Page 82 of Just Come Over
“I’m not,” he said. Fiercely, because that was how he felt. “I’m not a lie.”
Another heave of her chest, and the tears came. He wrapped her up, held her close, rocked her back and forth, and let her cry. Just like he’d done before, except that this time, he got to kiss the top of her head, run his hand down her back, and say, “Shh, baby. Shh. It’s all right. It’s going to be all right.” And he thought,She’s OK, then. She’s OK. Thank you, God.
He’d said he could take anything. It wasn’t true.
She sat up, finally, wiped her face on her shirt, and tried to laugh, and he said, “The toilets aren’t even open anymore. After hours, eh.”
“Never mind. I’ll just be disgusting.”
“Tell me. What happened?”
She looked at him, then. Soberly. Straight on. Pink nose, blotchy cheeks. Honest as the day. “Casey’s not yours. She’s Dylan’s.”
It was a kick in the gut. “No. She’s mine.”
“No, Rhys. She’s not. I found his emails with her mum. With India Hawk. And with other women, too. With...” She stopped, breathed, and went on. “Heni Johnson, in Nelson. I’vemether. She cried, at Dylan’s tangi, and I thought, that’s sweet. But every time the Blues played the Crusaders, she came to see Dylan. Not toseehim. To ‘bring him luck.’ Are you going to tell me you didn’t know that?”
Heni Johnson. Their cousin Franklin’s partner. Tall and beautiful in a lush Maori way that wasn’t anything like Zora. “That particularly?” he said. “No. I didn’t.”
“And how many others? How many, Rhys? And all that time, he was paying for Casey. The payments stopped when he got ill. When did you take over? And why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t. I didn’t take over.”
She stood up like a Jack-in-the-box. “Don’tlieto me. I know you did. You must have, eventually, once he couldn’t, because you were there as soon as her mum died, weren’t you? I saw the email where she told him she was pregnant. I saw all of it, and I saw when she stopped asking. I found the email address he was using. He used the same password every time, did you know that? My name, and his All Blacks number. He used mynameon the password he used to cheat. Who does that? How could he do that to me?”
He wanted to say,He used it because he loved you,but he couldn’t say that. It would be a slap in the face. Instead, he said, “I don’t know. I never knew. If I’d had you and Isaiah, I’d never have let you go.”
She was barely listening to him. She couldn’t. She had to get this out. “I found the account, too,” she said. “I know you must have known about that.”
“What account?”
“The one with a hundred twenty-seven thousanddollarsin it. Thesecretone. Why didn’t you tell me?” She was tearing up again. Too bad. He was just going to have to put up with it. “Why did you let me make a fool of myself? Do you know howhardit’s been? Do you have any idea how I’ve worried?”
“Wait. Back up. Dylan left an account with money in it?”
“Yes.He was hiding money from me for years. For all...” Another breath. “All the years we were married. At least once I was pregnant with Isaiah.” Her voice was shaking. “Do you know how that feels? Do you know how ithurts?I know I’m not glamorous. I’ve always known. I thought I wasn’t... that it was me.”
“No. It wasn’t you. It was Dylan. And no, I don’t know how it feels, but I can guess.”
“And when Isaiah was born with a hole in his heart. When I was spending my time in hospital with him. That was when the emails started for real.” She put a hand up and dashed away the tears. Stupid tears. “Like life was too much, and we weren’t what he wanted after all, and he was just waiting to run away from it. From us. He was waiting for his chance, but his chance wasthere.Why didn’t he take it? What, I couldn’t have handled it? I could have handled it. Idid.Iam.I handled hisdying.Why couldn’t he have just left me, if he didn’t want Isaiah, if he didn’t want...” Her chin wobbled, and she hated that, too. “Me? Why couldn’t he have left, so I didn’t have to handle it anymore?”
“You could’ve handled it. But he couldn’t. And so you know? I want to punch a wall right now. If Dylan were here, I’d punch him, except that I told myself I’d never do that again. D’you want to know how many times I’ve thought that since he died? I couldn’t even tell you.”
“What do you mean, he couldn’t?”
This conversation was all over the place. Rhys’s face had flushed dark, but that was good. That was what needed to happen. She needed this out, and she needed it over. “He couldn’t take you leaving him,” he said. “It was his biggest fear, when he fell ill, that you’d leave him alone. If he was saving money? He was saving it because he thought he was the one who’d be alone. He was so afraid of it, he made it happen. He was a brilliant rugby player, with heaps more talent than I ever had. Better looking, that’s certain, and he lit up the room. Everybody wanted to be around him. Always. And he was a bloody fool and his own worst enemy, too. Also always.”
“That makes no sense. None of it does. He didn’t have to hide money away. He was the oneearning.He took Isaiah’s living from him. We ate eggs and brown rice for dinner twice a week after he died. We ate beans and kumara and... and...” She was running out of breath. “I lay awake at night and thought about losing the house.”
“I didn’t say it was right. I just said it was true. And you should’ve told me. Or I should’ve asked you. I should’ve known.”
She bounced up, wound to her limit, and walked a circle, because she couldn’t keep sitting. “What about Casey? Tell the truth, Rhys. I have to know now. I can’t take any more lies.”
He stood up, too, and stood solid, like you wouldn’t move him with a crane. “First I heard of her was after her mum died. That’s when I found out he’d put my name on the birth certificate.”
“But you had to know she wasn’t yours.” She looked into his mountain-stream eyes, and the blood left her head. “Wait. No.”
“No what?”
