Page 83 of Just Come Over
She was backing up. “You didn’t know whose she was, because you knew she could’ve been yours just as easily. Tell me you both didn’t sleep with her. That that wasn’t a... thing between you.” She was rocking again. “No.” She had her hands over her ears, she realized, like she didn’t want to hear. She took them away. “Or tell me if it’s true. If I’m... part of it. If it was some kind of competition, some sick agreement. Tell me. I have to know.”
“No.”It came out as a roar, and she jumped. “No. I was engaged to Victoria.”
“And you didn’t cheat? Comeon,Rhys.”
He was glowering now. Dylan had been wonderful at reassurance. Wonderful at talking. Wonderful at apology. Rhys wasn’t wonderful at any of them. “No. Are you through insulting me? I never had a threesome with my brother. And, yeh, I cheated on girlfriends when I was younger. More than once. In Aussie. I got called out for it. I still hear about it. Couple of incidents there where somebody took a photo. You probably saw. I did everything wrong, I felt like shit, and I stopped doing it.”
“That’s your life lesson?” She was going to laugh. It was mad. It was impossible. But still, she was going to laugh.
“Yes, it’s my life lesson. Don’t do shit things that will make you feel like shit.”
She did laugh, and she sat down again, too. “Noted.”
He sat down beside her, looking like he was either going to growl, or he was going to smile. He smiled. Clearly reluctantly. She sobered and asked, “So if it wasn’t you, couldn’t have been you... why did you say she was yours?”
“What else could I do?”
“Well, let’s see... take a DNA test?”
“Have you seen Casey’s eyes?’
Hereyes?“That her eyes are like yours?” she hazarded.
It took him a minute, and when the words came out, they were jerky. “We weren’t wanted kids. I wonder if you know what that means. I waited three days in the cold one winter, in Invercargill, for our Nan, wondering if she’d come. In the school holidays, that was, and our mum was gone, off with some fella. There’s no school breakfast and lunch in the school holidays. We ate a packet of bologna out of the fridge, and five eggs, two every day until the last day, when there was only one to share between us. I took the blue bits off the bread and spread Marmite on the toast so you couldn’t taste the mold. The heat was off, because she hadn’t paid the bill. Dylan was supposed to go in the toilet every time. He was three. He kept forgetting. I’d shout at him. Hit him. When our Nan came at last, he had bruises on his arms.” His eyes, when he looked at her again, were bleak. “She asked if our mum had done it. I said yes. Our mum didn’t do it. I did. I hit him, and I lied about it. I know what it’s like when nobody wants you, and you can only count on yourself, because somebody else will only take their anger and frustration out on you. I knew what Dylan felt, because I did it to him. I don’t want that for Casey.”
Her throat had closed, and she had a hand on his arm. “Rhys—you wereeight.”
“Isaiah’s eight.”
“Isaiah knows how to care for somebody. He learned it from me. And he knows he doesn’t have to be in charge. He’s not alone in the dark and the cold, feeling the panic of knowing it’s all on him. Maybe you could look at it this way. That you never left Dylan, whatever you think, anytime you had a choice. That you did your best, even if that was never going to be good enough, because you were eight, or nine, or ten, and you didn’t know how to do it better. And that youdidtake Casey.”
“Yeh, I took her. She’s my whanau.”
“But you didn’t tell me about her.”
“She’s my blood. She’s not yours.”
She reared back at that, and he shook his head like a frustrated bull and said, “That’s not what I mean. I couldn’t tell you. You were on your feet again. I wanted to make it better, not worse.”
They sat for a minute in silence. It was getting cold, and she shivered. Rhys put an arm around her, sighed, and said, “It was a mess, eh. I’m sorry I wasn’t here when you found out. I wish you’d told me on the phone. It’s been a bad couple of days. I thought something was wrong with you, or Isaiah. But I thought it was something wrong with you.” He wasn’t looking at her. He was staring into the bush instead.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I guess that’s happened a lot.”
His throat moved convulsively, and the rest of him didn’t. “Yeh.”
She found his hand and took it in hers. She’d never thought, somehow, of what he’d lost. “I’m here now. We’re both here now.”
He turned his head to look at her. “And you still have more to say. Go on and say it.”
She hesitated, but he was right. She said, “What I want to know, what I keep coming back to, is—why didn’t he tell you about Casey before, when he knew he was dying? Why didn’t he tell me? About the money, either? I was frantic, some days. Somemonths.He left insurance, but it wasn’t nearly enough. What must Casey’s mum have gone through? She didn’t have any insurance, and then she didn’t have any child support, either. I read her emails. And that money was justsittingthere.” She beat the heel of her hand against her thigh, then did it again. She knew what Rhys had meant, because she was the one who wanted to put her fist through the wall now. “I hate that she felt that. I hate that she cried, and she worried. I hate that I didn’t know.”
“He’d have had to tell you, or he’d have had to tell me, which would’ve been even worse. He didn’t want to be a disappointment again. He didn’t want me telling him he was useless, feeling like I was smacking him again. He didn’t want anybody looking deeper, because he couldn’t stand to look there himself. And I love you.”
She stopped beating on her thigh. “P-pardon?”
“I keep thinking—what is it? And I think it’s that.” He laced his fingers slowly through hers, then lifted her hand to his mouth and, his eyes still on hers, brushed his lips over her knuckles, and she could swear her heart melted. “I think it’s your courage. I think it’s your heart. I’m not happy I had to say all of that, but you’re the only one I could have said it to.”
She rested her head against his shoulder, finally, he put his arm around her, and it felt like coming home. “What are we going to do?” she asked. “Everybody’s going to know about us.”
