Leaving Lana'i

by Edie Claire

  She felt guilty as she said it. And feeling guilty annoyed her, because what she said was true. They were happy memories. Maybe there weren’t as many of them as she would like, but she didn’t have any bad ones either. Did she?

  She checked her memory. No, she did not. Jill Westover had never raised her voice to her daughter, much less been abusive in any way. She was always sweet and smiling.

  Why the hell wouldn’t Maddie want to go back and see their house again?

  A sudden spurt of fear shot through her. Both as a child and as an adolescent she had worried that there was something wrong with her, that she must have some innate deficiency if her mother’s loss hadn’t torn a deeper wound. Perhaps if she had felt the kind of pain she was supposed to have felt then, she wouldn’t be able to look at the family’s house now without falling apart. Is that what Sammy meant?

  “Hey,” Kai interrupted smoothly, “did they ever find out how that fire started behind the house on Kamoku Street? Was it arson?”

  “No, man!” Kenny’s brother Dan answered enthusiastically. “It was the baby!”

  “The baby?” Kai repeated.

  “A two-year-old!” Dan explained. “They didn’t think he could strike a match or anything, but he’d been watching TV, and he did the thing with the magnifying glass, you know? And the grass was dry, and poof! Lucky he ran away and nobody got hurt, but can you believe that, man? Burned the whole yard up! Nobody could believe it, but they found the glass and…”

  Maddie’s mind wandered. Nana had told her all about the fire already. Kai was behind the times.

  Various uncomfortable thoughts refused to settle as the group’s conversation drifted, and she found her participation dwindling. When the topic turned to people she didn’t know, she excused herself and walked up the beach to the restroom.

  When she emerged from the remodeled — and amazingly plush — public bathroom, she did not return to the ocean, but instead got a drink of water, pulled her phone out of her bag, and wandered into a nearby grove of trees. She leaned against one of them, closed her eyes, and smelled the breeze.

  Saltwater. Pines. Red dirt. Maybe just a touch of diesel exhaust — but that would be gone in a minute. She needed to think. She had been hearing, seeing, and feeling all sorts of vaguely disturbing things ever since she returned to the island, and she had been willfully ignoring all of them. But the cumulative total was getting to her.

  She needed to talk to her dad.

  Maddie looked down at her phone and was relieved to see four bars. Lana'i City was well covered, but the rest of the island was spotty. She was lucky here only because the resort was close. She tapped on her father’s number and put the phone to her ear.

  After three rings, a woman’s voice answered. “Maddie, honey?”

  It was her stepmother. “Hi, Lisa.”

  “Hey there! Your dad’s driving, but we’ll be getting where we’re going in a minute. How are you? Is everything okay?”

  Maddie felt herself tense. The words could easily be taken as idle greeting from a concerned parent whose daughter has just moved thousands of miles away. But there was more to Lisa’s words than that. Maddie could hear it in her tone. Her stepmother was genuinely worried.

  Why would she be?

  “Everything is fine,” Maddie replied, albeit without her usual cheer.

  “Obviously not,” Lisa countered. Maddie could hear a hand covering the phone, then a muffled, “Pull over, Bill.”

  Maddie got a sick feeling in her stomach again.

  “What’s up, honey?” Lisa continued.

  Maddie stifled a sudden urge to cry. Lisa’s motherly concern had always had that effect on her. “There’s nothing wrong wrong,” Maddie insisted. “Things have been going great, actually. I’m back on Lana'i again right now. I went to surprise Kai at his office like I said I was going to, and we really hit it off again, just like old times. He loaned me some money for the ferry so we could come back for the weekend, and at this very moment, we’re at the beach.”

  “Well, that sounds delightful!” Lisa enthused. But her chipper Southern accent couldn’t hide her angst from Maddie’s practiced ears.

  “But the thing is,” Maddie began, “I’m picking up on something, and I don’t know what to make of it. Something about Mom. And I just want to know if—”

  “Hang on, honey,” Lisa interrupted. “Here’s your dad.”

  “Hello, Mads!” Bill’s loud voice boomed into her ear. “You still having a good time?”

