Playing Solitaire
Copyright© 2026 by Jody Daniel
Chapter 17
{3}
Dragon Peaks Resort.
I stepped back into the boma with mixed feelings. I was still hotly miffed at Chen Wei-Liang’s arrogance and bullying of, in his mind, lesser people. I hope that there is some organisation that will take him down. There must be some regulator of Financial Markets that would have the jurisdiction to bring him to book.
I sat down beside Megan and she cast me a worried eye. She must have seen the expression on my face.
“Are you okay?” She whispered.
“I’m all good, thanks Megs...” I whispered back.
“Then let’s go get something to eat. There is rib-eye steak, T-bone steak, smoked pork ribs and a variety of sausages ... I got my eye on a rib-eye...” She chuckled.
“Rib-eye sounds good,” I replied. “I saw they have about five or six different salads ... I’ll go for the Greek salad with all that Feta cheese and small tomatoes.”
“Don’t miss out on the potato salad,” she recommended. “I was hungry with all this smoky braai aroma hanging around so I went and grabbed a side-plate of potato salad. It’s to die for.”
“Then we take a helping of each,” I replied.
“Och, look at ye,” Megan smirked, her eyes twinkling over her Brutal Fruit. “Five minutes ago ye had a scowl that could curdle fresh milk, and now ye’re plannin’ a full-blown tactical raid on the salad bar. I like a man with priorities, Tim—now get ye’re boots moving before somebody snags the last rib-eye, or there’ll be a bloody international incident right here in the boma!”
I laughed, the last lingering tension from the phone call dissolving completely.
So off we went to raid the salad bar and load up on rib-eyes and pork sausages. When we sat back down at the table, Amanda took one look at Megan’s and my plates and remarked, “I foresee a gym session or two for some of us here at this table...”
“That’s what new love does,” Linda needled. “That saying about living on love and cold water is just not true.”
“That’s why you’re still single, Lin!” Megan fired back without missing a beat. “You eat like a budgie—one pip at a time!”
Laughter rolled around the table, and I couldn’t help but notice the contrast between the Megan from our first day and the “here and now” Megan. The girl had most definitely shed her shell.
With the bantering around the table, the meal went slowly, but it was thoroughly enjoyable. Soon the waiters cleared the dishes and the music started up in the background. The bar was making a killing, and the air stayed thick with laughter and lively chatter.
“Ooo ... my tummy hurts,” Megan declared, leaning back in her chair with a contented sigh.
“That’s for all your laughing, ribbing, and teasing,” Linda replied with a smirk.
“I’ll rub your tummy for you,” I whispered, leaning in close.
Megan immediately leaned into my side, resting her weight against me. “As long as yer hands don’t stray past my tummy...” she whispered back, before breaking into a quiet giggle.
“Tim, you better take that woman to her room so she can sober up,” Linda chuckled. “She’s had six Brutal Fruits already.”
“Did not!”
“Yes, you did!”
“I only had five!”
“Five or six ... who’s counting? But I know you. That silliness is not you.”
“Linda, leave the poor girl alone,” Amanda admonished with a smirk. “She’s got a plausible medical condition!”
“What medical condition?” Linda fired back.
“It’s called ‘Pathological Cardiophobia’ by those in the know. Also known as ‘Acute Cupiditis’,” Amanda replied with a straight face.
Linda’s eyes went wide. Her mouth opened and closed like a breath starved fish out of water. “Pathological Cardio WHAT!”
For a few moments the silence settled in around our group and I was still trying to wrap my mind around the Latin medical term Amanda was throwing out in normal conversation, when Megan blurted.
“Amanda! How could you!”
Linda looked at Megan and softly spoke: “Megs ... I ‘m sorry ... I did not know...”
Then it struck me what Amanda said and I chuckled. “Linda, it’s untreatable, but not terminal...”
“Tim, you knew?”
“Since about seven hours now...” I said with a straight face, letting Linda stew for a bit.
Then Amanda dropped the other shoe, “It loosely translates to ‘Lovesick’, ‘Smitten’, or ‘in love’ in English...”
“You devious, evil, despicable people! I thought we were friends...” Linda said, displaying a mock sad face. But when we broke out laughing, Linda laughed with us.
I looked at my watch. It was approaching 21:00. I looked at Megan, and before I could say anything, that mischievous devil dancing in her eyes took over, and she brought the house down.
“Timmy, go take me to bed ... I mean take me to my room. Dammit, that did not come out right.” And she blushed postbox red.
