Page 120 of Just Come Over
“I think it’s time for a hot chocolate,” Zora’s mum said, “and I have a very good idea. Let’s have it at my house, and I’ll show you something special.”
It was a blowing, rainy five o’clock in Brisbane. In five more minutes, Rhys would be getting on the bus with the team to go to the stadium, but at the moment, he was having a quick chat with Zora.
“Andthen,”she said, “Mum showed Casey her latest dollhouse. Don’t be surprised if Casey decides she doesn’t want to live with either of us anymore. She wants to magically shrink herself and live in the dollhouse, or possibly just move in with Mum and help her finish it. Fair warning.”
Rhys was laughing. He shouldn’t be. He should be switched on. He could switch on in five minutes, though. Right now, he was laughing. “And here I’d have said your Mum was a hard nut.”
“She wants a granddaughter. Hidden lusts are the hardest to control. Ask me how I know. On the other hand, that’s how I got interested in architecture, doing dollhouses with my Mum, so there you are.”
“What does she do with them?”
“You don’t care about this. I just thought it might amuse you.”
“Nah. Fascinating stuff. Go on. Tell me.”
“Donates them to Starship, for the children’s hospital. They get auctioned off every year at Christmas, furnished all the way down to the chandelier in the dining room and the food on the teeny-tiny table, and they bring in a surprising amount. They’re collectors’ items. She only does one a year, and she’s very good.”
“Somehow,” Rhys said, “that doesn’t surprise me.”
“And Casey...” Zora stopped a moment, and Rhys waited. “It’s like she’s a mixture of you and Dylan,” she finally said. “She looks like you, her eyes and her expression. Shestandslike you, and she’s got all your toughness, somehow. But she’s got so much charm, too. That’s all Dylan. And something of her Mum, I’m sure. Also, I just realized I told you that you aren’t charming. Whoops. Sorry.”
“That’s all right. I’mnotcharming. I’ll settle for ‘tough.’ That’ll do me.”
“And you’ve got to go.”
“Yeh, I do. See you tomorrow, baby. Love you.”
He was in the lobby of the hotel with Finn. He didn’t care. Finn already knew.
“I love you, too,” she said. “Good luck tonight.”
She rang off, and he thought about how she hadn’t said,I’ll love you either way,because it might jinx him.
You always assumed you’d win. No other attitude possible. That was how you came out fighting, and it was how you kept on fighting. All the way to the end.
Four hours later, the wind and the rain were still blowing at Suncorp Stadium, itwasalmost the end, and the Blues were still fighting. Down by three at 14 to 17, with seven minutes to go, which meant that a penalty would give the Blues a draw. Except that once again, they didn’t have the ball. The Reds did, and they were hanging on to it. Catch and pass, then pick and go, into the breakdown and out of it again, the machinery turning over. Eight phases. Nine. Ten.
They weren’t getting anywhere, though. In fact, they were going backward. A hundred-twenty-Kg lock driven back in a tackle by Marko Sendoa that you could practically hear in the coaches’ box, then another player wrapped up by Iain McCormick, his long arms reaching farther than anybody’s ought to have been able to as he wrestled the man to the ground.
The ball went back to the halfback, then to the No. 10, and this time, the Reds were going for the box kick. An acknowledgment of stalemate, and attempting the high-risk strategy, competing for the ball in the air and counting on winning it, or on being able to hold the Blues out from the tryline and preserve the win.
The No. 10 was chasing his own kick, and he knew where it would come down. Same as the game against the Crusaders, with Nic Wilkinson going up for it, and the Reds’ No. 10 leaping with him. Two bodies going up impossibly high, seeming to hang in the air, both of their hands on the ball. Nico coming down with the other man, caring more about the ball than he did about how he hit the ground, still wrestling. The Reds player had it, though. He was going to take it. Until Nico’s grip pried it loose, a split second before he landed on his back, and the ball came forward out of the 10’s hands.
The referee’s whistle, his hand out toward the Blues. Penalty.
They were forty meters out, close to the center of the field. Not a sure thing, not in the wind, but within Will Tawera’s range and his skill, even as knackered as he was. A penalty kick, three points, and it would be a draw.
Hugh, talking to the referee, making the decision.
You trusted your skipper to make the hard calls, to know what he saw out there and what the team could do. That was why he was the skipper.
The team lined up, and the kicking tee didn’t come out. Hugh was going for the corner. Going for the try, with three minutes to go. Will kicked it, conservative in the wind, making sure it went out, and they were eighteen meters from the tryline, and the win.
You didn’t worry about the mistakes you could make out there, or the ones you already had. You didn’t second-guess. You committed. No hesitation in Hugh at all, not tonight, or in anybody else. They were all in. They were believing.
The lineout, and the ball thrown in. Iain McCormick being lifted, rising high, snatching the ball out of the air, then coming down with it and passing it.
Except that he didn’t. It even took Rhys a second. Iain had sold the dummy pass to the halfback on the openside, then handed it to the blind side, to Hugh. The trick play that the squad had been practicing, that other day in the rain, the day he’d found out about Casey. Hugh was going down in a tackle, but he offloaded it behind his back to Tom Koru-Mansworth as he went, a tricky pass that a forward shouldn’t have been able to make.
