Page 169 of Just One Look

She pulled into her spot in the hospital carpark, and then she was wending her way through the complicated system of corridors with Luka beside her, frowning and silent. When they got to Radiology, she told him, “Wait here. If I’m gone more than thirty minutes, I mean it, tell them to page me.”

He didn’t look convinced. She put her hands on his face, the way she loved to do, kissed his mouth, and said, “I love you like the moon and the stars, and I want to marry you tomorrow more than anything in the world. Wait for me. Just for a few minutes. Wait for me.”

His face softened, and he said, “You know I will.”

“Yes, I do,” she said, and smiled. Near tears, the way she’d been so often, almost since he’d come back from Europe. Emotional, physical … she couldn’t have said. Systemic, she’d have called it. Her whole body, and her brain, too. Heart and soul. She said again, “Wait for me,” and walked away.

* * *

Partof him was trying to tell him that it was Christmas morning, and there were no air holes in that box. A pair of PJs and a cricket bat, and that was all. The other part was saying,Believe in her, mate. Sacrifice for her, if you have to. She’s believed in you, and she’s sacrificed, too.It was all confusing as hell, and he was hating it.

Especially fifteen minutes later, when an unfamiliar woman came over in her blue scrubs and said, “Luka? Elizabeth would like you to come on back so she can speak to you.”

He’d known it. He’dknownit. She’d be here for hours, and it was the PJs and the cricket bat. He followed the woman, trying to get his mind right. Trying desperately to compromise. Down the corridor, and into a room at the end.

It wasn’t a consult. There was a doctor there, white coat and all, but Elizabeth wasn’t standing beside him, frowning her surgeon-frown and looking at films. She was lying on the table. And she was crying.

He stopped barely inside the door. “You’re ill,” he said, his heart taking a sickening swoop straight down into his belly and lodging there, the wind knocked out of him as surely as if he were playing again, as if he were lying on the turf, knowing it was bad. He was across the room and at her side, then, taking her hand. “You should’ve told me. You didn’t have to leave me outside, because whatever it is, whatever’s the matter, I’m in it with you. All the way.”

He wanted to say something more. He wanted to say something to make it all right, but how could he? She was still crying, and her hand was shaking in his. How long had she held this in? What did it mean that she was telling him now, that she couldn’t wait another day, until after the wedding?

She was laughing now, though, through the tears, and he was so confused. “Luka,” she said, bringing his hand to her mouth and kissing it. “You idiot. I’m not dying. I’m telling you that I’m not going to be able to scuba dive after all on our honeymoon, and I’m probably not going to get better at squash anytime soon, either. Because it turns out …” Her eyes were bright as stars, her wide mouth trembling. “It turns out that we’re having a baby. And I wanted to show you.”

He cried.

* * *

Thirty hours later,he was standing under a simple arbor decorated with swaths of white net, silver ferns, and pale apricot roses, with forty white chairs arranged in front of him, waiting for his bride. On the Tutukaka coast, where he’d first met her all those years ago, where he’d nearly died and had lived instead. Where he’d put the sword to his career and found a new way to live. Where he’d grown up missing so much, and had found it again. Marko standing beside him, off his shoulder the way he’d always be, the rings in his pocket, asking, “Ready for this?”

“Oh, yeh,” Luka said. He should be worried that she wouldn’t come out, maybe, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t worry about anything. He was floating.

The music coming on now.Bridge Over Troubled Water,which was exactly what he wanted to be. For his wife. For his baby. Forever. He had chills, and the tears were rising in his eyes already.

Movement in the tiny cottage at the end of the red carpet, and there was Nyree. Wearing a gold dress like a Grecian toga, carrying a bouquet of white calla lilies that she waved at Marko and Arielle, and looking, as usual, like pure Maori life force. After that, Piper and Maddy. Dressed in more of that Grecian look, white this time, with wreaths in their blonde hair, scattering rose petals from a basket they held between them, and laughing.

Not many men’s first loves turned up as the flower girl at their wedding. He thought that was fairly safe to say. She got to the end of the aisle, though, smiled cheerily at him, and went to sit beside her fella. Noah hoisted Maddy up onto his knee, took Piper’s hand, kissed her cheek, and said something to her, looking not one bit fussed, so that was all right.

Webster, now, with Jordan holding his lead. The dog held a red pillow in his mouth—notactually bearing the rings, because Luka had put his foot down—and he was heeling. Well, mostly. Well, sort of.

And finally, Elle. On her father’s arm, a father who didn’t know how to patronize anybody here and wasn’t one bit happy about it. He’d tried this morning with Luka’s family, but his Gran had laughed at him, and Lana’s man, Dave, who’d long since become her husband, had merely looked bemused. He’d tried with Rhys, as if a New Zealand rugby coach was going to be intimidated by anybody, and he’d tried with Marko. That one had been funny.

He couldn’t think about that anymore, though, because there was Elle, and she was wearing the most devastating white dress you could ever hope to see. Sleeveless, cut close to her body, made of some heavy figured material, and with a gold zip that ran straight down the center, all the way from the bottom of the low V-neck to the top of the leg slit, which was halfway up her thighs. Showing off her body, and showing off her shine. No jewelry in her ears, because she didn’t wear it, and she didn’t need it, except for one thing: the bold, asymmetrical twist of a ring that curved like a wave, its yellow gold studded with diamonds. A ring like no other he’d ever seen, which she was wearing on a gold chain around her neck today, where she’d wear it throughout her workdays, the same way she’d done since he’d given it to her. “Where everybody can see it,” she’d told him, “and everybody can know what it means.” It was on the chain today because her finger was waiting for that other ring, the curve that complemented her engagement ring but didn’t match it. It didn’t even curve in the same direction, and it looked exactly right.

They didn’t have to look like anybody else, and they didn’t have to live like anybody else, either. They just had to live like themselves.

He cried, and she didn’t. She came to him, smiling out of her complicated, ever-changing, wholly beautiful face, clutching calla lilies in a peach so soft, it was nearly gold. In the breeze off the sea, in the warmth of the sun, in the simplest of ceremonies, and the purest. Out of his past and into his present, making it whole at last. Challenging him, laughing with him, healing him with her tough mind and her gentle hands. His moon and his stars. His soul’s balm, and his heart’s delight.

Ready for whatever came next.