Page 114 of Just Come Over
“And then you went to Nelson,” she said. “And to Motueka.”
“I needed to know who else Te Rangi had told about Casey.”
Tension in her shoulders, now. “And who had he told?”
“Nobody.” He felt her relax, like it mattered as much to her as it did to him. “So that’s good. He didn’t know that Dylan hadn’t taken care of Casey. He’d promised he would.”
She sighed. “I wish I could be surprised. I wish he would have, except that if he had—would we ever have known about her?”
His hand stopped moving. “You’re right. When the wheels finally lifted off tonight, I thought,Thank God. Going home.And I meant it. It was a...” He blew out a breath. “A hard day.”
“Yeh. For me, too.”
That took him a second. “Because I didn’t tell you.Shit.I just thought... I wasn’t sure...”
His hand was shaking on her shoulder. He tried to hold it still, and he couldn’t. Not even close. It was a leaf hanging on a tree, long since turned brown, about to fall, and you could no more stop the leaves from falling than you could stop the tide from going out. Than you could stop death. He got a hand up to his eyes and squeezed them shut, and that didn’t work, either. His chest was too tight, and the tears wouldn’t stay inside.
An ugly, ragged sound that was a sob, painful, feeling like it was piercing his chest. Another one, and there the tears were, forcing their way past his eyelids, past his hand, and down his cheeks, like he had no control at all.
The dam burst. He wrenched his arm from around Zora’s shoulders, got his elbows onto his knees and his hands over his face, and cried some more. Washed away in the flood, and not even able to swim. Going under.
Darkness. Panic. And something else. Zora’s gentle hands on him. Zora’s voice, calling to him.
“Rhys. You’re OK. That’s OK. You did so well.” Her hands cradling his head, her lips on his forehead. Seeing his tears, and letting them fall. Nothing frantic in her. Nothing but peace. “I’m so proud of you,” she said. “I love you so much, and I’ve got you. It’s going to be OK.”
Zora, weaving a net for him with her hands and her voice, her softness and her strength. Giving him a place to catch himself, a place to land.
Bringing him home.
A couple weeks later, a few things had happened.
The Blues had drawn a game against the Hurricanes, then won one against the Rebels in Canberra, and were lying third on the New Zealand table, one point below the ’Canes. Not the spot you’d choose. On the other hand, Rhys had left Casey with Zora and Isaiah again, and they were all in his house, which made him feel about a hundred percent better.
Also, as of today, he was divorced.
You didn’t have to be present for it to happen, which was fortunate, as he was in Brisbane, preparing for the game against the Reds in two days, and he couldn’t afford to be distracted.
He wasn’t thinking about either thing right now, because he was reading with Casey. On this trip, he’d come up with the somewhat brilliant idea to get himself an electronic copy ofThe Runaway Bunny,so he could read it to her last thing at night, and they could turn the pages together.
He finished the story, and she said, “I like the part where the mother bunny is the wind the best, because the little bunny’s ears are the sails on a sailboat, but they’re still pink, because they’re the inside part.” She was sitting cross-legged in her PJs on her princess bed with Marshmallow in her lap, and she lifted the bunny’s ears gently to show him. “See?”
“Mm,” he said. “The little bunny in the story looks like Marshmallow, a bit.”
“Except Marshmallow’s cuter.”
He considered saying, “He ought to be. He cost a hundred dollars,” but he didn’t. Instead, he said, “Time to go to sleep, then, and you can imagine being the sailboat, with your bunny ears being blown across the harbor by the wind.”
“Because you’re the wind,” she said. “But if I get a bad dream, you’re very far away.”
“Good thing I’ve got heaps of breath,” he said. “Enough to reach all the way across the Tasman.”
Yes, it was silly, but she’d like to hear it.
“And you have a very loud voice.” Shedidwant to hear it.
“I do. Right now, it’s telling you to give the phone to Auntie Zora so you can go to sleep. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
She got off the bed and put Marshmallow back in his cage, her hands gentle, giving each of the bunnies a stroke, and then she headed out the door and down the stairs.
