Page 100 of Just Say Christmas
Finn searched his eyes. “Did it go OK, then?”
“Yeh,” Rhys said. “It did. I expect the word will filter out to everybody, sooner or later. I’m not fussed, and neither is Zora. I’m the dad. That’s done.”
Finn’s smile transformed his craggy face, and this time, he slapped Rhys on the back, a gesture that would have felled a lesser man. “Bloody good news,” he said.“Bloodygood news. You’ve been carrying that too long. I’m not going to say Dylan didn’t deserve it, because whanau’s whanau. Just that I reckon Casey is where she was meant to be.”
“She is,” Rhys said. He wanted to say something about the baby. He was a pretty private fella, and it was all but bursting out of him all the same.
Soon,he told himself.Zora gets to decide this one.He got that image of himself again, holding that brand-new person in his two hands, making that promise, and got a shiver straight down his spine. The sound of the bone flute with its eerie, near-human voice, the music curling into his bones and lodging there.
Pa whakaruru ha.A shelter from the wind. That was going to be him. It was what Finn had said, and it was more. It was about living the rest of his life as the man he wanted to be.
Finally, when he was wondering if it would ever happen, Tania came out of the bedroom and said, “She’s ready. Craig, she wants you to walk her in.”
Her dad stood up and let out a breath, and Rhys could almost see the relief. That she’d asked him. That he’d come this close to stuffing it all up, but he hadn’t done it. And then he said, “Right. I’ll do that, then,” and headed for the bedroom.
Finn asked, “Ready, mate?” and Rhys said, “Absolutely. Oh. Rings.” They were in his pocket, and he handed them over. Maybe not quite as calm as he’d thought.
Hayden decided on the right spot, which happened to be next to the dining table, presumably so he could set his script down. Somebody punched up some music—that would be Luke—and it was the thing they’d heard in the restaurant, that first night he’d taken Zora out.Osculetur Me.The Song of Solomon. “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth, for your love is sweeter than wine.”
The bedroom door opened.
He thought,Behold, thou art fair, my love; behold thou art fair, thou hast doves’ eyes.And couldn’t have said a thing.
A Byzantine princess dressed in red, with pearls in her ears and flowers in her arms. The waxy white perfection of gardenias, and the delicate petals of renga renga mixed among them, both of them from the garden. His garden. Their garden.
And it came to pass in an eveningtide, that David arose from off his bed, and walked upon the roof of the king’s house: and from the roof he saw a woman washing herself; and the woman was very beautiful to look upon.
His Bathsheba. His brother’s wife, and then his brother’s widow. His sin, and his redemption.
She came to him like the moon shining across the water. She came to him, and she took his hand. Hayden read out the words they’d chosen, and they repeated them after him. The best words, the old and the new together, and when it was his turn, he didn’t choke up. He said them loud enough for her to remember.
“I, Rhys Riwani Fletcher,take thee, Zora Alexandra Allen Fletcher, to be my wife, to have and to hold from this day forward. For better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, forsaking all others, till death us do part. And thereto I plight thee my troth.” Making that promise, and knowing she heard it.
She said it back to him, her eyes as bright as if she really did have the light of the moon inside, and finally, Rhys was sliding the ring onto her finger. It had diamonds in it, because he’d wanted to, and it would sit there, closest to her heart, forever.
He looked into her doves’ eyes as Hayden gave him the prompt for the last thing, the words that had lasted for nearly five hundred years. The ones that perfectly expressed, still, what he wanted most to tell her.
He didn’t have to ask Hayden to repeat it. He knew his line. He took a breath and said it. “With this ring I thee wed, with my body I thee worship, and with all my worldly goods I thee endow.”
He meant it, too.