KAI
“Daddy!”Leilani calls out, holding her arms up for a lift. “Daddy, daddy, daddy.”
I scoop her up against my chest then, when she grows sick of that position, hike her onto my shoulders. She grabs two handfuls of my hair, steering me along the path like her personal people mover as she jiggles her feet near my chin.
Not quite four years old and I’m a slave to her commands.
Although the yacht we escaped New Zealand aboard docked in Samoa, we’d soon moved farther afield, locating to Rarotonga in the Cook Islands after a short debate. There are just enough people that we don’t stand out, but not so many that we don’t instantly know the difference between tourists and locals. Our documents might not withstand official scrutiny, but they’ve passed muster where we needed them.
Cash payments don’t draw close attention and so far, we’re muddling by. Nadia takes on occasional work as a tutor, but she also has a flare for investments, enjoying the game of it as much as the proceeds.
I’m happy to help with manual labour when needed, which brings in extra. Even if we never earn a fortune through work, we should be able to bump along okay on what we have. The living is pretty cheap here and none of us are fancy.
“Where are we going?”
“Books,” she says excitedly, letting go of my hair for long enough to point to a small shop on the promenade. “Mummy said.”
“Did Mummy? Well, in that case, I better obey her instructions.” I serenely follow my daughter’s direction until we’re a metre from the door, then I let her down onto the cobblestone path.
She grabs my hand, tugging with all her might. I stand still, resisting, letting her pull until she’s squealing with laughter too hard to even try. Then, just like her mother when she fails at the first hurdle, she changes tack, running to the door of the bookstore and tugging at that handle instead.
Which means I have to follow her because Lei Lei is the queen of getting into trouble when left to her own devices for more than five minutes. Something I’m sure she knows. Her manipulation is no less effective for being so blatantly obvious.
The store is one of her favourites, though my daughter’s preferences are ever-expanding so there is an increasingly long list of favourites that seem unlikely to end. It’s a shop for the locals as much as the tourists, having a wide circular rug close to the window where story hours are held.
There’s no reader there right now, but that doesn’t stop Leilani from running to the space and sitting in front of the faux throne with such rapt attention I feel bad nobody is due to show for another three or four hours.
“Hey, come over here and pick a story,” I tell her, standing next to a long shelf full of brightly coloured children’s books, each illustrated cover more enticing than the last. “Which one would you like to read?”
“I want to hear a story.”
“There’s no one there to read it, love.”
“Iwanttohearastory.”
Gibson, who runs the store, gives me a knowing look followed by a shrug. “Maddie isn’t coming in today, I’m afraid. She’s gone over to the mainland for a girl’s weekend.” He waits for a second, then offers, “You’re more than welcome to fill in for her if your girl really wants to hear something read aloud.”
I cringe at the thought. My automatic reaction when anyone mentions reading. Which, considering it’s one of my wife’s favourite hobbies, is a lot.
My comprehension is getting better. I tried hard while Nadia was pregnant because I couldn’t stand the thought of not being able to read or write my child’s name.
And my wife is the world’s most forbearing saint when she wants to be. No wonder she chose to teach as a career. Even with the worst of my struggles, she’s never once lost her patience. She never treated my illiteracy as a moral failing, though it’s a message I receive loud and clear from other sources all the time.
“Maybe not.” I turn around and Leilani’s gone. Her small stature easily hidden in the stacks and free-standing shelves littered throughout the store.
“This one,” she calls out from the back of the shop. “It’s like Mummy’s.”
I casually glance over, then jerk into action, already running.
Yes. The half-naked man on the cover is very much like one of Mummy’s books. Knowing my luck, Lei Lei will open it to the middle where things are liable to get juicy, then I’ll be hauled off to prison and locked up for corruption of a minor.
Mummy will have to spring me free again and she won’t be at all happy about that. Although, given the local prison here has a two-foot-high chain-link fence as its security, maybe she won’t have to spend too much money to break me free.
“Let’s just put that one back, shall we?” My best dad voice doesn’t work so I have to pull it out of her hands to replace it on the shelf. “What have we said about choosing books? We only take from our sections.”
She puts her thumb in her mouth and twists back and forth so her skirt swings from side to side. The picture of innocence. Also, one way she winds Daddy around her finger, so he doesn’t scold her for doing things she knows full well she shouldn’t do.
I blame that trait on her mother, too. She does have a son in prison, after all.
