Page 51 of Just Come Over
Casey didn’t put her rabbit back in the pen. She held him tighter and said, “Marshmallow doesn’t want to go with somebody else. He wants to come home with me. And Cinnamon is sad, because nobody’s holding him.”
Fine. Rhys picked up the fourth rabbit, who was, well, cinnamon-colored. How much trouble was he in that Casey and Isaiah had already named them? Marshmallow, Cinnamon, Cocoa, and Oreo. Heaps of trouble, that was how much. The tiny animal’s nose twitched, and he snuggled into Rhys’s palm as if he wanted to be there. Rhys gave him a careful stroke, feeling like he was about to squash him and resisting the cuteness with everything he had.
He was a hard man.Famouslya hard man. He did not cuddle bunnies. If anybody asked him to kiss one, he was refusing, no matter how Casey looked at him. “They’re smaller than I had in mind,” he told the woman, whose name was Nora. “Delicate, maybe.”
She snorted. “And small’s a bad thing? I don’t think so. About the most sought-after pet rabbit in the world just now. Most rabbit breeds don’t want to be held, but these ones love it. Perfect temperament for kids this age, if they can be gentle.”
“Also,” Rhys continued doggedly, “they’re all male. Not so good. Could be aggressive.” Anything less aggressive than the tiny furball currently eating a stalk of hay out of his hand couldn’t be imagined, but you never knew.
“Male rabbits are calmer,” Nora said. “More desirable. Less likely to nip. Like I said—if you don’t want them, that’s all well and good. It’s three weeks still until we move. I’ll have no trouble selling them in that time.IfI find the right family.” She eyed Rhys in what he could only call a suspicious fashion. “You’re an All Black, I understand. You could be violent.”
Violent?He could be violent? “I was an All Black, yeh,” he said, although there was no “was” about it. Once an All Black, always an All Black. He’d never forgotten his All Black number, his spot in the long line of proud men that stretched back over a hundred years, and he never would. The digits, and his name, were stitched into every one of the black jerseys tucked into a corner of a closet—a fraction of the seventy-nine he’d earned. He’d kept only the most memorable ones, and had given the rest away to various charities. He didn’t live in the past, and his number wasn’t tattooed on any part of him but his mind. “These days,” he said, “I’m a coach.” He didn’t address the “violent” part. What the hell?
Nora said, “Coach of the Blues, my husband says.”
“That’s right.”
She said, “I liked the fella they had before. He was a neighbor, just in the next street. They should have kept him on.”
“Aleke Fiso,” Isaiah said. “He went to coach Wales, though. And Uncle Rhys isn’t violent. Violent means hitting people at regular times, not in rugby. He doesn’t hit. I don’t think he hit people in rugby, even. Not with his hand.”
“You’re right,” Rhys said. “Hitting with your hand is generally frowned upon.”
“Or Finn Douglas,” Nora said, as if he hadn’t spoken. “I see his wife at the dairy from time to time. She’s lovely. Natural as you please. Why didn’t he get the job?”
Rhys didn’t answer that one, either. Coach selection was like any other kind of selection. The public wasn’t polled, and there was no point in arguing with the armchair critics who were convinced that they could put together a better squad. There was nothing that would satisfy them anyway. If you won every game, they’d ask why you hadn’t won them more convincingly, or how on earth you imagined you’d win the next one with those rubbish selections.
“Presumably,” Zora said, with a spark in her eye that didn’t bode well, “because he wasn’t the best choice, and Rhys is.”
“Didn’t win last night, I hear,” Nora said.
“You may not want to sell your rabbits to me, then,” Rhys said. “Understandable. Let’s go, Casey. Two more places to visit.”
“I never said that,” Nora said. “When did I say that?” Which was no surprise at all. In about thirty minutes, once he’d parted with too much money, he’d be “that lovely new coach, over at the Blues. You can tell he adores his little girl. Of course, they only select the solid ones for the All Blacks. You could see it in him.”
“If these look good to you,” he told Casey, setting Cinnamon down again, “choose the two you want, and let’s go.” There were probably things he should look for, rabbit diseases, ear malformations, whatever. They all looked fine to him, though. They looked like rabbits. Small ones.
“I can’t only picktwo,”she said. “They’ll be lonely. They’rebrothers.”
“They are not brothers,” he said. “They’re four rabbits of varying ages who happen to live in the same hutch.”
“They’re each other’sfamily,”she said. “They’d be sad. Can’t I have them all? Please? They’re very small. They’ll hardly take up any room. We could fitmorethan this.”
“I said two.” He could feel the control slipping right through his fingers. “I distinctly said two rabbits. We could buy about forty guinea pigs for the price of two of these rabbits, by the way. Guinea pigs are soft.” Why hadn’t he thought of that? Guinea pigs were also fairly interchangeable. If one of them turned up its toes in the night for mysterious reasons, he could substitute another one, with Casey none the wiser.
“But these are solittle,”she said. “They’ll fit.Please.I’ll do everything for them. I’ll give them hay and fill up their pellets and change their water bottle every day, and empty their tray and wash it out again every single week like you showed me, except you might have to help, because it’s very big and heavy. And I’ll give them toys and play with them and make sure they are very, very loved. They can be our family, and I won’t be lonesome when you’re—”
“Fine,” he said. “Fine. Four rabbits.”
“Four hundred dollars,” Nora said brightly. “Only because they aren’t babies, you understand. Otherwise, it would be six hundred.”
“Three hundred,” Rhys said, on principle. He had the feeling even that was too dear. She’d marked him as a sucker the moment she’d seen Casey’s eyes. Also, he’d had no idea in the world that rabbits could cost this much until he’d started looking around and had realized how much Casey would love the lop-eared ones. He should have bought her regular rabbits anyway. Normal, cheap, everyday rabbits. She would’ve been thrilled.
Too late now.
Nora shrugged. “I’ll show them to the other couple,” she said. “If there are any left, you can have them for a hundred dollars apiece.”
Casey let out a strangled cry of protest, and Rhys surrendered. “Fine,” he said. “Four hundred.”
