That was what you got, he guessed, when you lingered too long. “One moment,” he said.
“Right now, sir,” the agent said.
The last thing Rhys needed was temper. It appeared anyway. His temper was a bloody inconvenient beast. “I need to see to my daughter first.” Casey was, in fact, hopping up and down, trying to look into the bins to find Moana. “She needs to get her doll.”
“Sir,” the agent said.
Another agent handed Casey her doll, jacket, and backpack, so that was good, but she was looking around now. Looking for him. He said, “One moment. I just need to get her.”
“I can’t allow that, sir,” the agent said.
Rhys was fifteen seconds from exploding. He could feel it starting to happen. “You can take me into a room and strip me naked,” he said. “I’ve got hours to spare. You can do a cavity search. Whatever you like. Be my guest. It’s nothing that won’t have happened to me before at the base of a scrum, I promise you. But my daughter’s over there. She’s just lost her mum, she’s never been in an airport, and she’s scared. I need to get her first.”
He got her. Possibly, the agent didn’t want trouble. Or possibly, he’d seen Casey’s eyes. They had some superpowers. She didn’t appear especially traumatized, though, as she watched him be checked over. Pity his own heart was beating like a hammer, and so was the blood in his temples. It was a good thing a blood pressure check wasn’t included, because he’d have failed.
“What’s that?” Casey asked the agent as he scanned Rhys’s palms, and then his laptop and phone, after patting him down in a way that would normally happen around the third date.
“We’re checking for traces of explosives,” the man said.
“You mean, like he’d explode?” Casey said. “People don’t explode, though. He has a really big fish hook, that’s all. I think he has powers, even though he says he doesn’t, but not exploding.”
The agent subjected Rhys to some more penetrating gaze. “Could you show me the fish hook, sir?”
Rhys sighed and pulled the pendant out from under his shirt. “You already saw it.” He didn’t tell the fella not to touch it, even though he wanted to. That wouldn’t end well. “And for the record, I don’t have powers.”
“No, sir.” The agent handed him his backpack and laptop. “Have a nice day. You too, young lady.”
He’d never been more glad to head toward an airline lounge, even though it was taking twice as long as usual. He was used to walking fast, but Casey’s legs were too short for that. He was holding her hand again, which helped him moderate his speed, but the way she slowed for things like the giant-pretzel vendor didn’t help.
“We could get one of those,” she said, watching as an employee brushed an entire gym workout’s worth of melted butter onto the top of a twisted knot of absolutely nutrient-free dough, then sprinkled it with a day’s ration of coarse salt.
“We could,” he said, “if we wanted to watch our cholesterol and sodium levels rise in real time.”
“Huh?”
“It’s not healthy.”
“It’s kind of like pizza, though. It has dough, see? That’s how my mommy makes pizza. With dough.”
“Pizza isn’t healthy, either. And neither are cookies,” he decided to add, since they were now walking past a shop selling those, and she was eyeing them in a way that boded no good at all. They were practically the size of her head. He could feel his waistline expanding just looking at them. That was the good thing about holding her hand. At least you could keep moving.
“If it’s not healthy, how come you ate five pieces?” she asked.
“I was making an exception. Exceptions are allowed.”
“We could make a neck— neck—”
“An exception.”
“A neck-seption. For cookies. My mommy puts cookies in my lunch, because it’s dessert.”
“No. No more exceptions. We’ll get a cookie at the lounge. One cookie. One small cookie.” And zero giant pretzels.
When they were finally in the SAS lounge, which wasn’t much more than some wi-fi that he needed, some food and beverages in which he wouldn’t be indulging, and less noise than the gate area, he found them seats at a table, hauled out his laptop and notebook, and told her, “Good news. Security took so long, it is now only two hours until our flight is called.”
“Oh. Are we going to wait here?”
“Yeh. It’s an airline lounge. More comfortable than outside, eh. You can watch the planes and check out how we’re going to fly.”
She was shifting in her seat like it wasn’t comfortable at all. “Something wrong?” he asked.
