Free Sweet as Honey (The Seven Sisters) by Caitlyn Robertson Page B

sub-tropical Northland hung
onto its summer jealously. The air had not yet cooled enough for Cam to don a
jacket, and cicadas still called from the bush.
    Cam placed his mug on the table between
them. “Missy told me you rang Dex before you got in the bath.”
    “Yes.”
    “But he was busy tonight.”
    “Yes.” She looked at her hot chocolate and
picked out a tiny fly that had attempted to go for a swim in it.
    “Everything all right?” Cam asked.
    She sighed. “I think so. Probably. I don’t
know. I rang him at lunch today and he was…weird. And tonight he was…” She
trailed off, not knowing how to voice it. “Distracted, I suppose.”
    “Work?” Cam suggested.
    “Maybe.”
    “He’s a busy man. He has a lot on his
plate,” Cam said. “And he’s probably nervous about Saturday.”
    “I know.” That didn’t explain his irritated
tone, she thought. His curt, clipped sentences. The awkward silences. Something
had changed, and it wasn’t just her imagination.
    “Did you tell him about the court case?”
Cam asked.
    “No…” she said slowly. “I told him I wasn’t
allowed to discuss it outside the courtroom.”
    “You discussed with me.”
    “I know.”
    He sipped his coffee as he waited for an
explanation.
    She watched a pair of pukekos walking
across the lawn, their blue feathers bright in the late evening sunshine, their
red feet comical as they strutted to the pond. “I didn’t want to mention it,”
she said tiredly. “I didn’t want to have the conversation, because I’d talk
about Sarah Green and he’d pick up from my tone that it was upsetting me, and
then he’d get angry that I was comparing her to myself and tell me off.”
    The corner of Cam’s mouth curved up. “He
wouldn’t tell you off.”
    “Yes, he would.”
    “No, he wouldn’t. He would tell
you—rightly—that this case has nothing to do with you or Ian, and it’s not fair
on you or the defendant for you to let your emotions become involved.”
    Honey bit her lip. It was an easy thing to
say, but not so easy to carry out. The afternoon had been no easier than the
morning. The prosecuting lawyer had cross-questioned Sarah ruthlessly. Honey
thought that maybe James had paid a lot of money for the smartly-dressed,
hotshot lawyer to come up from Whangarei—the nearest city an hour away, rather
than hiring one from the smaller law firms in Kerikeri, whereas Sarah’s pro
bono lawyer—although he had done a good job in trying to elicit some sympathy
for her—wore an old suit and didn’t seem quite so on the case.
    The prosecuting lawyer had picked holes in
her testimony, querying everything from why she hadn’t put the chain across the
door if she was so afraid of burglars, to forcing her to admit that she must
have stabbed James only six feet from the front door rather than in the kitchen
as she’d previously testified, because a smear of blood had been found on the
wall there. It couldn’t have been made as James walked out, said the lawyer,
because the wall was on the left, and the wound was on the right side of his
face and arm. Rather than pointing out that James could have turned around and
leaned against the wall, Sarah had asked what difference it made, but Honey had
already understood the point the lawyer was trying to make—that Sarah had come
out of the kitchen and advanced to tackle the intruder, rather than waiting
there for him to come to her. That was not the action of a woman terrified for
her life.
    “I can’t not involve my emotions,” she said
in answer. “I’m an emotional person.”
    Cam smiled then. “Yes, you are. You’re very
like your mother.”
    Honey studied the lawn again, watching the
rabbits that had come out to play. A lump rose in her throat. “I wish Mum was
here,” she whispered.
    Cam turned the mug in his hand. “Yeah. Me
too.”
    “I’ll miss her on Saturday,” she said. If
we make it to Saturday. She didn’t voice those words though, knowing her
father would be