Du Rose Blaze

Chapter Six

Chapter Six

Longeing“I forgot to tell her Edin can read.” Hana tapped a nervous beat on her right thigh as Logan turned his truck onto the motorway. “She asked me to give her the most important information, and I burbled on like an i***t about Caroline. I should have told Mrs Tomlin she’s been reading for over a year.” Trees and bushes blurred in her peripheral vision as they sped towards Auckland Region Women’s Corrections Facility and certain doom. “I don’t think she’s deaf. Do you think she’s deaf?”

Logan’s palm settled over her writhing fingers and though he said nothing, it calmed Hana enough to draw breath. “Sorry,” she whispered. “I’m sorry.”

“They’ll find out she can read pretty fast,” he mused. “And there’s nothing she can throw at them they haven’t seen before today.”

Hana exhaled and leaned her head against the seat. “Am I the problem, Logan? If it’s nothing physical, is it something I’ve caused?”

Logan’s face clouded, and he stared at her as though replaying her question. “No!” He sounded appalled. “It’s one thing to accept other people’s children, Hana, and another to take the blame for their baggage. Phoenix and Mac are fine. Don’t accept guilt for factors outside your control.” He withdrew his hand, and a chill moved through Hana as he cut himself off from her downward spiral of recriminations. He’d accepted Wiri, pushing aside his misgivings about the boy’s parentage. But Edin proved a step too far. She and Wiri shared a father but having Logan’s ex fiancée as her mother acted like a knife through his chest. Yet Hana had taken her anyway, giving her a home when Alfred and Leslie couldn’t cope.

“What a mess,” she breathed. “I’m sorry for not listening to you at the start.”

Logan released a sigh but didn’t respond, watching the traffic as he pulled into the outside lane. The diesel engine rumbled beneath them, steady and reliable.

“What will you say to her?” Hana pushed herself upright and turned in her seat. “What will you say to Caroline?”

Logan shrugged, the motion nonchalant. It jarred with the nervous jitters Hana experienced for days before each trip to the prison. “I don’t know yet.” His reply caused her eyelids to give a series of rapid blinks. It amazed her he could remain so calm, relying on his wit and intelligence to furnish him with immediate responses to Caroline’s demands. She leaned against the hard edge of the door handle and sifted through her memory of previous visits. She’d rehearsed every possible conversation before she even stepped through the door of the prison.

Her gaze dropped to her ring finger, and she spun the gold band hanging loose below her knuckle. Stress had caused weight loss. Her engagement and eternity rings kept slipping off when she washed her hands. Hana sighed and pressed her palms together, sliding them between her thighs to stop them trembling. “There’s a dog,” she said, her voice a whisper. “He has to sniff the car and everyone entering the prison. They’re looking for drugs and weapons.”

Logan gave her a nod and a smile, which didn’t reach his eyes. “Good job I took them all out then, isn’t it?” he assured her.

But as they drove the rest of the way in silence, she rebuked her selfishness. They didn’t need to take Edin. That was on her. She’d insisted. “I’m sorry,” she said again. “You shouldn’t have to do this.”

They queued to enter the prison car park, subjected to the customary searches of vehicles and persons. Hana recognised the corrections staff from her other visits. Eighteen other visits, to be exact. They nodded to her and moved on, the tan dog with the floppy ears showing no interest in them or their truck.

Logan parked where the officer directed. Hana pulled out her phone, preparing to answer some emails while she waited. But the officer approached the truck and knocked on the window. “You can’t wait here, miss,” he advised.

“But I’m not going in today.” Hana pushed the door ajar and stared up at him.

“Wait over there.” He pointed to a metal shelter where a group of women gathered. They smoked and bickered in low voices, occupying the bench which ran the width of the space. They stared at Hana as she walked towards them, assessing and judging her based on her appearance.

“What are you looking at?” a slender woman snapped. Bleached hair hung in dead tresses from grey roots. She glared at Hana, challenging her to enter their space.

“Leave her alone!” An olive skinned grandma perched at the very end of the bench, her clacking knitting needles incongruous against the surroundings. Soft pink wool passed through her fingers, jarring with the razor wire and aluminum backdrop. Hana followed the twin lines of her thread into a copious bag nestled between her feet. “Sit by me,” she demanded, patting the metal. Her rings created an eerie click against the bench.

“Thank you.” Grateful, Hana settled next to her with a sigh. The phone in her jacket pocket caused the garment to list to one side on her shoulder, but she didn’t dare get it out in front of the women. The blonde one chain-smoked and flicked ash without consideration, the fumes drifting into Hana’s nostrils and irritating her lungs. A tightness built in her chest and she imagined the hostility a coughing fit would cause.

“What’s yours in for?” The kuia looked up from beneath bushy grey brows.

“Sorry?” Hana leaned closer to listen.

“What’s your prisoner in there for?” She jerked her head towards the queue snaking from the front doors.

“Oh. Assault with a deadly weapon. Murder. Well, manslaughter.”

“There’s a difference, you stupid b***h!” The blonde woman shook her cigarette at Hana. “One’s accidental and the other isn’t.” She pointed at Logan as he stood head and shoulders above the other visitors. “Is he with you? He’s fit.”