“I have to go to the bathroom.”
He should have foreseen that. She’d gone at the hotel, but that had been simple. “Uh . . .” he said. “Fine.” It would be down a corridor. Some corridor. He couldn’t leave her to find it by herself. He closed his laptop, shoved it and his notebook into his backpack again, and went with her. “I’ll wait for you here,” he said when they were outside the door. “Give me Moana and your backpack. I’ll hold them for you.”
Was that OK? It had better be OK. What else would he do?
Five minutes later, with a stop for, yes, a cookie on the way back, and he was pulling out his backpack again. He needed to catch up with Finn about team selection for Saturday’s match before nightfall in New Zealand, and time was running short.
He was typing when he felt the pull of the tractor beam. Which was, of course, Casey’s eyes on him. He raised his own. “What?”
“What do I do?” she asked.
“Uh . . . We wait. Two hours, like I said, then we can board the plane. There’ll be a TV on there.” That gave him an idea. “You can watch now, if you like.”
She craned around and looked at the set on one wall. “It’s not a show for kids.”
He looked himself. News. Something was blowing up. “Play with your doll, then,” he suggested.
She stared at him like he was stupid. He was getting used to that, too. “I can’t just play with her. I can’t even change her clothes, and I don’t have my room or my special rug or my bunnies or anything, so there’s no magic.”
“Right.” He closed his laptop again. Sacrifices had to be made. “Do you have a better idea?”
“You could be the monster,” she said, “and I could be Moana.”
Not happening. He’d be facing the police again for sure. He’d also become aware of the occasional filthy look from another passenger. What did they think people with kids should do, then? Disappear? “We don’t have, uh, room,” he said. “For me to be the monster. I require space. What else?”
“I could do a coloring book.”
“Good. Do that.”
“Except I don’t have one. Or I could play with a L.O.L. Surprise House. It has eighty-five surprises.” She sighed in a heartfelt way.
“Let me guess. You don’t have that, either.”
“No. I just have Moana. But you won’t be the monster.”
“Fine. Let’s go find you something to do.” He stashed his laptop again and stood up, and she jumped up and put her hand into his.
Three stops and forty minutes later, they still didn’t have a coloring book. They had, however, on the advice of the motherly lady at the last bookstore, ended up at the museum shop where they’d seen the dinosaur models.
It was a prehistoric-animal sticker set, in the end, not a coloring book. “I want this one,” Casey said, picking it up and hugging it to her. “Because I can make worlds. Look. There’s a lake and a forest and everything. And you can move the animals around. This is the best sticker set ever.”
“Good,” he said. “Fine.” Educational, quiet, and non-messy. Good to go.
She was lingering, though, at another shelf. “Look, you can make a crystal! It’s so, so beautiful. It’s like a jewel.” She was holding that box to her now, too. It made for a juggling act, considering Moana and the sticker book. “It’s the best thing ever. It�
��s—”
“Pink,” he said. “I noticed. But you can’t grow a crystal on a plane. Once we’re on board, there’ll be movies.” They had a whole section for kids, didn’t they? “You can watch all of them you want.”
“My mommy says only half an hour a day. Except it could be a neck-seption.”
“That’s it,” he said. “Definitely an exception. Everybody gets to watch movies on the plane.” Except coaches who needed to catch up, because they had to hit the ground running the next day. Coaches had work to do.
He bought the crystal thing. You made a night light with it, he’d found on further study, and she was afraid of the dark. It only made sense. He also bought her an enormous book about prehistoric creatures, because it was educational, too, and it was quiet. She could look at the pictures, even if she couldn’t read it. It had two hundred eight pages. There were a lot of pictures. He bought her an Antarctic Dinosaurs T-shirt as well. She was going to need clothes. It was summer in New Zealand, and not much in those bags of hers had been suitable. Her summer clothes had probably been too small for her, he realized, and her unfortunate pink suitcase was three-quarters empty.
The shirt had nothing to do with sparkles, flying horses, or pink. It was black, and she was captivated all the same. The dinosaur was big, it was roaring, and that seemed good enough for her. Which was fortunate, when he came to think about it, since she was going to have to live with him.
