“It’s four hours’ drive up there. You need to eat. Do you want Gray to get another migraine?"
"What?" I said. “No. Of course not.”
Hayden said, “Wait. Back up. Explain.” He was sitting on one of the stools at the island with Luke beside him. Kane and Victoria were standing in the kitchen drinking beer, and Drew was holding his littlest girl and frowning.
And Honor? Honor was still slicing pumpkin.
Hayden said again, “Explain. Or—wait. I’ll explain, and you can tell me if I’ve got it wrong. Daisy left Mount Zion when she was sixteen.”
“With my brother,” I said. Why weren’t we moving?
“With your brother,” Hayden said. “Whom we don’t see in this picture today. Huh. Interesting. Anyway, you ran, making your name mud. Damned to hell, I imagine, et cetera. And a couple weeks ago, your sisters left, too. Helped along by you and Gray, making your name more mud, presumably.”
“You’d have that right,” Gray said.
“And the sister’s husband,” Hayden said, “Frankie’s husband, is a nutter. Stalker, and so forth. Abusive.”
“Oh,” Victoria said. “That’s bad.”
“Not just Frankie’s husband,” Kane said. “Daisy’s, too.”
“What,” Victoria said, “both of them? Plural marriage? I thought Daisy was sixteen when she left.”
“I was,” I said. “That’s how old you are when you get married there. I divorced him the minute I could. And, yes, he married Frankie. He’s thirty-five now.”
Victoria said. “Well, that’s appalling. I prosecute sex crimes, and that’s a red flag. So he took her. You think. He’s been … doing what, exactly, that makes you think it was him?”
“Stalking,” Hayden informed her. “Like I said. Broke into Daisy’s flat. Set a fire in Gray’s house.”
“Called my landlord,” I said, “impersonating my brother, and cast doubts on my character. The fire was the main thing, though.”
“I agree,” Victoria said, “though the break-in’s pretty bad, too. No boundaries. So, yes, he almost certainly took her, which makes me wonder—why are we just sitting here? Why aren’t we ringing the police?” Which I was wondering, too.
“Don’t you think we’d better make a plan first?” Hayden asked. “Mount Zion is private property, and we don’t have any proof that he took her against her will. Just the opposite, sounds like. But if we wait for the police, who knows how long that will take? Legally, she has a right to go where she wants, and a woman who walks off with her husband isn’t going to be top of their priority list. And what if they do go up there and see her, and she says she’s happy to stay? They aren’t going to take Daisy along to help convince her sister to leave again.”
I said, “You’re right. That’s how Mount Zion works. You don’t feel like you have a choice. That’s what they do to you. And if she left without force … there’s a reason. She wanted to go to high school, but more than that. She wanted to leave Gilead. She wanted to be free.”
“Hence,” Hayden said, “the plan.”
55
The Plan
Daisy
It was six o’clock on Sunday morning. Another sunrise, the lowering clouds promising rain and streaked with red. And a caravan of vehicles driving up the road to Mount Zion, turning down the cinder track. Not over the electric fence this time. Driving all the way to the back gate, where the hostels and the dining room and the laundry were, and stopping there.
Gray and Honor and I were the first to climb out, because we’d led the caravan. Behind us, Iris and Oriana got out of an ancient SUV. And then there were the rest of them.
Dorian and Chelsea, because when I’d called, my twin had answered. His first time back on this ground. He was scared, but he was here. Drew Callahan, who’d taken his family home, then climbed into his car at two in the morning and driven through the night with us. Kane and Victoria, and Luke and Hayden. Matiu and Poppy and the kids, coming straight off Matiu’s evening shift. Everybody we’d called. Everybody who’d turned up in answer.
And all the others.
Six women from Honor’s cleaning crew. Single mums with their kids, women with their partners. A young girl just starting out, and a grandmother. The woman who owned the café, too, whom I’d seen opening up her restaurant on the day the girls had got out. Two clerks from the supermarket, and the manager of the hardware store. Gray’s mate Rangi and his family, and the others he’d brought along. Half of Wanaka, it seemed, was here, one person