  Maddie blew out a small breath of frustration. Her father’s unstoppable good humor had always made him a joy to be around. It also made him extremely difficult to talk with about anything more serious than a shortage of laundry detergent.

  “I am having a good time,” Maddie answered. “But I need to ask you something.”

  “Oh?” he replied, managing to infuse the single syllable with an overtone of reluctance.

  “I know I was a difficult child, in a lot of ways,” she forced out quickly. “But I’m getting the idea that Mom might have been a bit, well… neglectful, maybe? Was that true?”

  She heard a pause. Then, uneasy laughter.

  “Oh, Mads! That’s hardly fair. You were a little tornado — that’s what your mom used to call you, her ‘little tornado!’ Nobody could keep your hair tidy and you got dirty the second you walked out the door. Your grandmother couldn’t do a thing with you, either. Lisa had better luck, but you were older, then. You never gave a hoot what you looked like, not until you started wanting a little more attention from the boys. Isn’t that right, babe?” He laughed again.

  Maddie did not hear Lisa laughing with him.

  Her mind swam with confusion. Everything he said sounded perfectly reasonable. At no time while she was living on Lana'i had she cared one whit what she looked like. And after her mother had died and Maddie had gone back to Ohio, she had pitched a fit when her grandmother tried to brush her hair. But that was because Grandma hadn’t known how to do it without pulling. Grandma meant well during those months, but she had no idea how to take care of a distraught little girl. The poor woman was out of practice, and she had only raised boys, besides.

  If Lisa wasn’t laughing over Maddie’s previous tendency for dishevelment, it was because the story she told had always been a little different. Lisa had noticed Maddie tagging along with her father to the state resort offices over that first summer and, knowing something of the family’s recent tragedy, had gone out on a limb and offered to help her boss by taking his daughter shopping for the new school year. Apparently Maddie’s wardrobe at the time consisted partly of what she had brought from Lana'i and partly of what her grandmother had allowed her to pick out at the Goodwill store in Ohio, since which time Maddie had grown at least an inch. And Lisa, understanding all too well the nature of sixth-grade girls at the Paducah Middle School, could not in good conscience allow that coming apocalypse. Although others accused Lisa of using Maddie to cozy up to Bill, she insisted — and Maddie believed her — that the opposite was true. Lisa hadn’t been interested in Bill at first precisely because she was so annoyed by his disregard for Maddie’s social wellbeing. Only later did Lisa realize he wasn’t uncaring so much as blind.

  Blind.

  Maddie had to wonder.

  “Dad, just listen to me, okay?” she said earnestly. “I’m getting strange vibes from some of the people here, and I don’t understand them. I only have happy memories of Lana'i. Of Mom. Of the house. And… it keeps seeming like this surprises people. Like they would expect me not to.”

  She paused a moment.

  Silence.

  “Dad?”

  “Yeah?”

  More silence. Her pulse pounded.

  “Well, what do you make of that?” she tried again. “I mean, I was there. I know Mom was never abusive or anything. But do you think maybe some people here might have a different impression for some reason?”

  “Um…” Maddie heard a scratching sound. She cou
ld picture him fussing with his beard. He was nervous and trying to think of what to say. “Yeah, that could be. You know how gossip gets going in small towns.”

  “But it would be just gossip, wouldn’t it?” Maddie pressed. “Mom never got, like… really angry with me, or violent—”

  “God, no!” Bill protested hotly. “Mads, you have to remember your mother better than that! She was the sweetest, gentlest thing! Don’t you remember how she used to smile so pretty… whenever you brought her flowers…”

  Without warning, his voice cracked. For several seconds all Maddie could hear were muffled sounds.

  She closed her eyes and exhaled with frustration. Her father was a mountain of a man physically, and a tower of strength in many ways. But he had always been a crier.

  “Dad?” she called quietly after a moment. “Dad? Are you there?”

  “Maddie, hun,” Lisa’s voice returned softly, “It’s me. Can your Daddy call you back in a bit?”

  Maddie hesitated. She doubted there was much point. It made no sense that she would remember her own childhood wrong, but it made plenty of sense that gossip would spread about the family after her mother’s unexpected death and their precipitous departure. “Never mind,” Maddie assured. “I don’t want to torture him if he doesn’t want to talk about it. It’s just that he never wants to talk about Mom. Or Lana'i.”

