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Just in case it’s James or someone else we know, I run into the bathroom, but it is breakfast, and when I come out, I’m met with the mouth-watering smell of freshly baked croissants.
Henry adds a pot of the chopped fresh fruit to one of the bowls of muesli, pours over the milk, then sits back to eat it. I take one of the croissants, some butter, and jam, tear off a piece, and eat it slowly as my brain processes what he’s told me.
“Bigamy is against the law, right?” I ask him.
He nods. “It carries a prison sentence of seven years.”
“Wow. For all of them or just him?”
“It’s complicated. Apparently it’s thought to represent a threat to public morality, and to compromise the institution of marriage. If the spouse of the second marriage—Dad’s second wife, in this case—was aware that he was still married, then they would both probably get two years. If she didn’t know, and especially as more than seven years have passed, a judge would most likely find her innocent. The same for my mum and Teariki, although Dad would get the whole seven years.”
He has a few spoonfuls of muesli while I eat my croissant, thinking.
“So, what did you do?” I ask eventually.
“I went to see him.”
My eyes widen again. “What happened?”
“I went to his house and knocked on the door, but he wasn’t there. He lives right near the beach, so I walked down to the sand, and then I saw him. He was with his wife and two of his kids. Apparently he has four now by her. Rawiri said he’d stopped drinking. He has a steady job. He looked happy.”
“So what did you do?”
He stirs the muesli with his spoon. “I didn’t do anything. I watched him for half an hour. Then I walked away, flew home, and didn’t tell anyone.”
“How long ago was this?”
“About two and a half years.”
That shocks me. I’d assumed this had all happened recently. “Christ, Henry. Why didn’t you tell Shaz?”
“My marriage was falling apart by that point. I was unhappy and lonely. I didn’t talk to her enough at the best of times, and I wasn’t going to start confiding in her when things were bad between us.”
That’s why he’s telling me—because he feels guilty he didn’t tell her. Maori men are often quiet and shy, and if you add to that his troubled youth and his anger and resentment toward his father for dying and leaving him, he’s obviously grown up reluctant to talk about his feelings.
I try to imagine how that must make him feel. That his father didn’t love him enough to stay. That he was so unhappy with his first family that he faked his own death to get away from them. God, what must that do to a man?
I put down my plate, get up, and go over to his armchair. He places his bowl on the table as I approach, then sighs as I sit on his lap, loop my arms around his neck, and give him a hug.
“I’m so, so sorry,” I say, resting my lips on the top of his hair.
He doesn’t say anything.
“It wasn’t you, Henry,” I say, stroking his hair. “Your father didn’t leave because of you.”
He still doesn’t speak, but I know that’s what he’s thinking.
“He obviously suffered from depression, and maybe he was caught in a cycle of poverty and misery where he couldn’t see a way out.” I kiss his hair, thinking about my own predicament, and how sometimes it’s so hard to separate yourself from a situation, even if you’re unhappy.
His father would have known that if he asked for a divorce, he would have had to pay child maintenance for Henry’s mum and their three children. He would have been tied to them, even though he knew he was making the family unhappy. As a poor man, he would have found it almost impossible to find a well-paid job he enjoyed, to escape on regular vacations, or even to indulge in expensive hobbies to take his mind off it. Alcohol would have become a crutch, and he would have seen his wife’s and children’s misery on a daily basis, and known he was the cause of it. In his father’s eyes, he was helping his family by leaving.
But from Henry’s point of view, his father didn’t love him enough to stay. He’s happier with his new family. And that has to hurt.
Why hasn’t he told anyone? Surely he must be tempted to punish his father by revealing what he’s done? It has to be a huge weight to bear alone.
But I know the answer, even as it springs into my mind. It would ruin his mother’s marriage and his father’s second marriage, and crush his siblings and his new half-siblings, who would be devastated to know what their father had done. Having to carry the burden of it rather than destroy all those lives would be a small price for Henry. He wouldn’t even consider making himself feel better by offloading the information if it meant harming someone else.
He shifts awkwardly beneath me. His hands are resting on the arms of the chair, and he’s not hugging me. He’s regretting his confession.
