EIGHT
Felicity knocked quietly before opening Pippa’s door.
“Erin? It’s nearly seven.”
Sea-vin. Even numbers were turned on their heads in a New Zealander’s mouth.
Erin’s eyelids were lead. Tungsten. No, platinum. Or whatever was heavier than platinum. That new metal. She couldn’t remember the name. With jet lag as her drug, she could have slept for the entire five months.
Felicity flicked the lights on. “Erin? Time for tea. You’ll be wrecked tomorrow if you don’t start moving.”
Erin was wrecked either way and tea wasn’t her thing, but eating on a schedule was the quickest way to shake jet lag. She threw off her blankets, experienced two seconds of chill, and covered right back up again.
“Why is your house so cold?” Erin couldn’t look at Felicity’s face.
“The table is plenty warm. And the whole family is waiting for you.”
Had Claire known about the frigid house, Erin wouldn’t be here. Surely the family couldn’t help being poor, but Erin could hardly endure a cold, tiny house on the ugly side of town.
Erin hoped this was the ugly side of town. What if all of Christchurch was one huge strip mall?
She raced to the bathroom where towels hung in disarray over a slick floor, as if the tidy house had been a mere illusion projected for her tour earlier. The toilet paper was a sad surprise: thin and rough like in public restrooms.
She splashed her face and gave a little pep talk to the girl in the mirror: You can do this. And if you can’t do this, you are one phone call away from securing a flight home.
Still in her down jacket, Erin opened the door to the other side of the house. It smelled like a bakery. Her host family sat around the table, talking easily and all at once.
When he spotted her, Hamish uncovered the serving dishes. “Sweet as!”
Six little pot pies circled one dish, green salad filled a beautiful red bowl, and fresh sliced bread steamed on a cutting board. Tea in New Zealand meant dinner.
“Beer with your tea?” Hamish asked.
Erin glanced from Hamish to Felicity. “I’m seventeen.”
Hamish’s rough, calloused hands flourished his beer in Erin’s direction. “You’re also in New Zealand now. Can’t buy alcohol, but you can drink it.”
Felicity was drinking wine.
Alcohol had never been good to Erin, and she hadn’t drunk anything since her last birthday party, which she was trying to forget. “No, thanks. Maybe another day.”
Pippa, who was ten, had missed gymnastics to fetch Erin from the airport, but had spent the afternoon riding bikes with friends. Pippa was in year six—not sixth grade, mind you—at Ilam Primary and she was having Kapa Haka and wanted to know if Erin wanted to come.
Felicity jumped in. “She’s been here eight hours, Pippa.”
Pippa blushed.
Erin peeled off her socks under the table. The room had become downright toasty while she napped. “I think I need to recover from travel before I make any plans. Maybe we can talk scheduling tomorrow?”
Pippa’s smile was unconvincing.
Erin raised her eyebrows. “It smells like heaven in here.”
“A day of cooking will do that to a house. I made a chicken stock and chopped the chicken for enchiladas tomorrow night, cooked a lamb, and made lamb pies for tonight. Are you vegetarian?”
Erin was not in any way a vegetarian, and lamb was a meat she knew. “You made these?”
Felicity nodded, her mouth full of food.
Erin hadn’t imagined people made pot pies from scratch. Her parents sometimes bought frozen pot pies. Valentina cooked for her family when she cleaned twice a week, and Erin’s grampa used to cook delicious and creative dinners, but neither of them had made anything as tricky as this.
Felicity’s lamb pie was cupcake-shaped and almost the exact size of Erin’s mostly empty stomach. Erin dug in with her fork, but the oozy center she expected never materialized. It hung together really nicely. And it was delicious.
“So, Erin? What kind of weird stuff do Americans eat?”
Felicity almost spat out her bite. “Pippa!”
“Mum, I waited all day!”
Felicity grinned. “It’s true, actually. Pippa has been on pins and needles waiting for you to wake up. She has some questions for you.”
Pippa held up a notebook. “Sixty-one questions. The weird food stuff was number fourteen.”
Four-deen. The accent was particularly cute out of Pippa’s mouth.
“Let’s start at number one: do you own a gun?”
Erin squinted. “Of course not.”
“I heard America has more guns than people.”
Erin bit her cheek. “Well, I heard New Zealand has more sheep than people.”
“’at’s true,” Hamish said.
“Question two,” Pippa said. “When is your birthday?”
“May nineteenth.”
Pippa squealed, “Mine is November nineteenth!”
Confused about Pippa’s enthusiasm, Erin feigned her own. “That’s … exciting?”
“We’re like half twins: our birthdays are exact opposites. May/November. June/December.”
“Oh. Right.” Erin imagined it was a kiwi sentiment.
“Okay. Next question: Your accent is neither Southern nor Boston nor New Jersey. I know all of those. So what’s yours?”
Ten minutes later, sated, warm, and bemused by Pippa’s intense questioning, Erin felt slightly less regret about her plight.
Felicity said, “I’m afraid we don’t have a pudding prepared. I meant to bake a pavlova for your first night, but time got away from me. Another day, perhaps.”
Pippa said, “Can we have Hokey Pokey?”
“I suppose,” Felicity said.
Pippa leapt to the freezer and returned with a container of Hokey Pokey ice cream. Felicity scooped some into a bowl and offered it to Erin. “Hokey Pokey?”
Hokey Pokey looked like vanilla ice cream laced with suspicious candy.
“Sure. I actually prefer ice cream to pudding anyway.”
Felicity scooped ice cream for Pippa. “Pudding just means whatever sweet thing you eat after tea. Ice cream is pudding. Pavlova is pudding. Your pudding might be biscuits.”
“We call that dessert,” Erin said before taking a timid bite. The Hokey Pokey bits hung in suspension of thick, rich ice cream. For ice cream, it was totally decadent.
Maybe the Hokey Pokey is what it’s all about. Erin’s brain leapt from the ice cream, to the bumper sticker on her ex-boyfriend’s car, to Ben, and her brief happiness deflated.
Disappointment and agony wrapped around