Blood Orchids

by Toby Neal

  “I’m sorry,” Lei said, keeping her eyes on the road. “I didn’t want to worry you.”

  “What? Who raised you to talk crazy like that? Oh yeah, that crack whore momma of yours. That’s why I should expec’ this kine thing.” She folded her arms and stared out the window. They drove in silence for some minutes, Aunty letting the full weight of her displeasure settle over the cab. Finally Lei put her hand on her aunt’s arm.

  “I’m sorry,” she said again. “I’ll call you next time I have a problem, I promise.”

  “That’s what family is for,” Aunty said, slightly mollified. “I guess I should expec’ I gotta teach you that. Now tell me ever’t’ing.”

  “I nevah like talk about it,” Lei said.

  “You stay goin’ to,” Aunty said. “I need fo’ know.”

  Aunty never took her eyes off Lei as she filled her in on what had happened with the stalker and Mary.

  “I want you to come back to San Rafael with me,” her aunt said with a note of finality. “Take some vacation time. Momi and I will take care of you.” Momi Pauhale was her aunt’s longtime partner in the restaurant and like a second aunt to Lei.

  “No,” Lei said. “I have to see this through. I want to catch these guys—the one who killed Mary and the girls, and the one who’s stalking me.”

  “Sometimes you gotta let other people take care of you,” Aunty said, an eerie echo of fifteen years ago when she’d picked up a battered child of nine from Social Services.

  “And sometimes you have to be the one who takes care of business.” Lei pulled into her driveway, going through the motions of opening the house, showing her aunt where to stow her things, giving her the bedroom and getting out the futon for herself.

  Rosario had brought a lot of food from the restaurant in the white cooler, and she put it away, keeping up a stream of gossip about mutual friends and relatives as she thawed some kalbi ribs and warmed up poi rolls for their dinner.

  “Business has been pretty good. I still surprised how many Hawaii people drive for miles to find us. Momi and I are training some new waitresses; we lost Kailani when she went back school. The best one is our new girl Anela Ka`awai. She’s related to the Ka`awais from Kaua`i and she a hard worker. Momi talking about making her assistant manager . . .”

  Lei sat at the little table, and let the words wash over her.

  She squinched her eyes shut, trying to shut out the memory of Mary’s dusky face. Funny how she’d never noticed that little mole by her mouth before.

  “Lei.” Aunty touched her shoulder and she looked up.

  “What?”

  “I brought something. Something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about for a long time.” She came and sat back down beside Lei. She was holding a thick packet of letters bound with rubber bands. She set them in front of Lei. “From your father.”

  Chapter 34

  “What are these, Aunty?” Her heart accelerating, she picked the stack up, slid the rubber band off. She turned over the topmost letter, looking at the return address.

  Wayne Texeira, Federal Correctional Center Lompoc, Lompoc, California.

  Wayne Texeira. Her father—the man whose incarceration had led to such devastation for her and her mother. Her blood seemed to roar in her ears as she shuffled through the letters, postmarked all the way back through the years to the first one, written in 1989.

  I was five years old, she thought. I thought he forgot all about me. She looked at the address they had been sent to:

  Lei Texeira, c/o Rosario Texeira, 300 D. Street, San Rafael, California.

  “He sent them to me. At first I’d lost track of you, couldn’t get them to you. Then, it seemed like it would upset you too much to give them to you.” Aunty got up, banged some pots around. Lei looked at her small, sturdy form, shoulders hunched as she flipped the ribs on the cookie sheet with her back turned.

  “Why now?” Lei turned the packet over in her hands. Her chest felt constricted, that panicky feeling returning. She wanted to get up and run, run, run.

  “I don’t know. It just seemed time, and like maybe you needed something else to think about.”

  “You shouldn’t have kept them from me.” Lei stood, went into the bedroom and got the Glock in its holster, strapped it on. Picked up her backpack, slid the letters into it. Her voice trembled with the effort of self control. “I’m going out. Keep the door locked.”

  Her aunt nodded without turning around.

