Page 90 of Just Say Christmas
Everything stopped.Rhys was still looking at Zora, and then he was looking at Casey. “What?” he asked. Which wasn’t too brilliant, but he couldn’t think of anything else to say, and apparently, neither could Zora.
“Lily said,” Casey said. Looking stubborn. Looking fearful. “That her mom told her dad that you didn’t have to be my dad, but it was good that you were a good dad anyway.”
Zora finally said, “I’m guessing Lily misunderstood. That sounds very confusing. Yes, your dad’s a good dad, and heisyour dad, so I don’t understand the question.”
Isaiah said, “Grownups don’t talk about important things in front of kids anyway, so she probably got it wrong. Also, she’s only four.”
“No,” Casey said, “because I said you did so have to be my dad, because youaremy dad, and Sophie told Lily not to say. People only tell you not to say if it’s true.”
Too many “she saids.” Too much uncertainty. “When did all this happen?” he asked. “All this conversation?”
“When we went to the toilet after fishing,” Casey said. “And Lily said she did so hear, because she was hiding to see if she could find out what her Christmas present was, and her mom said it.”
At a certain point, there was nobody else’s judgment to fall back on, just you in the moment and a decision to make. You had to back yourself. He said, “Right,” sat on the couch beside Zora, pulled Casey sideways into his lap so she could still see him, put his arms around her, and said, “First—I’m your dad. Got your birth certificate in a drawer in my office, with my name on it. Got the form I signed when I got you in Chicago, saying you were mine. Got the form from when we changed your name to Fletcher, because that’s my name, and now it’s your name. Also Isaiah’s name.”
“Because of his dad,” Casey said.
Her eyes were huge, and this was a niggle that wouldn’t go away. Time to face it. If Lily had overheard that, somebody else could, too. There was his cousin Te Rangi, who’d signed the birth certificate witnessing that forged signature. How long before Te Rangi said something tohiswife, or one of the others, and it got passed around as the juicy bit of news it was? Rhys had known Te Rangi too long to believe it wouldn’t happen. One too many beers, one too many late nights, one too many visits down in Nelson with the cuzzies, like they were doing nextweek,and Te Rangi seeing Dylan’s charm in Casey? It would happen. Time to put it out there, and put it to rest.
“Isaiah’s name is Fletcher because it was his dad’s name,” he said. “My brother Dylan’s name. I’m your dad in every way that matters.”Too late to think twice now. Go on and say it.“But I didn’t know your mum. I never met her. Isaiah’s dad did.”
Oh,he realized, the moment he’d said it. This was going to rock Isaiah’s foundations, too. “Mate,” he told the boy, “come sit by us.”
Isaiah didn’t. He stood there and said, “You mean my dad was Casey’s dad?”
“Not quite,” Rhys said. “Or yes, but . . . there’s being a father biologically. What you said. Mating.”
“Like in elephants,” Isaiah said. The words came out a bit robotically. Isaiah was shutting down, and Casey was stiff on his lap. Frozen. Almost shaking. Her skinny legs hanging down over his, looking like Dylan’s legs. They’d called him “Chook,” when they’d wanted to tease him, because his legs were so skinny, like a chicken’s. Fast legs. Legs for a winger scoring the tries and charming the girls, not a flanker doing the hard yards in the dark places, with not much to say.
She had Rhys’s eyes. She had Dylan’s legs.
“Yeh,” Rhys said. “Like elephants, but maybe more than just that, because your dad wasn’t a bad person. He made some bad choices, but he made some good ones, too. He made Casey with her mum, which was a bad choice, even though itdidmake Casey, which was good.”
Oh, geez. He was already tangled.
“It was bad because he was married to mymum,” Isaiah said. “And you’re only supposed to have sex with the person you’re married to.”
“Yes,” Rhys said. Zora could chime in anytime here, he thought, but she didn’t. She had Isaiah’s hand in hers, and was watching. Listening. This was his to do, she was saying, and she was right. “But after that,” he plowed on, “he paid child support for Casey every month.” Until he hadn’t, but he wasn’t bringing that up. “Which was a right choice, and then a wrong choice again, not telling me that he’d put my name down on that piece of paper as the father, and not telling your mum or me about Casey even after he got sick, so I didn’t know about her until her mum died. People aren’t just bad or good. They’re a mix of things. They’re themselves.”
“Then why did you say you were my dad?” Casey was still on his lap, and her chin had started to wobble. “Why did you say you were Maui, and you were coming across the ocean to get me?”
Rhys hadn’t told her he was Maui. That had been Casey’s idea. Sometimes, though, the story felt more real.
“Because,” he said, “you felt like my daughter. Because you were my whanau. It’s a Maori thing, so I guess maybe itisa Maui thing. Whangai, it’s called. If one person can’t be the dad or the mum, because it’s too hard for them, or because they die, somebody else in the whanau puts their hand up. It’s close enough for us. Whanau is whanau. So I came to meet you, and I saw that I needed to bring you home. And I did.”
He was making a hash of this. He tried not to harbor regret anymore, because it was pointless. You took your learnings and moved on. He couldn’t help regretting saying this, though. She’d had too much loss. He’d just given her one more. He should have denied it, and kept on denying it. He should have . . .
Too late now.
He was desperate for Zora to say something. She stirred, stood up, and he thought,Help me.She didn’t. She rushed into the house instead. Blundered, more like, her elbow hitting the frame of the glass slider along the way.
Oh, shit. Zora. It was all going to come out now, and what was that going to be like for her?
Isaiah said, “OK. I’m going to go do LEGOs now, though.”
Casey said, “I thought you were my dad. I thought youwere.”She slid off his lap fast and ran down the back stairs to the garden. Not looking for comfort. Looking for a quiet place, and the time to think it through. Exactly the same way he would’ve done as a kid. Because legs or not, DNA or not, she was his.
Also, he was on his own.