He did not, however, buy her a hatching dinosaur egg, grizzly-bear-paw slipper-boots, or a plush gold-sequined snake that was two meters long. Every man had his limit, and a sequined snake was his. “You’re reaching,” he told her when she held it up and opened her mouth to say, “I love it. It’s the best snake ever.” He didn’t even need to hear it.
Snake or not, she was set for the flight, at least once he handed over his card and signed away eighty-nine dollars. Problem solved.
Sleep didn’t come gradually that night. That day. Whatever it was, in real time. His body had no idea anymore. Instead, sleep slammed him right between the eyes. The last thing he remembered, he’d been working on his laptop, wearing his noise-canceling headphones and enjoying, in a masochistic sort of way, the feel of a long-haul jetliner at night, the collective weight of hundreds of sleeping bodies and the pleasure of being one of the only souls still awake. He hadn’t made his seat into a bed, because he still felt perfectly alert, despite the beer he’d had before takeoff, once he’d got Casey settled. And the wine he’d had with dinner, once he’d got her settled again, after she’d told him, “Moana’s not scared. She’s just lonesome.” They’d worked out, eventually, that Moana would be less lonesome if Rhys were in the seat in front of Casey rather than behind her, since she’d be able to see his head, at least while he was sitting up. Or, rather, Moana would be able to.
The flight attendants had been awesome, as usual. When he’d told Ilona, a veteran of Business Premier long-haul whom he’d first met in his playing days, “This is my daughter, Casey. It’s her first flight,” she hadn’t blinked. She certainly hadn’t looked like she’d be rushing to alert the media, however interested New Zealand would be in this story. Instead, she’d said, “Hi, Casey. Would you like to come into the cockpit before we take off, and meet the pilots?”
“Yes, please,” Casey said, like somebody who knew what a cockpit was. Casey was nothing if not a quick learner.
“After that,” Ilona said, “maybe we could find you a snack.”
“Do you have any cookies?” A quick learner, indeed.
“I think we do have a cookie,” Ilona said. “Let’s go see.”
Casey cast a triumphant glance at Rhys as she headed up the aisle with Ilona’s hand on her shoulder, and he had to smile. She was getting another neck-seption, and he was going to finish this beer.
Tomorrow, though, once they got home? The regime would be back in place, as per usual. “Start as you mean to go on,” that was his motto. Tomorrow, it would be back to discipline. A scheduled, organized, orderly life.
Meanwhile, he’d work a bit more, knock this out, and still catch six hours of sleep before breakfast.
That was one second. The next, he was being poked in the arm by a white horse with sparkling wings. It kept shoving its nose into him, no matter how many times he pushed it away.
Wait. It wasn’t a horse. It was a lizard. It opened its mouth, showed its teeth, and poked him again.
Dinosaur.
“Aaargh!” It was a roar, or a yell, except that he couldn’t hear it. His knees knocked into something hard, and his arm bashed against something else. His funny bone, that had been. The shock of the nerve being whacked reverberated all through his body and made his eyes water.
Plane, he realized. Casey. She’d been beside his seat, but when he’d yelled, she’d jumped back. She was hovering almost out of sight behind him, and he got his headphones off and his seatbelt unfastened, shoved his table back, ignored his elbow, twisted around, and asked, “What? Problem?”
Her hair was a tangled mess around her little face, and she was in her stockinged feet, the way she’d been when she’d gone to sleep after dinner, once Ilona had helped her make up her bed. When Rhys had assumed she was set for the night.
“I have to go to the bathroom,” she said.
“Oh.” He shoved his feet into his shoes and got himself out of the seat. His body felt like it weighed four hundred pounds. The last few days of travel had caught up at last, it seemed. Or maybe that was lack of sleep, no workout, two—possibly three, depending how you counted—drinks, and two-thirds of a deep-dish sausage pizza.
He said, “Straight up the aisle. I’m right behind you,” and put a hand on her shoulder for good measure, since the plane was rocking a bit. He stopped at the toilet, and she stopped with him.