  “No,” Lisa agreed soberly. “He doesn’t. But that doesn’t mean he shouldn’t. Not if you want to. He’ll call you back tonight. I’ll make sure of it.”

  Maddie didn’t answer. She wasn’t sure she did want to talk to him anymore, at least not about Lana'i. The family’s time here couldn’t have left them with more radically different feelings about the island. To her, Lana'i was sunshine and ocean and warmth and laughter. To him, it meant sadness and heartache. Maddie was hoping that he and Lisa would come to visit her on Maui at some point. But she knew that he would never return to Lana'i.

  “How long will you be there before you go back to Maui?” Lisa asked.

  “We’re taking the late ferry out on Sunday,” Maddie answered, thinking even as she spoke that she was wasting valuable seconds at one of her favorite places in the world. “But I’ll probably come back as many weekends as I can. I love it here.” She lightened her voice, insisted that she was perfectly fine and that her worries were undoubtedly nonsense, apologized again for upsetting her father, and wrapped up the conversation.

  She turned off the phone and smiled to herself. Despite the drama of the call, she did feel a little better. Until she took her first steps back toward the beach.

  “Hel-lo,” said the great white shark, stepping out from behind the tree against which he’d been leaning. “Did you lose your friends?”

  “Only temporarily,” Maddie assured. Although, at a glance, she could no longer see any of them.

  “No offense to them,” he continued politely, “but how would you like to join me for dinner at the resort tonight? Just you and me.” He flashed her an orthodontically perfected smile, then blew a breath on his sunglasses to wipe out a smudge with the corner of his Hawaiian silk shirt. “I hear the desserts are incredible.”

  Maddie had wasted enough time on this particular individual. “No thanks,” she replied with a half smile, walking away.

  But he wouldn’t let it go. “Wait!” He rushed up to her side, grabbed her by the wrist, and leaned close to growl into her ear. “What do you want? Just tell me.”

  Maddie stopped walking. How she hated having to do this! She flicked her wrist quickly and violently, twisting herself away. Then she turned and faced the man down. “Don’t. Touch. Me,” she ordered, her voice a deathly whisper.

  She became aware of someone standing fairly close to them. Someone small. She hoped it wasn’t a child. Her gaze remained locked on her pursuer. Please, you damned idiot. Just go away!

  The man glared back at her, his eyes fiery with rage. It always happened that way when they rejected her “polite no” and forced her to use a “hell no” instead — they got angry at her for humiliating them.

  She really hated when it got this far.

  She tried hard to keep her gaze level and cool, not at all challenging or baiting — if she could manage it. It wouldn’t do for him to see what she was really thinking.

  We have an audience, moron! Be a man. Go away.

  The person standing near them stepped up close to Maddie. Gloria swung around to face the man and flashed him her most innocent smile. “Hey there!” she said cheerfully. And very, very loudly. “Haven’t we met? I think I babysat your kids at the resort earlier!”

  Maddie watched, and tried not to laugh, as the crimson anger in the man’s face dissolved into a dull puce of embarrassed confusion.

  “Um…” he mumbled uncertainly. “I don’t… think so. Well… Later.” He cast a last, disappointed glance at Maddie. Then he whirled and walked away.

  Gloria turned to Maddie with a smirk. “You know, you can tell the ones who actually have a wife and kids by how long they hesitate. It’s pretty hysterical, really. They can’t seem to decide whether I’m serious or not, even though you think they’d remember if they’d actually met a babysitter!” She cackled with laughter.

  Maddie laughed with her. “Thanks. You use that line often?”

  Gloria nodded. “The older girls are always getting hit on. Not me so much. I look like jail bait. But that makes me good for ‘protection.’” She chuckled again, then looked at Maddie sympathetically. “Didn’t you already ditch that guy once?”

  Maddie started walking back toward the water. “Yep.”

  “That’s crazy. And you’re wearing that… well, that! Don’t you ever wear a real swimsuit? I mean, what would happen if you did?”

