Page 36 of Just Come Over
“Just like you say,” Isaiah said with his wicked little grin, the one time when he looked like his dad, ‘Isaiah, I need some quiet time now.’”
She laughed, leaned over, and kissed his head, and for once, he didn’t shift under that. “Yeh. Exactly like that. We’ll love each other enough to tell the truth, even if it feels hard. That’s our deal.”
When Rhys pulled into the driveway, Casey asked, “How come your house looks like the doctor’s office?”
Still asking. Still stroppy. His body and mind might feel as battered as after a one-point loss to South Africa, but he liked this kid. A lot. He said, “It’s an unobtrusive entrance,” then pulled into the garage and cut off her view of the low wooden structure. Its narrow vertical windows were the only thing visible on the front—well, actually, the back of the house—in the purely rectangular, absolutely plain façade, and that was fine by him. Anonymous was good.
He considered explaining that New Zealand had only four and a half million people, and that he couldn’t buy groceries or get a coffee without having a chat with half of them, but he saved it for another day, climbed out of the car, and said, “The good stuff doesn’t always show on the outside. Life lesson. Or just say that not all houses look alike. You saw the inside this morning. That didn’t look like a doctor’s office, did it?”
“Other people’s houses still look likehouses,though,” she insisted. “Or mopartments. They have curtains, and you don’t have any curtains. And they have pretty things in them. You don’t have any pretty things. My real house is a mopartment, but it doesn’t look like your house, either.”
He didn’t know how to answer that, so he didn’t. She waited, shifting from foot to foot, while he hauled her school uniform, the clothes Zora had bought, the groceries, the bag of hair paraphernalia, and the borrowed sheets out of the back of the car. He’d always been a minimalist sort of fella. It looked like that was another part of his life that was about to blow up. He grabbed one last bag and told her, “Run on ahead, if you’re that impatient.” She was practically hopping up and down now.
“I have to go to the bathroom really bad,” she said.
Not this again. “Why didn’t you go at Zora’s?” he asked. It wasn’t easy to juggle everything and still get the door into the house open. It was dark in here, but he could hear Casey jumping around. He also couldn’t remember where the light switch was, though, especially since he was fumbling around for it and trying to get his trainers off while still holding his bags.
“Because Isaiah was there,” she said. “You can’t tell about going to the bathroom to boys.” When he got the light on, she sat on the floor and started untying her shoelaces. One of them was in a knot, and she tugged at it. “And you’re supposed to remind me.”
“Next time,” he said, “go on and ask. Ask Zora. Ask whoever. You can ask to use the bathroom, surely. We went through this on the plane, remember?” He tried to remember where the bathroom was up here. He’d spent less than a week in the house, and putting Casey’s suitcase into one of the bedrooms this morning marked the sum total of his exploration of the upper level thus far.
He was heading down the passage to turn the lights on, toting a collection of purchases that would have done justice to a Maharani visiting a neighboring state, when he realized Casey wasn’t with him and looked back.
She was still on the floor in the entry, one shoe off and one on, looking stricken.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“I wet my pants.” Her chin was wobbling. “I tried really hard not to, but a little bit came out anyway. And then it all came out, and I couldn’t make it stop.”
She was going to cry. Bloodyhell.This day just kept giving. “Stay there,” he told her. “I’ll get towels.”
He found her bedroom, tossed everything but the groceries onto the bare mattress, went into the bathroom, once he remembered where it was, and realized there were no towels up here. Of course there weren’t. There wasn’t even any toilet paper up here. He had to go all the way down the stairs and around the house to his own ensuite bath to get both. When he came back, Caseywascrying. Silently, not even trying to wipe the tears away. And still sitting exactly where he’d left her.
He’d said to stay there, and she’d had no choice but to mind him, even if it meant sitting in a puddle with her jeans soaked, feeling like she’d failed, knowing he was mad, and wondering if he was going to throw her away.
It was right there: the memory of Dylan, his shorts wet and the pee still dripping into the grass, standing in the middle of the yard and crying, while the cousins laughed and Rhys raged, hot with frustration and embarrassment, “Why do you have to be such a baby? You’re useless. Go change before Nan sees. You aren’t playing with us anymore, either. Stay in the house, baby.” The satisfaction and the shame when Dylan had run away, and the hollow spot in the pit of his stomach.
You could always do better. Time to start. He said, “Here. Let’s get that wet kit off,” then crouched down and stripped her T-shirt and jeans off her, the ones she’d been wearing for two days now. In Chicago in the winter snow, and in Auckland in summer. At a foster home, at a restaurant being questioned by the police, at an airport, on a plane, at her aunt’s, at a new school where she’d be the newest of all and had the wrong accent, and in the not-halfway-unpacked house of a strange man who wasn’t really her father, and who knew it. She was looking over his shoulder now, for once not meeting his gaze, trying to suppress the sobs, and failing. Like somebody who’d been pushed too far, and was finally giving up.
He’d never been able to stand giving up, and he couldn’t stand watching her do it, either. He got his hands under her arms, pulled her to her feet, and said, “No worries. It happens. Everything washes the same whether you pee on it or not.”
Her undies were blue, with dots on, and on the front, they saidFriday.Just as wrong in New Zealand as they’d have been in Chicago, where it was now Tuesday. There’d been nobody to tell her which ones to wear, he guessed, or nobody who’d cared enough to do it. Her mum had probably helped her pick out her clothes. At night, maybe, before she’d read her a story.
“Next time,” he said, knowing his voice was too gruff but unable to keep it from being any other way, “askmeabout the toilet. That’s a Dad job.” He got a towel wrapped around her. That was better. She looked safer. Warmer.
“You won’t...” She’d stopped crying, but she was looking down, like she didn’t want him to see her face. “You won’t be there. Because you have to go to... work.” A sniff. “And then you’re going away.”
“You ask Auntie Zora, then, or your teacher. You ask Isaiah. He’s your cousin.” And kinder than Rhys had ever been, because he had Zora in him.
“What if I wet my pants again at my new school, in Year Two, though? Everybody will laugh.”
She looked at him at last. Those eyes. Too scared, and too tired. He should probably get on her level to answer, so he crouched down, kept a hand on her shoulder, and said, “Fair point. Let’s think about it. First of all, you won’t do that, because you’ll ask your teacher when you first need to go. And if itdoeshappen, and somebody laughs, you say, ‘So what? Bet you lot have all peed your pants as well. I don’t have to go anymore, anyway, which means I can kick your arses.’ They can try to embarrass you, and they probably will. That doesn’t mean you have to show it. You turn it around onto them, that’s all.”
Her expression could only be called skeptical, but that was an improvement over “defeated.” He lifted a corner of the towel and wiped her face, and that was better, too.
“That’s not the right thing to say, I don’t think,” she said. “You’re not supposed to say to do fighting.”
She was probably right. Zora would no doubt have offered up something better. He tried to think of what it would be, blanked, and gave up. “That’s because I’m the dad,” he said. “That’s thedadthing to say. Never let them see you’re scared.”