A second. Two. She turned around to look at him. He asked, “What?”
He realized what was different. She didn’t have Moana. She stared up at him, and finally, he crouched down to her level and asked again, “What?”
“Where’s the bathroom?” she asked.
“It’s right here,” he said, glad it was nothing more extreme. Why did my mummy die, or some other terrible middle-of-the-night question he wouldn’t be able to answer. “Didn’t you go earlier?”
“No,” she said. “I didn’t know where.” She was wriggling. “I have to go really bad.”
“Easy-peasy,” he said, then stood up and opened the door. “Here you are.” He should have taken her, he guessed. No, he definitely should have taken her. What had he been thinking? About having his dinner, that was what, and feeling virtuous for turning down the second dinner tray offered by Ilona, who appeared to think he was still playing and needed the calories. About finally getting to work, and about how good that glass of Pinot Noir was tasting, especially after Ilona topped it up.
Never mind. He was here now. Except she wasn’t going in. And she was wriggling worse, her face screwing up in concentration.
He was in trouble.
“Go on,” he said, waggling the door. “It’s empty, see? Nobody in there but you. All yours.”
She went inside, and he pulled the door closed with relief. He’d barely done it when he saw the handle shake. He opened it again and asked, “What?”
She said, “I opened up the toilet, and there was a very loud noise. I think the nairplane has a hole in it. I think you can fall down. Can I go in a regular bathroom? Please?”
He said, “You can’t fall down. It’s a bit loud, that’s all. It’s safe.”
Her shoulders heaved, and her face crumpled. He was still holding the door open, and she was yanking on her jeans, her other hand fumbling to open the toilet seat. Dancing up and down on her toes in her stockinged feet, and, finally, starting to cry. He swore, stepped inside, and lifted her onto the seat just as she got her trousers down.
And still, she cried. Both hands clutching the seat, her jeans around her knees, her shoulders shaking, her eyes squeezed closed, and the tears s
treaming down her face. It was pathetic. It hurt.
He crouched down, put his hands on her skinny shoulders, and said, “It’s OK. Don’t cry. It’s OK now.” A lame response from a bloody clueless fella, because all she did was cry harder. Still nearly silently, shaking with sobs.
He tried to think what to do. He couldn’t. He wished with all his heart for a flight attendant. A friendly mum. Somebody. There was nobody here but the two of them, though, so he did the only thing he could think of. He wrapped his arms around her, pulled her head into his chest, and waited for her to cry herself out. And tried to tell himself that he could handle this.
When she was dressed again, and he’d helped her wash her hands and face and blow her nose, wishing once again that he knew what to do about her hair, he felt a bit better. It wasn’t rocket science. It was one little girl who’d had to use the toilet. All he had to do was pay more attention. He’d be fine.
He said, “Better?”
She nodded, not looking up for once. Well, everybody had their low times, in the middle of the night, when the bad thoughts came. She said, “Except my feet are sticky.”
Oh, bloody hell. This floor was disgusting. He got one of her socks off, then the other, stuffed them in the rubbish, and said, “Good job we didn’t buy the pink sloth ones. You’d have been sad to see those go.”
She said, still sniffling some, “But now my feet are very sticky.”
“I reckon they are, but we can fix that.” He picked her up, propped her against his shoulder, and stuck her feet into the sink, then pushed the button to turn on the tap.
She said, wiggling her toes, “You’re not supposed to wash your feet in the sink.”
“We won’t tell.” He grinned at her in the mirror. She smiled back, first tentatively, then wider. Her nose was red, her cheeks were still tear-stained, and still, she smiled.
Something inside him went Click, like a locked door sliding open. Something small, but, at the same time, like he’d just been driven back in the tackle by a South African. Both things couldn’t be true, but they were.
She looked so much like him, but it was more than that. It was that she felt like him. Even though she wasn’t his. She hadn’t cried once, and then, finally, she had. If she had to do that, he had to hold her.
Just Come Over Page 8
