Page 111 of Just Come Over
Rhys looked up at the stars above the dark water, listened to the voices, the laughter, and the lap of the waves against the pier, and thought,Time to see if I can still play Union, maybe. Time to see if I can come back.The Broncos had won the NRL Grand Final, the box was ticked, and Rhys’s star was on the rise. Professionally, at least. Personally? Not so much. A fresh start sounded good. Better for Dylan, and better for him, too.
When the deal was signed and he rang his brother to tell him, Dylan was silent for so long, Rhys thought he’d lost the connection.
“Still there, bro?” he asked.
“Yeh,” Dylan said. “You could’ve told me before I moved to the Blues.”
You didn’t have much choice,Rhys didn’t say. Dylan had had too mixed a season with the Crusaders. Brilliant one week, strangely absent the next, unable to string together more than two good games in a row. “Could be we both needed a change,” he decided to say. “Second chance can be good.”
The third tombstone.
Dylan Ihaka Fletcher
Into the sunshine
Ihaka. “He will laugh.” And Dylan had, always. Lighting up a room or a crowd as easily as turning on a lamp, like that rice-paper kite flying high. The skills that dazzled you, and the grin on his face when he’d scored a try. He’d inked Zora’s name on his left wristband, closest to his heart, before every game, and after every one of those brilliant tries, he’d kissed it.
He’d fallen so frustratingly short so many times, or maybe it was something else. Maybe he’d never been able to grab hold of the best of himself for long enough, set it down firmly enough, to build on a solid foundation.
Rhys had never understood him, but he’d loved him, and he’d protected him as best he could. Imperfectly, always. But he’d tried.
This stone was larger, because it had finally dawned on Rhys that he could pay for better, and that it might be good for Zora and Isaiah if he did. Or maybe that wasn’t it at all. Maybe he’d needed to know that he’d done his best for his brother, this one last time.
His hair was dripping with rain now, his trousers and shoes soaked, as he crouched at the head of the grave and traced the winding path of pebbles placed amidst the nearly white granite from the bottom on up to the top, Dylan’s rocky journey through his too-short, blazingly-bright life. He touched the albatross carved into the V-shaped cutout in the top of the stone, where that path ended, running his fingers over the bird’s body. It was soaring already, its great wings outstretched, held to the stone only by their tips. Leaving the stony path behind and flying free, where his feet wouldn’t be caught up by obstacles, where he could sail across the tryline with a smile on his face, could kiss the name on his wrist and know that he was home.
Into the sunshine.
Rhys had left his brother alone, the thing Dylan had feared most. And then he’d come back.
Now, though? What was he doing now?
Was he taking Dylan’s wife and son, or was he taking care of them? You could see it either way. A double-edged sword. Or like Tumatauenga, who was the god of war, but also the god of hunting, of fishing, of cooking. The provider, and the conqueror.
You could only be the best of who you were. You couldn’t be somebody else.
He hono tangata e kore e motu; ka pa he taura waka e motu.
One can cut a canoe rope, but the bond between two hearts can never be severed.
“Haere ra, bro,” he said, feeling the prick of tears behind his eyelids, then a few escaping, and not caring. Nobody to see, not out here. Nobody to know. “Ka kite ano.”
Goodbye, brother. I’ll see you later.
He was only ten minutes from the airport, but he wasn’t going to catch that plane. He’d get the next one instead.
It was well after eight, and Rhys still wasn’t back. He’d said six-thirty, and then he’d texted that it would be later. Right now, Zora was readingHorton Hatches the Eggaloud on the couch. Casey was listening, and Isaiah was pretending he wasn’t. Zora had already given Casey her bath, and in another ten minutes, she was going to put her into Isaiah’s bottom bunk.
She finished the book, and Casey sighed and said, “I like this book very much, because Horton was always faithful, one hundred percent. He kept his promise and sat on the egg, even though the baby bird wasn’t really his. And then at the end, it was, and he got to keep it.”
Zora smoothed her hand over the girl’s hair, bent to kiss her head, and said, “He did keep his promise. Elephants never forget, that’s what they say. And elephant families stay together all their lives. A mother elephant stays with her daughters, and her daughters never forget her, even after she dies. If they go past another elephant’s bones, they stop and touch them gently with their trunks to say goodbye.”
“Only the females stay, though,” Isaiah said. Not just playing with Legos, then. “The males go off on their own. That’s because you can’t mate with your family. Like, cousins can’t. Or brothers and sisters. It’s if you share blood. Which doesn’t meanrealblood. It means your family.”
“What’s ‘mate’?” Casey asked.
“Having sex,” Isaiah said. “To make babies. You can’t make babies with your family. That’s why the males have to leave.”
Well, that had escalated quickly.