  Lei hooked the light nylon parka shell off the back of the door and slipped into it to cover her gun, grabbed her keys and went back out to the truck. She drove to a nearby espresso bar and sat at her favorite spot in the corner, where the sun cut a sharp, bright lance across the table. She ordered a coffee of the day, and sipping it out of the thick, white mug, she pulled the letters out of the backpack.

  She arranged them into chronological order. Interesting Aunty never read them, she thought, examining the intact flap of the very first one, dated November of 1989.He had been arrested in October of that year.

  She’d been asleep in her little bed, and still remembered the boom of the front door breaking open, waking her up. Even at five, Lei knew it was smartest to hide, so she’d slid out and crawled under the bed, clutching her favorite stuffed kitty. She remembered her father’s voice, raised in argument, her mom yelling, the glare of the lights, flashing blue and red . . . and eventually silence.

  Lei crawled out and went into their bedroom, climbing into the wide bed, still dented with the shape of her father’s body. She’d snuggled into his still-warm pillow beside her weeping mother, a fatalistic sorrow taking up residence in her bones.

  Lei refocused on the letter in front of her. She realized she didn’t know his handwriting, an unfamiliar hieroglyphic of deeply pressed block letters. She traced the dents on the paper with the tips of her fingers.

  November 4, 1989

  Dear Lei-girl,

  I hope you are okay, and not missing me too much. I sure miss you, though. I wish so many things could be different. I hope you and your mom are staying with your Aunty Rosario. I told your mom to go there because I think you will do better there with her to look out for you both.

  I am so sorry, honey. I never wanted you to know about any of this. Truth is, I always meant it to be temporary, just until I could get enough money together for something better, but I waited a little too long. I hope you aren’t too ashamed of your old man. I always wanted you to be proud of me . . .

  Love, your Daddy

  Lei refolded the letter and put it back into the envelope. Her eyes prickled with unshed tears but she blinked them away. She went on to the next. His tone grew frantic, wondering why he never heard from them, then fatalistic as Rosario must have told him what was happening with Maylene’s addiction. He expressed his helplessness, worry, sorrow, loneliness and, above all, love for her again and again. At some point, he seemed to realize she was not getting the letters, but he continued to write them every six months or so, telling little stories of his life.

  Finally finished, Lei restacked the letters, slipped the old rubber bands back over them, put them back in the backpack. She checked the time on her phone. Aunty would be waiting. Her coffee had gone cold, a milky clot forming on the surface.

  People sat at the little tables, reading the paper. The bell over the door dinged with each customer’s entrance or exit. The smell of coffee, the periodic roar of the blender, the bubbling hiss of the espresso machine were all the same as they had been when she came in. But inside Lei something had profoundly shifted.

  I thought he forgot me. I thought he never cared. All along he loved me. All along he was missing me, thinking of me. The truth of it pressed on her heart, a message written in deep block print.

  She slipped the backpack on, waved distractedly at the barista, and pushed out through the glass door with a ding of the bell. A few minutes later she pulled back into the garage, letting the exterior door rumble down behind her as she went out th
e side door. The front door was unlocked—and she’d told her aunt to close up. She relocked it and put the chain and deadbolt on.

  “Aunty?” she called, heading for her room. She slung the backpack onto the bed, patted it with affection as her aunt called from the kitchen:

  “In here, Ku`uipo.” She went in. Her aunt was washing dishes at the sink. She’d always called her “sweetheart” in Hawaiian.

  “Why was the front door unlocked?”

  “Someone knocked. I opened it and there was a letter there for you on the mat.” She indicated a plain white envelope on the counter, LEI TEXEIRA printed on it. “I hope it’s okay.”

  Lei’s heart picked up speed. She’d so hoped the stalking was over, and now he’d come when her aunt was home alone.

  “Dammit, Aunty, it was the stalker!” she exclaimed. “There was a reason I told you to keep the door locked.”

  “No talk sassy to me, girl.” Rosario dried her hands on the dish towel as Lei went and got a pair of gloves, snapped them on. Got a steak knife, slit the top, took out the trebly folded note, and opened it.

