Part 3

When I finished my long chat with Kathryn, she forgave me about both the money incidents.

Suddenly, out of the blue came my brother from America. He had obviously been watching the netball game. He had seen that I was not on the court, he would not give me the money.

He stared at me. I stared back. He lunged forward towards me. I broke into a run. He followed me all the way downstairs until I ran into the Silver Ferns changing room. I just realized that I wasn’t alone. Sitting on the bench, was my whole netball team and my coach.

I realised that the netball team didn’t want me interrupting their netball meeting, so I willingly slipped slowly to face my fate.

I expected my brother to get really angry at me and throw a big fit at me, but he didn’t. Instead, he said in a stern voice,

“Why? Why did you do this to me? Your own brother!”

“I didn’t mean to. I really needed the money because I had to pay back a friend of mine. That’s all. I’m really sorry. Please forgive me,” I exclaimed while I looked at my feet with my head hung low.

I kept looking at my feet, while shuffling a bit from time to time, until he let out a long sigh. I knew this meant that he had finally forgiven me. This made my heart rise, patching up all the holes in my conscience that I had created by tricking my brother to get the money. I instantly threw my arms around him and hugged him, almost afraid that if I let go, he would disappear from my hands.

Finally, he laughed. He let go, and I thought he was going to run away from me, but instead, he took something out from his pocket and gave it to me. It took me some time to register what it was. It was the $10,000 that my brother had promised me, if the Silver Ferns won the big game! My eyes lit up with happiness. My brother said softly,

“Go find your friend, give her the money.” I cried out to him as I ran to find Kathryn,

“Thank you brother, I will never forget this!” Then he disappeared from my sight.