Hana nodded, her insides quailing. The women jeered and made coarse remarks about conjugal visits, remarking on the unfairness of New Zealand prisons not allowing them.

Hana ground her teeth. She’d had courage once, nursing it like a tiny flame and finding it when she needed its assistance. It seemed so long ago when she’d galloped around the property on her white mare. Sacha had given her confidence. A sharp pain snaked through Hana’s chest. She missed her with a physical ache. The last year and a half had sapped her courage until even the spark had flickered to nothing. Her fear of the women caused a flush of embarrassment to stain her cheeks.

“Ignore them.” The kuia reached the end of her row and turned her knitting over to begin again on the other side. A baby’s pink sleeve flopped against her thigh. “My mokopuna is on remand,” she said with a sigh, referring to a grandchild. “She’s pregnant.” She lifted the needles and two sleeves bounced, a delicate cable pattern snaking through the middle of each. “I can’t go in today. They waited until I got here to tell me she got put in solitary for fighting.”

“Pregnant? A baby girl?” Hana kept the other women in her peripheral vision as she spoke to the kuia. Despite the cameras mounted on metal struts, they oozed a restless trouble.

“Yeah. She can keep the baby here until she’s two.” She nodded and smiled, tugging on her woollen threads to loosen the tension and then resuming her gentle clacking.

“I don’t think anyone offered Caroline the choice,” Hana mused. “Her husband died of cancer, so I took her daughter.”

The blonde woman stubbed out her cigarette, crushing it into oblivion with the rubber sole of her trainer. “I’ve seen you here,” she remarked, raising an invisible eyebrow. Black pencil formed a thick line in the general area, missing the mark and giving her a startled expression. “With a kid.” She jerked her head towards the queue as Logan disappeared through the door into the bowels of the prison. He’d left his phone and wallet in the truck and she had the keys. The driver’s license in the front pocket of his trousers identified him to the guard at the entrance. “Is she his kid?”

“No.” Hana watched the queue shrink as the waiting visitors snaked into the prison. “Niece.”

The woman snorted and jeered at Hana. “Na. She’s his kid. He did you dirty, babe. Now he’s going in for a bit of conjugal bliss.” She laughed at her own joke and the others with her tittered.

Hana turned her face aside and kept her expression impassive. A latent fury fired up in her gut, stoking itself into a slow burn, which she struggled to contain. Her fists balled by her thighs on the metal bench until the kuia elbowed her in the ribs. “Don’t bite, honey,” she murmured. She darted her gaze at the group within kicking distance. “Seen their like before, a million times over.”

The blonde’s eyes flared, but she didn’t challenge the elderly woman. The matriarch’s quiet authority suggested she returned home to a whānau. Du Roses bickered and fought among themselves, but they stood as one against outsiders. Hana imagined the kuia surrounded by strapping sons and grandsons ready to take up her cause. Her mind flicked to memories of Tama’s laughter, his dancing grey eyes and the mischievous tilt of his chin.

The blonde lit another cigarette, arguing with an officer who asked her to extinguish it. “No smoking.” He pointed to a sign inside the shelter and stood his ground. “Why are you here?” he demanded as she continue to hold the lighted cigarette out of his reach. Smoke funneled into the atmosphere in wispy lines.

“I’m seeing my partner,” she snarled. “But that dude won’t let me inside today. So, I’m waiting with my mates.”

The officer beckoned to the colleague she’d pointed to, and the women became engrossed in an ensuing discussion. The officers led the group back to their vehicle and saw them off the premises. Hana breathed a sigh of relief as they took their latent sense of threat with them. “I hate this,” she admitted in a rush.

“Me too.” The kuia sighed. “It’s not how I ever imagined I’d spend my weekdays.” Her needles paused as she inspected the hands of an analogue watch face. “My husband will come for me soon.”

“Where do you live?” Hana concentrated on her heartbeat, regulating her breaths and forcing herself into a calmer state. “We’re going as far as Parnell if you’d like a ride?”

The old lady waved her needle, keeping hold of her knitting with the yarn tucked beneath bent fingers. “I’m good, honey. My tāne dropped me outside the gate and he’s coming back for me.” She smiled without looking at Hana, finishing her row and ramming her knitting to one end of the needle. Dipping forward, she shoved her creation into the bag at her feet with a grunt. “Good luck, honey,” she wheezed as she rose. “You do right to pick your battles.” She hefted her bag and weaved through the parked vehicles towards the exit.

Hana gnawed on her lower lip and considered the kuia’s words. She’d provided encouragement instead of dwelling on her obvious lack of courage. A memory surfaced of her at school and wearing hockey pads. She’d frozen in place as an unforgiving match ball soared through the air towards her face. She hadn’t moved a muscle, rooted to the spot as the ball clanged against the metal post of the goal and ricocheted into the field. It dropped at the feet of a defender who bore it away, out of danger.

“Well left, Hana!” the coach had called from the sideline. “Great judgment.”

She always wondered if he’d seen her fear and converted it into feigned wisdom, allowing her to receive the praise and save face. She experienced a moment of delayed gratitude for his kindness. Time allowed her to pay it forward and heap her appreciation onto the shoulders of the woman lumbering across the car park. Her grand-baby’s knitted jacket peeked from the top of her bag.

Hana’s phone vibrated in her pocket and she pulled it free and peered at the screen.