all over the shop. Adjustments. The first couple weeks will be rough.”
“Oh, please come,” Obedience burst out. “It would be so much nicer if you were here. It would be almost like—”
She stopped, and Mum said, “You’ll be missing your own mum, love. Your sisters and brothers.”
“Yes,” Obedience said. “I mean, Daisy’s my sister, too, but … she’s not my mum.” Fruitful was still silent.
Obedience cast an imploring glance at Daisy, who said, “No worries, love. I’m not your mum, you’re right. You haven’t seen me since you were four. Honor, if you can come, we’d love it. It would be helpful, honestly.” She glanced at me as if to ask, Is that what you wanted me to say? It was.
Mum sighed again. “All right, then. I can’t just drop everything, mind. I’ll go in tomorrow and see if I can get it sorted.”
“Two weeks,” I said.
“You said one week,” she said.
“Changed my mind.”
33
Rose Gold
Daisy
I woke to sunshine and birdsong and the buzz of honeybees, and didn’t roll out of bed.
Normally, I bounced straight up and got going. I wasn’t a let’s-be-lazy person. I was a get-it-done person, and I’d had—I checked—six and a half hours of sleep. I had a spa appointment at five with the girls, Gray’s mum was coming, possibly tonight, Gilead was out there looking for me, and I still had that long list of things to do. And all the same, I lay in crisp white sheets and looked up at the radial beams of pale wood that Gray had put together, building his first house, and at the treetops and blue sky through the glass at the dome’s peak. The windows in the lounge must be open, because I could hear birdsong. Warbles and chirps, and the familiar, clear tones of bellbird and tui. And the sound that I’d heard through my dreams, the crow of a rooster. I felt warm and safe and so cozy, and …
When I woke up again, it was nearly four. This time, I did roll out of bed. No choice. Fifteen minutes later, I was headed through the front garden and down the track. I wasn’t running, though. That was because I had a mug of tea in one hand and a scone in the other. I’d found the scones on a plate in the kitchen which meant one of the girls must have baked. Obedience, probably.
They were in the vegetable garden. Fruitful sat on an overturned box, her crutches beside her, weeding an herb garden, and Obedience knelt on the ground with a trowel in her hand, transplanting vegetable seedlings. A tall, rangy figure dressed in overalls, with blond hair in a ponytail, trundled a wheelbarrow full of soiled bedding from a chicken yard full of a couple dozen friendly Orpingtons, fluffy Easter Eggers, and black-and-white-speckled Plymouth Rock hens, overseen by three strutting, magnificently multicolored roosters.
The woman dumped her load of shavings into a walled compost bin and said, “You’re Daisy, then.”
“Yes,” I said. “You must be Iris.”
She nodded, then went back into the chicken yard for another load. Obedience said, “It’s so beautiful here. So peaceful.”
“Not necessarily,” Fruitful said. “You should’ve seen the chickens earlier. Somebody found a spider, and one of the roosters had to come break up the fight.”
I smiled, but said, “A couple more minutes, and then you’d better come clean up so we can go to the spa. Manicures. Pedicures. Waxing. You should probably allow time to dig the dirt out from under your fingernails.”
Iris came out with her wheelbarrow again and said, “Manicures. Huh.”
Just like that, my peace was gone. I said, keeping my voice as even as I could manage, “Manicures are a choice. I don’t judge anybody for not getting them, but I don’t accept anybody judging me for getting them, either.”
Iris was using her pitchfork now. She said, “You’ve got opinions, eh.”
I said, “Well, yes. I do. My sisters have just come from Mount Zion, just like I did when I was sixteen. Finding out you have choices is the most powerful message in the world. The last thing they need is another voice condemning them for vanity.”
Iris turned and leaned on her pitchfork. “Prickly little thing, aren’t you.”
I said, “Seems to me you have opinions yourself. Gray said you didn’t like his yurt.”
She grinned. “You’ve got me there. That’s true enough. Too flash for me. All right for some.” She moved to a second compost pile, what I recognized as the finishing pile, and began pitchforking rich,