Page 111 of Kiwi Sin
Dad said, “I wonder that you came to tell me, then.”
“Because I respect you,” I said. “And I trust you. You were the best man I knew, growing up. You still are. I know it’s hard, changing. It’s been hard for me, too, but I have a guiding light I’ve followed all my life, and it’s you. I may disagree with you. Idodisagree with you, but you’ll always have my loyalty. You and Mum.”
“But Oriana will have more,” Dad said.
“Yeh,” I said. “She will. That’s how it’s supposed to be, and even if it weren’t—that’s how it is.”
He said, “You’ve never made me anything but proud, so I’m going to trust your choice.”
The lightness I felt in that moment … it was like the biggest backpack in the world sliding from my shoulders. I could swear I stood taller. I said, “Thanks,” and couldn’t go on for a minute. Dad gripped my shoulder, then released it, and we walked like that for a while until I asked, “Are you going back?”
“No. Your mum and I talked it over last night. It may seem to you that I—” He stopped, then went on. “That I don’t respect her the way you feel a man should respect a woman. I do. But the old ways—they hold fast, sometimes. For both her and me. Doing it the other way doesn’t feel right. I don’t know that it ever will. But I’ve talked over every decision I’ve made with her. Sometimes, she disagrees, and she tells me so, and usually, she’s right. If we do it in private … well, that’s our way.”
“Fair enough,” I said. “So why aren’t you going back?”
“It’s what you said about the money. And this goes no further, not now.”
“Understood,” I said, my heart starting to beat harder.
“I handled everything,” he said, “except the books. The Prophet is the only one who sees those. I don’t know why I didn’t connect those dots sooner. Maybe because I couldn’t see what he’d be saving it for. I still can’t. He’s not a young man. He’s got nowhere to spend it. Why would he hoard it? It’s foolish, and it’s a sin.”
“‘And again I say unto you,’” I quoted, “‘it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.’ It’s vanity, maybe.”
“Maybe,” Dad said. “Reckon they’ll find out when the tax authorities get hold of those books, because that’s coming. It’s going to come crashing down, I fear. My place is to be here, ready to help the brothers and sisters when it happens.”
I had to stop, right there on the pavement, and turn to him. I said, “I’m proud to be your son.” That was all, because the rest of it, everything in my heart, was choking me.
My dad had never held me, and he didn’t hold me now. He took my shoulder and clutched it, I took his, and we stood there like that, in the drizzle of an early-autumn rain, unable to speak.
Finally, we were moving again, and I said, “Oriana told me something yesterday. That you were with her dad, chasing her and Frankie and Daisy on the night they ran. I didn’t know that.” I tried to make it neutral. I couldn’t keep this secret. I had to tell him I knew, but despite everything I’d said, I was afraid of what I’d hear next.
He said, “I was.” A long, long silence, and then he sighed. “He’s a hard man. Too hard. He shouldn’t have let the Prophet give Daisy to Gilead, and he shouldn’t have let him give Frankie to him, either. Even more, by then. After Charity died—”
“Gilead’s second wife.”
“She hanged herself,” Dad said, and I stopped again, from shock this time. “From a showerhead, when she was in hospital after having their baby. So he wouldn’t be the one to find her and cut her down, I always thought. Maybe so no man from Mount Zion would ever touch her again, even in death. She was sixteen.”
I had to swallow, I felt so sick.
“Dove,” he said. “Oriana’s youngest sister. She’s theirs. Oriana’s mum’s—Blessing’s—baby was stillborn. Her twelfth, eh, and she was well over forty. The Prophet made the switch, and I didn’t say anything. That’s my sin. When he married Frankie to Gilead, I did say something, but I didn’t say it strongly enough. Another sin. Gilead had learnt his lesson, I hoped. To drive a woman to suicide …”
“But he didn’t,” I said.
“No,” Dad said. “He didn’t. That was why I had to help Frankie. She’s not a Godly woman, but maybe I understand why. That’s why I started to help Daisy, too, to come in and give the women birth control. It was a selfish reason, maybe. I couldn’t bear another suicide on my conscience.”
“I’m not sure it matters why you do something,” I said. “Who has a pure heart? If God sees … surely He knows. Was Dove adopted, then?”
“No,” he said. “It was all done quietly, the switch. Wrong, I know now.”
I tried to think how to say the next thing. I couldn’t, so I just said it. “I may use that information.”
He said, “Why do you think I told you?”
* * *
Oriana
Tuesday went by, and then Wednesday did. Gabriel had classes for his trades certification on Wednesdays. I knew he couldn’t come see me, but it didn’t stop me wanting him to. We texted, but it was moreGood nightandGood morningthan anything I wanted to say. I didn’t want to talk to him over a phone, either. I wanted tobewith him.
