever, no matter how it had felt, because she’d never really belonged here. Because it had all just been pretending after all.

There was a dad beside her now, big and brown, holding a curly-haired toddler in one broad arm to look at the jets, a stroller at his feet. She saw the flash of white teeth as he talked to his little boy, his big hand at the end of a tattoo-bedecked arm pointing to a baggage cart trundling out to load suitcases onto a jumbo jet.

That was nothing to do with her, either. That was the worst kind of wishful thinking. She could put it into a book, and that was all.

Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach.
She’d always hated that saying. But she knew one that worked, at least for her.
Those who can’t, write.