Page 26 of Just Come Over
“See you.” He rang off, and she stuck her flowers back into water as hastily as she could without damage and headed for the door.
She opened it, and there he was, his shoulders blocking out the light and the usual look on his face, like whatever he was doing next, he was already roaring his way toward it.
She stepped back and said, “Oh. You meantnownow.”
“Yeh. We were outside. Too soon?” He was still frowning, and he was holding somebody’s hand. A girl of five or six, her curly dark hair wild around her face, her brows straight and dark, and her gaze intense.
A gaze that came from black-lashed hazel eyes.
It was hard to breathe. Zora’s body had frozen up, and her mind couldn’t put the pieces together.
“Hi,” she said when she got her breath back. “I’m Zora. What’s your name?” The girl was clutching a fashion-sized doll close to her body, and was wearing a pair of jeans that were a bit too short and surely warm for the day, and a black T-shirt that was too big, featuring a roaring dinosaur. Zora would have thought she was a boy, except that she so clearly wasn’t.
“Casey Moana Hawk,” the girl said.
“My daughter,” Rhys said, absolutely unnecessarily.
“Come in. I was just fixing my flowers. Or go on into the house and make a cup of tea,” Zora told Rhys, “and get something to eat as well, if you like. The door’s open. I’d offer to help, but...” She cast a hand out at the arrangements on the work table. “It’s my spa day.”
Get it together. Focus. This isn’t about you.
“I thought that generally involved nail varnish and a massage,” Rhys said, with a hint of a smile, as if he had no idea what kind of blow he’d just dealt her. “Nah, we’re good. We just had lunch.”
“It was a sandwich,” Casey said. “But I couldn’t have a cookie, even though they had lots of cookies.”
Zora wasn’t sure how to answer that. She looked at Rhys, who told the girl, “You had two cookies yesterday, and a chocolate tart on the plane as well.”
“That wasyesterday,though,” she said.
“Also,” he said, “you didn’t even finish your sandwich. You said you were full.”
“That was myregularstomach,” she said. “I still had room in mydessertstomach.”
The corner of his mouth twitched, but he said gravely, “You’ve got me there. We’d better tell Zora about our day, and ask her our questions, because she looks busy.”
“I am,” Zora said. “But glad to have company.” She wasn’t.
Not Rhys, too. She’d always thought he was solid. That when he said something, it was true, and when he stood by somebody, it was real. He hadn’t let Dylan down, ever. But a woman was different? A woman didn’t count?
If this girl was—what? Five? Six? He’d have been engaged to Victoria, or married to her, when she was born. He’d asked Victoria to marry him, had told her he loved her, and Victoria had known—she’dknown,Zora was as sure of that as she’d ever been sure of anything—that his word was good. And then he’d gone on tour and thrown all that trust away.
Dylan had said it didn’t mean anything, that everybody did it. She hadn’t believed it was true, but here the truth was, literally staring her in the face. She said, hearing her voice shake and unable to prevent it, “Would you like to get up on the stool and watch, Casey?”
“Yes, please,” the girl said, and Zora dragged it over, then got herself back into territory she knew something about. Flowers. She began with her bucket of hydrangeas, cutting them far up the stems and arranging them at the base of three round vases, letting the touch of the blossoms, the sweet-clove scent of the stock, the need to pay attention, distract her and soothe her, the same way they had at the very beginning. Which had been so much worse a time than this, however bad this felt, and she’d got through that, hadn’t she? “My son used to use this when he helped me,” she told Casey. “But he’s got so tall now, he doesn’t really need it. Isaiah’s eight. How old are you? You’d be cousins, I guess. And to Maori, that’s a big thing.” She was talking too much, when really, all she had were a thousand questions, sitting like a leaden lump in her belly. Or maybe a fiery lump, because there was something else in there, too.
Face it. It was rage.
“I’m six,” Casey said. “I’m in first grade, but they don’t have it here. They say it’s Year Two, but that would be second grade, because two and second are the same. But you have to do more things in second grade. It’s really hard. I have a friend who’s in second grade, and she says you have to read long words. I only know short words. My new school is a bad word, too.”
“Titirangi Primary,” Rhys said.
Zora had to smile, even through the rage. Her head was so confused. That accent was American.What?She said, “Isaiah’s a pupil there as well. Never mind, you’ll get used to saying it. It’s Maori, that’s all, and the bad words aren’t the same in Maori. Titirangi means ‘Fringe of heaven.’ Really, it means ‘Fringes of cloud in the sky,’ but heaven sounds better. A new school could make you feel a bit nervous, but I’m guessing that after a few days, you’ll find a spot where you fit. Most of the kids are pretty nice, I’ve found, and Isaiah will look out for you, too.”
Whatever Rhys had done, it wasn’t this little girl’s fault. There were dark shadows under her eyes, her hair needed major taming, and all the same, she stood on her stool like she’d been planted here, and here was where she was staying.
“I wouldn’t be nervous if I had rabbits,” Casey said. “You can pet rabbits if you’re sad, and they’re very soft.”
Something was wrong. Everything Zora said was fine. It was just the look in her eyes, like the shutters had come down. That could be, though, because she’d caught the look inhis.