  Maddie’s eyes scoured the ocean. She didn’t see any of the guys. Where were they? “I don’t wear swimsuits.”

  “Seriously? Like, ever?”

  “Nope,” Maddie confirmed, ready to change the subject. “Where did everyone go?”

  “I’m here,” Kai said from behind her.

  Maddie turned to find him walking up alone.

  “The others had to leave,” he explained. “Sammy’s got work, and Kenny was driving him. We saw you talking on your phone earlier. They said to say goodbye.”

  “So, you’ve never worn a bikini?” Gloria continued incredulously, oblivious to her brother’s arrival.

  Maddie squelched a strong desire to throw Gloria in the ocean. Only seconds ago, she had wanted to hug her. “Can we talk about something else?”

  “Do you ever wear, like, camis and tank tops and stuff?” Gloria pressed.

  “Why don’t we walk up to Pu'u Pehe?” Kai suggested. “Have lunch up there?”

  “Sounds fab,” Maddie agreed quickly.

  “But seriously,” Gloria insisted. “What’s the worst that could happen? In a public place?”

  Kai groaned. “Gloria, will you—”

  “That question, I’ll answer,” Maddie said sharply, turning to face his little sister. Sheesh, one minute the girl seemed thirty years old, the next she seemed about twelve. Maddie planted her hands squarely on her hips and fixed Gloria in the eyes. “How about my getting arrested for assault?”

  Chapter 17

  Kai tried not to look as thunderstruck as he felt. He wasn’t sure how much more he could take. It wasn’t even noon yet, and the day had already produced an endless stream of bizarre events that seemed specifically designed to stress him the hell out.

  It was working beautifully.

  “Please tell me you’re joking,” he said to Maddie, his voice demanding. She had to be joking. Never in a million years would he admit how irked he had been when she plunged into the water in that pathetic getup. Women’s board shorts? Seriously? Who even manufactured such a thing? And she wouldn’t even take her shirt off? In the ocean?

  He realized he had no rational right whatsoever to be disappointed, particularly given her crystal-clear signals regarding the nature of the
ir relationship. It was none of his business what she was wearing underneath that dripping wet shirt and what she would look like in a perfectly decent, normal swimsuit that showed a healthy amount of upper thigh. She didn’t owe him or any other man on that beach a peek at a damn thing.

  He didn’t care. He was still disappointed.

  And the fact that she might have a valid reason for ruining all his perfectly innocent fun irked him all the more.

  “I am not joking,” Maddie replied in complete seriousness. She located her pack, picked it up, and slipped on her sandals. Kai and Gloria followed in silence. “I am exaggerating,” she admitted as they all moved off towards the trailhead. “But only slightly.”

  “Well, you have to tell us now!” Gloria pestered, walking close by her side. Kai followed a pace behind.

  Maddie sighed. “Fine. It happened a couple years ago, when I was at a hotel in downtown Atlanta for an ecology conference. The last night, one of the other grad students and I decided to go out and have a nice dinner somewhere, just for fun. So I dressed up. Nothing excessive, just your standard little black dress and some makeup. But then he met a guy he was interested in, so I came back alone. No big deal. I hadn’t been drinking; we just said goodnight and I took a cab. Everything was perfectly fine until I got into the elevator at the hotel. Just as the doors were closing, some man stumbles up and pulls them open again. He’s falling down drunk, of course.”

  She rolled her eyes in disgust, and Kai found his core temperature climbing. Feeling protective of Maddie was indeed second nature to him.

  “So at first he was too drunk to even notice me,” she continued as they started up the trail through the trees beside the beach. “His eyes weren’t focused. He forgot to push a button. He just leaned against the far wall looking seasick. He was obviously a businessman, in his late forties maybe, wearing a tailored suit. I thought about getting out and taking another elevator, but he looked pretty harmless, so I just ignored him.”

  The trail angled up sharply as they climbed along the volcanic rock ledge that formed the east end of the bay. Down and to their right, the lava rocks swept out to sea in a variety of elaborate curls, creating a series of smaller pools whose depth varied with the tide. Concrete steps led down to one particularly appealing, protected keiki pool where many Lana'ian toddlers, including Kai himself, had first learned to swim.