“Or it did come out just right!” Linda smirked, getting us all back for making fun of her.
A riot erupted at our table. But for us ... the evening was over.
The short walk back to the Lakeside Suites gave me enough time to notice that Megan was perfectly steady on her feet. Linda’s earlier suggestion that the Brutal Fruit might have gone to her head had clearly been exaggerated for comedic effect.
Megan was sober. More importantly, she was happy.
There was an ease about her that I had not seen when we first met. The guarded woman who had seemed to live behind an invisible wall was slowly being replaced by someone who laughed more readily, teased without hesitation, and seemed almost surprised by her own happiness.
And she was holding my hand again.
Our fingers were loosely intertwined as we followed the paved pathway through the resort. At nine o’clock on a winter evening, the Drakensberg had already surrendered completely to the darkness. The mountains were little more than black shapes against the night sky, and the cold had settled into the valley with the sort of determination that made you appreciate a warm bed and a mug of Rooibos.
The pathway lights cast small pools of yellow-white illumination onto the paving, leaving the spaces between them in deep shadow. Somewhere behind us, the farewell braai was still winding down. Every now and then a burst of laughter carried through the darkness, followed by the clink of bottles or the muffled scrape of a chair being moved.
The smell of braaivleis and dying kameeldoring wood still lingered in the air.
For the moment, though, Megan and I seemed to be in our own little world.
“Where’s your car, Megs?” I asked.
“At home in the lock-up garage,” she replied.
“So, how did you get here?”
“My dad took me to the Lanseria Airport where I met with the team and flown to King Shaka International. From there we rented a minibus and travelled to here.”
I smiled. “So, what’s your dad going to say if you arrive at Wonderboom and not Lanseria?”
“He’ll just ask if I had a good flight.” She giggled.
“Okayyy ... Not why the change in transport?”
“Tim, he’ll be okay with what I do, as long as I don’t end up in prison.”
“Good dad!”
“I love him to pieces,” she replied. Her voice softened on the last words. Then she went quiet.
I glanced at her. She was looking ahead, but I had the distinct feeling she wasn’t really seeing the pathway anymore. The light from one of the lamps caught the side of her face before we walked into the next patch of darkness.
Her thoughts had gone somewhere I couldn’t follow. We walked another few metres before she spoke again.
“Near the little lake, there’s a bench. Let’s sit for a while...” Megan eventually said.
“Okay, it’s just up ahead.”
We reached the split in the pathway and turned towards the little lake.
The wooden bench stood beneath the trees, facing the dark water. Small lights from the resort buildings and pathways shimmered across its surface, broken whenever a faint breeze disturbed the reflection. Beyond it, the mountains were almost invisible now, their presence felt more than seen.
We sat down next to each other. For a few seconds neither of us spoke.
The cold seemed sharper once we stopped moving.
A night bird called somewhere in the darkness. The trees whispered overhead, and from the distant braai area came another round of laughter before the sound faded away.
Then Megan turned towards me.
“If we are going to stick around each other, then there is stuff you need to know about me...” Megan began.
“We don’t need to discuss it now...”
“Now is as good a time as ever, Tim,” Megan replied and took both my hands in hers. “I’ve been playing solitaire for too long now, I feel with you there’s a new dawn breaking and I am ready to live again ... If I can remember how...”
I looked at her face in the soft light from the pathway lamp. She was smiling.
It wasn’t the teasing smile I had become accustomed to. There was something vulnerable in it. Something that told me she had just opened a door she had kept locked for a very long time.
“I lost my mom and dad when I was nine. They died in a car wreck. A drunk driver took them out in a head-on collision. The people said they died instantly. There one moment ... and gone the next ... Turning my life to shit.”
The words seemed heavier in the cold night air. I tightened my grip around her hands.
“I’m sorry, Megan. But I thought you said your dad took you to the airport?”
“He is not my biological father. He was the last decent person to raise me, paid for my studies, bought me things I needed and hugged me when I was sad...”
I didn’t interrupt. There are times when the best thing a man can do is shut his mouth and listen. So I listened.
Megan told me about the life that had followed the accident. About being bounced from one foster-care home to another, about school and the cruelty that children could inflict on someone they considered different. She told me about boys who seemed interested only because they wanted to get inside her pants, and how quickly they disappeared when they discovered that she could actually hold a conversation and wasn’t interested in a quick romp in the hay.
