Page 9 of Just Come Over
It had surprised him, when he’d first realized it. Shocked him, in fact. Even before high school, the way some kids did exactly what they were told to do, some shirked even that, as if it would happen by magic, and others did more. He’d assumed that everybody would do more. If you loved something, didn’t you want to get better? Didn’t you want to be the best? What was the point in trying at all, then?
He’d tried to explain that to Dylan, more times than he could count. It had never worked. Now, he gave a player the message once, loud and clear. If they didn’t get it the first time? He cut them loose. He could coach passing. He could coach kicking and tackling and scrummaging, too. He couldn’t coach drive, and he couldn’t coach heart.
Another forty-five minutes, and the squad headed into the sheds, the younger boys moving faster, like horses heading toward the barn, some of the veterans taking a few more minutes. Will having a final few kicks at goal, because his boot had been off today in the wind and the wet. Three others running lines, practicing a tricky play they’d been working out.
Kors had been headed in, pulling his beanie off along the way. Now, he hesitated, then tugged the hat back on and jogged over to the little group, positioned himself along the line, and ran the next one with them.
“Better,” Finn said. “Even if all he’s doing is showing you.”
“Push him harder in the gym tomorrow,” Rhys said. “If he’s not going to level up, we may as well find out in preseason.”
“Righto,” Finn said, and they headed in, scooping up rugby balls along the way. In the coach’s room, Rhys stripped off his jacket and track pants, both sodden with the soaking rain, and sat behind the desk to make a few notes before he headed out.
He had six voicemails, he saw, none of them from anybody he was particularly keen to talk to. Five of them could wait, but when your lawyer said, “Ring me back today,” you probably had to answer that one.
It had better not be about Victoria. It was bound to be about Victoria. Two months to go until their divorce was finalized. He rang the lawyer back.
“Afternoon,” Colin said. “You settled in, then? Everything go OK, getting into the house?”
Stalling. This didn’t sound like Colin at all. ItwasVictoria, then, and it was bad. The property settlement, or the alimony, which was meant to be done and dusted after this year.
“All good,” Rhys said. “What’s up?”
Across the room, Finn looked up, his blue eyes sharpening in his rough-hewn face.
Colin said, “Do you have a few minutes to talk?”
“Yeh. Go on.” Rhys didn’t sigh. The problem, whatever it was, would be there whether he ran from it or walked toward it. Walking toward it got it over sooner.
Colin said, “A woman in Chicago, a Ms. India Hawk, has died and left a child.Yourchild, apparently, as you signed an Acknowledgment of Paternity. I could say that I wish you’d told me, because this could certainly affect your property settlement with Victoria, but that’s a matter for another day. Right now, I need to know what you want to do about the child. Who would appear to be your daughter.”
Rhys said,“What?”Never the brightest answer. After that, he gathered his resources and said, “I haven’t acknowledged anything, because there’s nothingtoacknowledge. Explain why you think there is.” Across the room, Finn looked up again, then picked up some papers, stuffed them into a backpack, and headed out the door, closing it behind him, but Rhys barely noticed.
“Your signature’s on the document,” Colin said. “Recognizably yours. I have a copy in front of me here, which I’ll send over to you in a minute. Voluntary Acknowledgment of Paternity, State of Illinois, dated eleven days after the birth. It’s your name, and your address at the time. Your phone number and date of birth as well. Signed in front of a witness. Te Rangi Walton, whose address is given as Motueka. In addition, as passed on to me by the Department of Children and Family Services via a friend of India’s, you also paid child support for a number of years. That appears to have been an informal arrangement, because there’s no paperwork or any order on file. Next time, tell me first. The legalities are there to safeguard you as well as the child.”
Rhys was drowning in words. Time to start swimming. He said, “I won’t be telling you, because there’ll be nothing to tell, exactly the way there isn’t now. It’s not true. But before you ask—Te Rangi is my cousin. And that, and all the rest, means exactly nothing, because whoever signed that, it wasn’t me, and I imagine it wasn’t Te Rangi, either. The rest of it, the address and phone number, isn’t impossible information to come by, and as for my signature, it’s out there on a million rugby balls and T-shirts and game programs. Nice way out for whoever it was, though, putting my name to it.” The warmth in the office was suffocating. That was because his blood was boiling. “Wait,” he realized. “When am I meant to have done this?” He’d been gone from home half the time while he was playing in New Zealand, and almost all the time after that, first in Japan, playing and coaching, and then in France. You couldn’t get a girl pregnant if you weren’t there, and he’d been to Chicago exactly twice in his life. That was a relief.
“We’re going back almost seven years,” Colin said. “Chicago, early November. The first All Blacks test in the States.”
“I remember.” Not so much of a relief, then.
“India Hawk, as I said. Unusual name.” As always, Colin got more deliberate, to the point of sounding sleepy, the more the tension ratcheted up. He’d been an All Black himself, in the amateur age, and understood the particular issues of sportsmen. That was why Rhys liked him. Normally. He wasn’t a fan of this particular line of conversation.
“I don’t know anybody by that name,” he told Colin. “And seven years ago, I was engaged to Victoria.”
“I’m your lawyer,” Colin said, “not your judge. I can only help you if you tell me the truth.”
Rhys was trying not to lose his temper. Unfortunately, his temper was trying to lose him. “You think I’m afraid to tell you? I’m not afraid to tell you. If I had a kid, I’d be looking after it. I’m not, because I don’t have one, no matter who puts my name to their problems. It never happened. It isn’t true. Fight it. Starting bloody now.” That last part came out in a bit of a roar. Usually, that was for effect. This time, it was the dragon.
That should have been the end of it. It wasn’t. “I’m sending across a couple photos,” Colin said, “and that acknowledgment. I’ll wait until you have a look.”
Ten long seconds, and the email was in his inbox, and Rhys was clicking on it. And then on the first attachment.
An easy “no.” If he’d ever seen this woman before, he didn’t remember her. He’d met a lot of girls, and he’d slept with some of them. He hadn’t slept with this one, though. He hadn’t slept with anybody seven years ago, other than his fiancée.
Why, then, was his heart thumping out of his chest?
The girl, who surely looked younger than she actually was—he hoped so, anyway, because she looked eighteen—was blonde, pretty, and smiling, holding a toddler on her lap. The kid, whose hair was dark, was dressed up in white tights, a frilly blue dress with petticoats, and shiny black shoes, but stared stolidly at the camera as if she wasn’t on board with the frilliness or, in fact, any part of the occasion.
