thinking he’ll have an opinion, and that he’ll be willing to share it.”
Which she could have done, I thought hours later, if Gray were here. It was after six now, and Matiu and his family had arrived as promised. And Gray hadn’t.
I’d thought he would come. I really had.
Matiu had brought pizza, which the girls were extremely excited about. He’d also brought Hamish, Olivia, and Isobel, aged seven, five, and two, respectively, plus his wife, Poppy, eight months pregnant, and their little dog, Buddy. Which was the kind of crowd the girls were used to, and that I wasn’t one bit used to anymore.
When we’d first seen it, the yurt had felt spacious and spare. Now, it was anything but. The pizza was warming in the oven, and the older kids were upstairs in the loft with Obedience, doing “gymnastics.”
The gymnastics had been Olivia’s idea. When she’d met Obedience, she’d said, “You have a very pretty shirt. It has flowers, and I like flowers. Do you want to be my friend?”
“Yes,” Obedience had answered. “I do.”
“Then we should do gymnastics,” Olivia had announced, like the little ginger general she was. “And Hamish can do gymnastics too, and Isobel can do gymnastics, except she’s too little and she can’t do anything.”
“Isobel can stay downstairs with me,” Matiu had said. “The stairs aren’t safe for littlies.”
“OK,” Olivia had said. “Then just me and Hamish can do gymnastics,” she’d told Obedience. “Come on. We can hold hands.”
Olivia was about as far from a Mount-Zion-approved child as you could possibly get. There was more than one kind of way, maybe, to be a role model. From the sound of the thumping and the shrieks up there, Obedience was doing some gymnastics herself, and from the sound of the barking, Buddy was helping.
Meanwhile, Poppy and Matiu were on the couch, Matiu holding Isobel in his lap as she ate dry cereal out of a plastic tub, and Fruitful was in a chair with her foot propped on a cushion. As for me? I was standing at the island pouring wine and water into glasses, battered by activity and noise and emotion, waiting for Gray, and jumpy as a cat.
Matiu said to Fruitful, “I like the new clothes, and the new hair, too. Looks good. Expressing yourself, eh.”
Fruitful touched a shiny dark strand as if she couldn’t believe it was hers, that she was wearing it down and not hiding it from everybody but her husband, and said something that may have been, “Thanks.”
Poppy asked, “Was it longer, then, before?”
“Yes,” Fruitful said. “It reached to below my knees.” She found it easier to look at Poppy than Matiu, I could tell. Whether it was Matiu’s looks, or just that he was a man, I didn’t know. If you needed to get used to talking directly to men, though, Matiu was a good start. Calming nervous patients was the story of his life.
“That’s long,” Poppy said. “Hard to wash and take care of, maybe.”
“Yes,” Fruitful said. “It was.”
“I had long hair myself,” Poppy said, “before. Below my shoulder blades, anyway. About the length yours is now, in fact.” She laughed. “Too long for me. I got it cut to this length and layered like yours exactly seven weeks after I separated from my husband. Declaration of independence, eh.” She sighed. “It felt so good. I cut my hair, and I started drawing something new. That same day.” She looked at Matiu. “I just realized that.”
Matiu smiled at her, a subtle thing, more eyes than mouth, picked up her hand, rubbed his thumb over the emerald on her finger, and said, “That’s right. You did.”
Dorian did that sometimes with Chelsea, too, that easy touching thing. I wondered how that would feel. If it could be as nonthreatening as a touch from your sister, but still exciting. Still … different.
Fruitful asked, “Really? The hair? You were—separated?”
“Yes,” Poppy said. She must have heard why Fruitful and Obedience were here, because she went on. “I think it was one of the first things I did just for me, without feeling guilty. It was my hair, after all. And I started wearing makeup again, and prettier clothes, too.” She smiled at Fruitful. “Like you. Breaking out. Breaking free. Also, I kissed Matiu. That was the very best part.”
Fruitful blinked, like she didn’t quite know what to do with that information. She was wearing makeup. Lipstick, a bit of mineral foundation, and eyeliner, to be exact. The makeup had been, unlike the clothes,