Page 7 of Kiwi Sin
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When we werein the car again and driving, I said, “You stop there often, then. With your family.” I needed to make some kind of conversation, if only to distract myself from my back. It was against the seat no matter how I tried to position myself, and it was hurting more.
No, I needed to make conversation because he’d invited me tolivewith him. Or near him. In a “granny flat,” whatever that was. Did that mean it had a granny in it?Hisgranny?
I didn’t know howto live Outside. What had I done?
I was breathing harder, so I focused. On the road, and on what he said next. “Yeh,” he said. “Three kids, like I said. And a wife, of course.”
“Oh,” I said. “You’re married? I thought people Outside just …”
He shot a look at me, then smiled in a crooked sort of way. “Nah, married before our families and God and all, I’m afraid. Sorry to disappoint in the sin department. Anyway, I work in Dunedin, but we’ve got a place in Wanaka as well, so we’re back and forth a fair bit. It’s my holidays now, though, such as they are, and once the kids are done with their school term, we’ll be up in Wanaka again for Christmas. The kids can never seem to make it all the way there without stopping for a wee and a feed, so hey presto—the café.”
I did my best to take all that in. “You have two houses?” I asked cautiously. “That are just yours?”
He glanced over at me, then back at the road. “Holiday house. Pretty common.”
I tried to digest that, but it wouldn’t go down. “Holidays are days off work,” I said, but after that, I had nothing.
“Let me guess,” Drew said. “You don’t have holidays—proper holidays—at Mount Zion. Don’t even get a few weeks around Christmas to recover from the year? Or in winter, maybe, as it’s farming? To go … someplace else?”
“No,” I said. “Who’d do the work? And where would we go?”
“Hmm,” Drew said. “What do the kids do, then, when they’re not in school?”
“Work,” I said.
“Ah,” he said, and that was all.
I didn’t hear anything after that. Not to put too fine a point on it, I fell asleep, or at least into a doze. It wasn’t what you’d call a comfortable sleep. More of a nightmarish one, to be honest. And when I woke up, that looked like a dream, too.
It was a house, I guessed. The Wanaka house we’d stood outside, the one that was Gray’s, had been a cube, and this was … a bigger cube, or a series of them, stacked in a sort of pattern. It was a towering structure, all white and windows, like nothing I’d ever imagined could be a residence for one family, or for four.
Drew said, “We’ll have a look at your back first, then get you sorted in the flat. Come on,” and climbed down.
I took a breath and followed him. My back was screaming now, but it wasn’t the first time I’d been hurt, and anyway, there was too much strangeness here to get distracted by pain.
We didn’t make it to the door before it opened and three kids came pelting out. Small, medium, and largish. The littler ones, who were girls, threw their arms around Drew’s legs, while the boy just came close, upon which Drew threw an arm aroundhim,even though the kid had to be nine or ten.
Somebody else came out of the door, then, a pretty woman with white-blond hair coiled at the back of her neck in a way I recognized. She was wearing shorts and a T-shirt, but I was already getting less shocked by women’s clothes. Either the Devil whispering in my ear, or God deciding I’d had as much shock as I could endure for one day.
Or not, because she ran to Drew, then grabbed him around the neck and kissed him. Passionately, I guess you’d call it. In front of their kids. In front ofme.
I’d never seen a kiss like that in my life. The closest I’d come had been when my parents were in bed and I was trying not to look, and these two were doing it in front of a stranger! I didn’t know what to do, so I stared into the middle distance and tried harder not to notice. Not easy, when the people are a meter away.
The woman pulled back, finally, when I was wondering desperately if I should just get back into the car, and asked, “Where are you hurt?” Her eyes shadowed, worried. “You can still drive. How bad is it?”
“What?” he said. “I’m not hurt.”
“Drew.” She looked upset now, and shesoundedupset. And, yeh—I’d also never seen a woman get upset at a man like this. “You asked me to get some large burn dressings. You told me that Gabriel was coming to stay, and to please get large burn dressings!”
“Did you get burned, Dad?” the boy asked.
“No,” Drew said. “It wasn’t for me, though. It was for Gabriel. Didn’t I say?”
She had a hand at her face. “Oh. I’m so sorry, Gabriel, but—Drew.Why didn’t youtextme that?”
“Aw,” he said. “Sorry, sweetheart. I was driving,” and then kissed heragain. When he pulled back, he was smiling. “I’m all good, see? Not getting myself hurt anymore, remember? Leaving that to the younger boys. Besides, I’d have thought you were immune from worry by now. And you got the dressings? Brilliant.”