The bitterness wasn’t in her voice anymore. That was perhaps what struck me most. She wasn’t telling me these things because she wanted sympathy. She was explaining how she had become the woman sitting beside me.
People, she had learned, could be messy. People could lie. People could pretend to be friends while collecting information to use against you.
She told me about the girl at university who was supposed to be her best friend, only to discover that she had been gathering information about Megan and passing it on to boys who wanted exactly what the other boys had wanted.
Trust had become a luxury. Her ‘dad’ was the exception. The only person who had stayed. The only person she could rely on.
There was one thing, however, that didn’t make sense.
Linda had warned me never to call Megan Blossom. She had told me it was connected to the last words spoken to Megan by her father.
Eventually, I had to ask.
“Linda warned me never to call you Blossom as that was the last words spoken to you by your dad when he died of a heart attack...”
Megan raised an eyebrow. “So, you two did gossip about me?”
“No, she said that she is keeping an eye on me and if I stray off the straight path, she’ll kill me slowly, dismember my body and drop it in trash cans all over the city.”
“Hmm ... that’s Linda ... But no, that was a story I told her when one irritating one-track-mind bozo kept on calling me Blossom.”
“She should have started by dismembering his body!”
That earned a small laugh from her.
“Anyway, I was bounced from one foster-care home to another, until, James, a far-off nephew of my mother, found out and adopted me. Him and his late wife. They gave me the home I always wanted. Now only James is left ... He’ll be seventy-four this year.”
There was something in the way she said his name. Not just affection. Gratitude.
“I would like to meet James.”
“You will. As soon as we land at Wonderboom, I’ll call him to come fetch me.”
“I can take you home, Megs. It’s not that big a deal.”
“No. You go home and rest up. We can meet later...” Then she squeezed my hands. “Remember you got permission to officially court me,” she giggled. “So I need to see how you go about it.”
“I still have to get past James...” I chuckled.
That brought the sparkle back into her eyes.
“James, will like you. Especially if you two start talking aircraft. He flew Boeing 747s for SAA on international routes. Always brought me something from the cities he stayed over in.”
That explained a few things. The aircraft fascination suddenly made a lot more sense.
“You were lucky they found you...”
“Yes, James is my safety net ... Other people just kept on going away...”
I didn’t have an answer for that. Sometimes there simply wasn’t one.
Instead, I looked towards the lake. The breeze had picked up slightly, and the cold air moved through the trees with a soft rustling sound.
“It’s getting chilly out here. Let me go give you a mug of Rooibos...”
“ ... and a Eat-Sum-Mor biscuit?” She finished my sentence.
“Yes.”
“And a good night kiss...”
“Definitely, absolutely, YES!”
“Good!”
She smiled, and somehow that single word carried far more meaning than it should have.
We got up from the bench and started walking towards the Lakeside Suites.
From the direction of Champagne Castle, a light breeze began to blow, picking up fallen leaves and sending them skittering across the pathway towards the east. It stirred the branches overhead, making the leaves whisper against one another.
Megan shivered beside me.
I moved a little closer without thinking. She leaned into me and snaked my arm around her waist.
“Tonight will be the last of the winter cold,” she softly said. “Tomorrow we go on back to warmer days in the Bushveld...”
Back at my Lakeside Suite, the quietness of the room felt almost strange after the noise and laughter of the farewell braai. The door closed behind us, shutting out most of the sounds from the resort, leaving only the occasional muffled voice and the distant clink of somebody clearing tables.
The cold had followed us inside, though. It seemed to cling to our clothes after that walk beside the little lake.
I switched on the kitchenette light and filled the kettle.
While it rumbled towards the boil, Megan opened the cupboard and took out two mugs. She prepared the teabags and added sugar to each, apparently knowing exactly how she liked her evening Rooibos.
The kettle clicked off.
I poured the steaming water, and almost immediately the familiar reddish colour began spreading through the mugs. A faint, earthy sweetness rose with the steam.
I watched Megan stir hers.
“On Boschendal we brew the Rooibos a little different,” I remarked.
“Oh, what do you do different?” Megan replied and raised one eyebrow.
“We don’t use teabags,” I explained. “I’m not a particular tea drinker, but my sister, Naomi, does it with the loose Rooibos leaves. She places one tablespoon of Rooibos per cup or mug in a little tea kettle. Pours water on it and then boils it on the stove for five to eight minutes. Then she removes it from the heat and lets it stand to rest for about two minutes.”
“That sounds like a ritual,” Megan chuckled.
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