Page 88 of Kiwi Sin

“You want her to do her jobandtake care of the house and the kids and you,” Daisy said. “That’s not freedom. It’s the opposite.”

“No,” I said. “I don’t. I know how to clean. I know how to do the washing, too, and how to shop for groceries. I don’t know how to cook very well yet, it’s true, but I can make breakfast, and I’m learning. I can learn to look after kids, and I’ll be working all the hours God sends to take care of my family. I can promise that now and know I mean it, because I’ve already proved it.”

“You’re twenty-five,” my dad said. “You haven’t had a chance to prove it.”

“Why did you make me foreman, then,” I asked, “if you don’t trust me to give everything? Iwillgive everything. Iwantto give everything. To the job, and to Oriana. We just want alife.”

“How much have you saved for that life?” my dad asked. “You’ll support your family on what?”

I was about to answer, but Oriana spoke up again. “I’ve saved over ten thousand dollars. I know how to work as well. I know how to save. We just want to do it together.”

Wait. Ten thousanddollars?

“You can’t have,” my mum said.

“School, though,” Daisy said.

Oriana said, “Two more years of it, according to you. And for what, exactly?”

Daisy stood up. “I can’t talk to you about this. If you don’t even understand that, how can I …”

Oriana said, “All right, I’llgoto school. I just want to be married, too!”

“Well,” Daisy said, “you’ll need the Family Court’s approval to do it before eighteen. What do you think the judge is going to say when you tell him you’ve just come out of Mount Zion, and you’re sure you’re old enough, because everybody’s always told you that you need to marry an older man as soon as it’s legal and then obey him in everything?”

“What do we have to do,” I asked, “to convince you?” I looked around the table. “All of you?”

“You could just wait until Oriana’s eighteen and get married anyway,” Priya decided to point out. True, but not exactly diplomatic, because everybody but Gray erupted at that.

My dad said, after a fair amount of heated talk back and forth between him and Daisy, fury on my mum’s face, and Oriana looking miserable, “I’m going to have to pray about this. I thought leaving was the right thing to do. Now, I wonder. If it leads my children into these kinds of disobedient paths …”

“Wait until you find out what Uriel and Glory are doing, then,” Priya said. “Oh, sorry, Usher and Georgia. They evensoundglamorous now. Raphael and Radiance are still pure, though, as far as I know, so there’s that. One out of three, eh. Or two out of four, if you count Harmony, but who knows?”

My mum said,“What?”Her face had been going red. Now, it went pale.

My dad said, “That’s enough. We’re going. Gabriel?” He stood up and looked at me in that expectant way that means,You’re following my lead.

I said, “I’ll stop here a bit longer, thanks. I’m pretty sure Gray and Daisy have more to say to me.”

My dad said,“Ihave more to say to you.”

“And I’ll listen, later,” I said. “But Daisy is Oriana’s sister. I have to respect that. Mostly, though, I have to respect Oriana.” I thought of something, discarded it, and then, somehow, said it anyway. The thing I’d thought weeks ago. “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.”

“You can’t pick and choose like that,” my dad said, “after you rejected the word of God at my kitchen table this morning.”

“Everybody picks and chooses,” Gray said. “Or searches for the most important lessons, maybe, because there’s contradiction all over the shop in every holy book known to man.”

“Blasphemy,” my dad said.

“Reality,” Gray answered. “I don’t see many of Jesus’s teachings in the Prophet’s ideas. Very Old Testament, I’d say. Or, rather, very much what serves the Prophet’s interests.”

My parents were still standing. So was Daisy. Gray wasn’t. He and my dad locked eyes, and finally, my dad said, “That’s enough. You’re still my employer, and I’ll respect that. I’ll take your orders on the job. I won’t take them in my home, about my family.”

“You forget,” Gray said, still calm as glass, “that you’re not in your home. You’re in mine.”

My dad had nothing to say to that, because he clearlyhadforgotten, and within about thirty seconds, my parents had left.

Oriana sat there and trembled, her hand cold in mine. And I thought—We did it.And then …