  I THINK OF YOU EVERY TIME I TAKE A BATH.

  Lei’s stomach dropped and her vision swam. Aunty Rosario reached over her shoulder and snatched the paper up. Her color drained as she read it, hand coming up to cover her mouth. Her eyes were huge looking over her fingers at Lei.

  “This must be the guy who did those things to you, Lei! Charlie Kwon!”

  Lei got up, fetched a Ziploc bag, slid the letter into it, put it in the freezer between the frozen dinners.

  “I don’t know,” she said woodenly. “How could he find me?”

  “I don’t know either! This is terrible! He should go to jail for what he did.”

  “Believe me Aunty, I’d send him there if I could find him.” Lei sat back down. “Dinner ready? I need something to settle my stomach.”

  Her aunt went back to the stove, dished up the ribs and rice. “Aren’t you going to call that Pono or something?”

  “No. I just got them to stop staying over here for protection; we’re fine in the house and I’ll take the letter in in the morning. It does seem like it must have something to do with Kwon though. He’s the only one beside us who might know that thing about . . .” Her voice trailed off. She couldn’t finish the sentence.

  Aunty set the plate in front of her with a purple poi roll. Her clenched stomach suddenly translated into hunger. The food was hot and savory, and took her straight back to being safe as a child. She ate quickly and wiped the plate with the tender roll.

  “Delicious, Aunty.”

  “Thanks, Ku`uipo. I’m thinking about anyone who knew what happened to you. I only told the social worker at Child Welfare, and Momi of course. I don’t know if Momi might have told anybody but I don’t know why she would.”

  Momi was her aunt’s partner in the restaurant business, a friend closer than family. Child Welfare was supposed to have confidential records.

  “Well the stalker’s finally said something I can follow up on. I’ll work on trying to track Kwon down. Now can we talk about those letters from my dad?”

  Her aunt looked down at her weathered hands, folded in her lap.

  “Ku`uipo, I didn’t want him to hurt you, let you down anymore. When he was arrested I tried fo’ get your mother to come to the Mainland, stay with me like he wanted, but she wouldn’t. I lost you—Maylene moved around so much. Finally I found you and gave you my number in case you needed me . . . and I was angry with them both. They’d screwed up their lives with drugs and they didn’t deserve to have a little girl, when I would have loved you so much . . .”

  “They were my parents.” Lei put her hand on her aunt’s shoulder. “But you were my mama.”

  Aunty threw her arms around Lei and tucked her head against Lei’s shoulder. Lei folded her aunt against her, stroking the long, thick braid of her hair. A kaleidoscope of feelings swirled through her, but she just pressed her cheek against her aunt’s head, realizing she was taller, realizing she was stronger too. She had never known that before.

  Her aunt pulled away, tore a paper towel off the roll on the wall, honked her nose loudly.

  “I’m sorry,” Aunty said. “I kept those first letters because I didn’t know where your mother had taken you, then because I didn’t want you to be upset by hearing from him. I didn’t think he deserved you. And later, I didn’t know how to tell you I’d been keeping them all these years.”

  “It’s okay,” Lei said. “It’s just that it would have made a difference. It would have helped me, to know he was thinking of me, that he loved me.”

  “I couldn’t be sure what was in there. I was trying to protect you.”

  “You could have read them.”

  Aunty Rosario sat back, drew herself upright. “That would be wrong.”

  “Aunty, listen to yourself! It’s wrong to open someone else’s mail but not wrong to keep it from them?”

  “It’s complicated,” Aunty said. “Anyway, what’s done is done. What you going do now, is the question.”

  “I’m going to visit him,” Lei said. She clapped her hand over her mouth as if to take back the words, but then slowly lowered it as she realized, yes, this was what she wanted to do.

  Her aunt looked at her. Sighed. Picked up the sponge and wiped the table.

  “I’m not surprised. Wayne always had a way with words.”

