get out of here. It’s too close. I wasn’t going to stop, after I got them. I was going straight back to Dunedin. The other man—was he the same age? Or younger?”
“About the same,” I said. “I think. It was dark.” I thought back. Body language. “He wasn’t a teenager, anyway.”
Daisy glanced at Fruitful. What? Was she worried it would have been Fruitful’s husband? Something was very wrong here. Something even bigger than leaving a cult, if that were possible.
“You were sixteen, too, though, Daisy,” I said, possibly to get the conversation away from Fruitful, who still looked tense and flushed. “When you left. And Obedience is sixteen now.”
“Yes,” Daisy said. “Obedience’s wedding was meant to be next month.”
I glanced at Obedience, but she wasn’t saying much. If she was devastated at missing her wedding to who-knows-who, she wasn’t saying. She’d sounded a bit wistful, though, about the flowers and the pink dress. I asked Daisy, “Is that why you left, yourself? The marriage bit?” It was much too personal, but it was also at the heart of things, at least it seemed so to me.
A long hesitation, during which her sisters looked at her and didn’t look at me, then Daisy said, “Yes.”
“You didn’t want to be married,” I said. “Like you don’t want Obedience to be.”
“No,” she said. “I didn’t leave because I didn’t want to be married. I left because I already was.”
15
T. Rex
Daisy
I had that nearly-trembling feeling you get when your emotions are too far out there and you’ve shared too much. I tried to joke my way out of it. “Aren’t you sorry you asked?”
“Well, no,” Gray said. “I’m glad I asked. I take it the marriage wasn’t a success.”
“You’d be right,” I said. The girls, I noticed, were actually looking at him. That was serious progress, but then, there was something oddly comforting about Gray. Or was that just because he’d helped get me out of the river, and the memory of the shovel and all? I couldn’t tell, but they were looking at him, and they hadn’t been the ones getting pulled out of the river. Also, the dog liked him better than she liked me, so there you were.
But then, some women have a weakness for big, tough men. As I’ve mentioned.
He said, “I’m guessing you don’t want to bare your soul about it at this moment. I’m full of intuition, eh.”
“Oh,” I said, “only about as much as I want to open a vein,” and we smiled at each other. I’d been so tense, and now I wasn’t, quite. Why was that? Maybe that it was a relief, still, to hear a person’s—a man’s—horrified reaction to the details of Mount Zion, and to realize it really was as bad as all that. A reaction I didn’t get often, because I shared—oh, on a time scale of “rarely” to “never.”
Just as I was thinking it, Gray said, “If being here is making things harder, scaring you, there’s an easy solution. You should get out of here.”
Talk about your slaps in the face. I may actually have rocked back. Then I said, “Well, yeh. That was the plan. We can do the backpacker’s right now, in fact. I’d need a loan for the night, that’s all. And a bit extra to get something to eat.” I lifted my chin. It was an effort. Gray hadn’t had to help me at all, or he could’ve dumped us at the backpacker’s this morning for the price of a couple nights’ lodging. Why would he bring us here, into his house, with his mum, and then turf us out as soon as things got complicated? How was that right?
I wasn’t being fair. It was right if he chose it. His house, his rules. It just wasn’t what I’d thought he’d do.
Hope is what gets you out, maybe, but hope is also what can knock you down again. Daring to hope, and being disappointed.
He said, “Wait, what?”
“A loan,” I said. “I told you, I have exactly zero dollars, and the girls don’t have anything either. You don’t get paid at Mount Zion. Or Dorian could come tonight, after work.” Why hadn’t I thought of that? Because I’d wanted to stay? I didn’t want to stay, though.
I also didn’t want Dorian to have to drive seven hours after a full day of work. He wasn’t as tough as me. Pity it wasn’t about what I wanted. I said, “He wouldn’t get here until nine-thirty or so, but he’ll