Page 3 of Just Say Christmas
Isaiah said, “That’s right, Casey. Mumsareall kinds of people, and they do all sorts of things. They can be astronauts or teachers or just mums. Just like Uncle Rhys isn’t home very much, which isn’t like most dads, but he’s still a dad, just a weird kind, because of rugby. Mum isn’t exactly your mum, but she’s close. And Uncle Rhys isn’t my dad, but he’s kind of close, too.”
Rhys said, “You do the best you can with what you’ve got. That’s life, eh. And what you’ve got, the two of you, is us. You’re stuck with it, so get used to it.” Which wouldn’t have been how Zora would have put it, but Casey’s face cleared, so it worked for her. “But we’ll get that angel,” Rhys promised after a moment, which was better. “Sounds good.”
“OK,” Casey said. “But you haven’t said about the other part.”
“What other part?” Zora asked.
Casey looked at Isaiah, then away again. “How come you fixed the stairs,” she said. “And made more rooms.”
“Uh . . .” Rhys said. “Because you said the stairs were scary. Holes in them, eh. A floating staircase isn’t safe for kids.”
“And because of a baby,” Isaiah said. “I heard you and Mum talking about it. A baby could fall through the holes and get hurt, and besides, you need carpet on the stairs for a baby, because they could fall. Babies cry heaps, though. Harry says babiesalwayscry, and they mess up your LEGOs and rip your books, and they poo in their nappies and stink.”
“Babies are like dolls, though,” Casey said, “only better, because they’re real. You can change their clothes and give them a bath and make them laugh, and they’re cute.”
Isaiah looked dubious. Rhys said, “To recap. A baby would cry and sometimes be stinky, but it would be cute, and you could be a big brother and sister. Pluses and minuses, I guess.”
“And maybe . . .” Casey said, then stopped.
“What?” Zora asked. “You can say, my darling. We’re all here to listen.”
“Maybe it would be different,” Casey said, pleating the pink duvet cover between her fingers and frowning ferociously down at it, looking too small against the big bed. “You know. If you had a real kid.”
Rhys stood up so fast, it took Zora by surprise. His black brows slammed together, and in that moment, he looked exactly like Casey. He said, “No.” Explosively.
Rhys always controlled his temper, and he did it now. It took an effort, but fortunately, Rhys also always made an effort. “No,” he said again, and then, “You’re my daughter, and once I marry Zora, you’ll be her daughter, too, and Isaiah’s sister. I don’t want to hear any more about elephants and blood. We’re not elephants. We’re a family, full stop. We’ll buy a Christmas angel. We’ll buy a Christmas tree. We’ll have Christmas presents and Christmas surprises, exactly like we planned. Auntie Zora and I will get married, and we’ll have a baby, and maybe another one, and you’ll be a big sister. And you’ll be my daughter through all of it. Forever. Understood?”
Another kid might have been intimidated, but not Casey. All she looked was relieved. She nodded.
“Good.” Rhys took a breath and sat down on the bed again. “Right, then. Let’s read this book, and then it’s bedtime. We may not know exactly how to do all of this, but we’ll work at it until we get better. You can’t win unless you get in the game.”
2
Not a Carnivorous Dinosaur
Friday,December 11
Kane
Kane Armstrong was big. You could call it the central fact of his life. Whoever had first said that size didn’t matter hadn’t been nearly six foot nine, and he hadn’t weighed two hundred seventy-four pounds.
When you were this size, the world didn’t fit you. Getting shoes made was a major undertaking, and a T-shirt with sleeves that stretched over your biceps ballooned around your waist. No car ceiling was ever high enough, and the only comfortable way to kiss a girl was to have her in your lap. Which, all right, wasn’t terrible. Scratch that one from the list. You ducked through every doorway, though, and tended to turn sideways as you went for good measure, like a human in a hobbit hole, in order for your shoulders to fit.
So, yes, he was unusually large. It wasn’t the most fascinating thing about him or anybody else, in his opinion, but it was what everybody noticed first, and as often as not, they assumed it went along with a walnut-sized brain and/or uncontrolled aggression, as if he were a particularly carnivorous dinosaur.
In reality, your size had nothing to do with your personality, as far as he could see. It wasn’t even necessary for rugby, which was actually a game for all sizes, from the bullet-headed, no-neck fireplugs that were your props to the Jack Russell terrier that was your halfback, yipping at his forward pack like so many recalcitrant sheep. And the locks, of course. Every player might be a certain size, but that only suggested your position, it didn’t dictate your success playing in it.
Six foot nine did, however, enable you to paint ceilings without a ladder or a roller, which was helpful when your stepsister was inconveniently and decidedly short, and insistent that although you’d actually come to Auckland for her fiancé’s stag weekend, this ceiling must be painted now, and there was only One Right Way to do it.
She wasn’t the only one, either.
“You should put more white in the middle there,” the room’s normal occupant, Isaiah Fletcher, aged nine, told Kane. “On either side, for the Magellanic clouds. You’ve only got the Milky Way so far.”
Kane swirled a bit of white paint into the still-damp dark-blue underlayer, as he’d been instructed, to create the proper night-sky effect, and felt another glob of white paint drop onto his forehead. “I’ll do my best, but it’s not going to be perfect. It’s not a scientific rendering. At least not with me doing it, it isn’t.”
He’d asked why you couldn’t just slap one of those stick-on murals up there, job done. Nyree had looked horrified. “Mass production,” she’d said. “No personality. No.” And then, “Never mind. You don’t have to help. I’ve got it.” Pugnaciously, because nobody had ever alerted Nyree that you had to be tall to be aggressive. Then she’d seemed to remember that she was on a serious deadline and looked stricken. As in—he wouldn’t help her, and what was she going to do now?
In other words—yes, he was here painting.