  Chapter 35

  The bus bound for Halawa Prison on Oahu was a huge Greyhound, and Lei felt like she was in an ocean liner, gliding and swaying far above mere mortals fighting traffic in the narrow double lanes below. She snuggled into her comfortable seat, looking out the window as steep jungled slopes streamed by. She’d got going early that morning, flying out of the Big Island to Oahu, her stomach knotting every time she thought of meeting her father. She pulled the photo her aunt had given her out of her pocket.

  In it her father smiled a handsome, square-jawed smile. A toddler Lei sat on his shoulders, her hands buried in his dark curly hair, her grin as big as the moon.

  “I don’t have anything more recent,” her aunt had said. “I couldn’t stand to take a picture of him in that orange jumpsuit. But he’s aged, honey. Prison life hasn’t been that kind.”

  “No, it hasn’t,” Lei whispered, touching his face. She slid the photo back in her pocket and looked back out the window. According to her aunt, he’d been recently transferred to Halawa from Lompoc in California, with another year on his sentence.

  Her phone rang, vibrating against her side. She pulled it out, flipping it open as she looked at the plaque attached to the seat in front of her: NO CELL PHONES.

  “Hello?” she whispered.

  “Lei?”

  “Yes? Who is this?” she flipped the phone over to see the screen ID: Unavailable.

  “Me. Your special friend.”

  Lei sucked in her breath, held it. Every hair on her body stood on end. The voice was loud but muffled. She couldn’t tell gender, age, anything.

  “How did you get this number?”

  “That doesn’t matter. What you need to know is that I haven’t forgotten you.”

  “I haven’t forgotten you, either,” Lei said, her whisper vibrating with rage. “I’m going to find you and seriously fuck you up.”

  A long pause.

  “I hope so.” Then laughter, a low rumbling chuckle. “I like a challenge, Lei.”

  Click. Dead air.

  Lei snapped the phone shut and pressed the power button to turn it off. She stood up and stepped into the aisle, scanning the people in their seats for any unusual activity. There were only a few other passengers, hunched over portable video games, or tucked dozing into corners. She walked to the back of the bus and into the closet-like restroom and locked the door.

  She took some relaxation breaths. Splashed water on her face and hands. Did a nervous pee. Washed her hands again. Splashed water again. Nothing was helping to diffuse the adrenaline that had pumped into her system. She
went out, scanned the seats again. No activity. She walked down the aisle, touching a few seat backs for balance as the bus swayed. She walked back and forth a few more times until her heart rate was back to normal and the trembling of her legs had calmed. She sat back in her seat and took a few more relaxation breaths, longing for the familiar weight of the Glock, which she’d left at home due to airport hassles. All she had with her was the black lava stone from Mary’s memorial.

  She rubbed it, and then flipped open her phone and texted Stevens:

  ♦ Stalker called my cell. Can you trace my phone activity? Anything new your end?

  She’d called him and Pono the night before to let them know about her plans to go to Oahu, and he hadn’t had any more overtime authorized for her Saturday so she’d gone ahead with the trip. A few minutes later the phone vibrated with his phone call.

  She didn’t pick up, texted again: ♦ On bus so can’t use phone to talk.

  A few minutes later, he texted back.

  → No action here. Will put in trace paperwork. Will check records for caller number. You ok?

  ♦ Shaken up but ok.

  → Why you on bus?

  ♦ Going to Halawa to see my dad. He’s in prison there, told you yesterday.

  → Think he knows anything about the stalker stuff?

  Lei paused, looked out the window at the lushness of remote Halawa Valley rising around her in sculpted beauty. Her eyes hardly registered the scenery. Could her father be connected to the stalking campaign that had been going on? It didn’t seem possible.

  ♦ Don’t think so. Unfinished business. She clicked the phone shut. It vibrated once more:

  → Call me when you can.

  ♦ Will do, she texted back, unaccountably warmed.

  She sat at the battered Formica table in the communal room, waiting for her father. It had been an ordeal getting in. She had been able to get on the schedule for a visit but only because of her police and daughter status. She hadn’t known what to expect. The prison was medium security so the visiting could have been anything from plastic windows and phones to this open setting.