Page 46 of Kiwi Sin

I put down my pencil and stood up.

* * *

I hesitatedoutside the other house for a long minute. I’d never actually done this before—barged in on Gray and Daisy in Gray’s house after they’d settled down for the evening. I wondered if I should text first. Or maybe I should walk in, the way I’d do at dinnertime?

No. Walking in would be wrong, when they weren’t expecting me. It would be almost as bad as walking into a family’s room at Mount Zion. You didn’t do that. I knocked. And then I waited.

Gray finally answered the door, looking alarmed, even though he must have known it wasn’t a bad person, because Xena was wagging her tail and panting happily.

“Something wrong?” Gray was in rugby shorts and a T-shirt, and his feet were bare. His hair was rumpled, too.

Oh. He could’ve been in bed.Theycould’ve been in bed. I stepped back and said in confusion, “No. I’m fine.” I looked at my phone. It was after nine o’clock! “Sorry. I’ll come back tomorrow.”

“No.” He opened the door wider. “Come in. There’s a problem, eh. For me, or for Daisy?”

“Oh.” I considered that. “For … you? I think?”

“Fair enough.” He closed the door behind me, took me into the lounge, sat on the couch, and, once I’d sat myself and Xena had thumped down at Gray’s feet with a sigh, said, “Fire away.” Gray was the most comforting person. He was big and tough and could handle anything, but he was gentle underneath.

Like Gabriel. Standing there at Mount Zion holding that hammer, telling me to run, but choosing pink paper for me, too, and putting his hand on Jack’s shoulder to make him feel better.

Stop it.

I refocused and explained, and Gray said, “Hmm. I can see it’s a quandary. Of course, you probably won’t get the job, so there’s that. Too young, eh.”

“Oh.” I hadn’t even thought of that. How stupid. I was a schoolgirl. I wasseventeen.Of course nobody would hire me to care for fragile newborns all day! I kept forgetting that I wasn’t an adult anymore.

“No worries,” he said. “You’ve got a work ethic I’ve never seen in anybody as young as you. Well, anybody but Daisy, and to be fair, I didn’t actually see hers, just heard about it. Must be Mount Zion, eh. Reckon it’s good for something. If you’ve lived in indentured servitude, anything else seems easy.”

“Sorry, what?” I asked. “It wasn’t … whatever that is.”

“You’re right,” he said. “Not indentured. No end date. Closer to slavery. But you want to apply anyway, just in case.”

“I’d love to do that job, is all,” I tried to explain.

“Even if you can’t knit during it.”

I wasn’t sure if he was joking. “Of course I couldn’t knit. It’s tiny babies. Anyway, I knit at night. I won’t be able to knit working for your mum, either. Never mind. This was stupid. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

I stood up to leave, and he said, “Hang on. Let’s ring Mum.”

“Won’t she be angry if I tell her I’m thinking of not honoring my obligation?”

“You have no idea how many people don’t honor their obligations. Let’s ring her anyway.” He did, and put the phone on speaker, and I sat there, trembling with the shame of what I wanted to ask, and waited for her answer.

It came after two rings. “Gray. Everything all right?”

“All good,” he said. “But Oriana wants to apply for another job for over the school holidays, looking after newborn babies. She’s sitting here with me now, worrying about it.”

“I am,” I spoke up. “But I won’t do it, of course. I gave you my word.” Just hearing Honor’s voice, remembering all her kindness to Frankie and me when we’d come out of Mount Zion, so scared and knowing absolutely nothing, made my skin prickle with shame.

Honor said, “Looking after newborn babies is a treat, is it?”

“Yes,” I said, because … well, it was.

Honor said, “I’ve done this job for nearly forty years. If I got my knickers in a twist every time somebody didn’t turn up or quit on me mid-shift, I’d have died of stress long since. Got two backpackers in today, a girl from Sweden and a boy from the States, looking for work. I don’t get boys much, but he seems keen. Even cleaned before. One in a million, eh. Let’s do this, then. You apply for the job, and give it a couple of days. If you haven’t heard anything by then, you won’t be hearing, andthenyou can commit to me. If you do hear—well, let them know you’ve got another offer, so you need to know fast. Fair enough?”

“Fair.” I was so excited, I was fizzing. And then I was thumping down to earth again. “But … I won’t have a place to live. I keep forgetting that.”