by Edie Claire
Or did you just assume she loved you because Dad kept saying she did?
“Maddie? Are you listening to me?”
She didn’t act like she loved you. She didn’t even take care of you!
“Maddie!”
“What?” Maddie broke free of his embrace and hopped off the rock again.
“Talk to me,” Kai ordered. “What are you thinking?”
“I’m not thinking anything,” Maddie snapped.
“Liar.”
Her face heated up all over again. How easy it was to drop back into the old patterns… how cathartic it had been to scream and stomp and yell at Kai whenever her crazy childish emotions got the best of her! “I’m thinking that my mother never loved me, of course!” she answered. “What the hell else am I supposed to think?”
Kai jumped off the rock and stood beside her. “Well, knock it off. You’re not a kid now. You know that depression is a mental illness. Your mother was sick, Maddie. The same as if she’d had cancer or diabetes. You know that.”
Maddie looked away from him. Depression. She could remember her mother lying in bed. Sleeping late. Lounging on the couch. Complaining of headaches. Resting. She had smiled at Maddie. Always had kind words. There had been good days here and there, when her mother seemed to have more energy. They might go out together then, or play a bit. But other times Maddie would talk to her and she seemed not even to hear.
You’re an idiot.
“I should have known,” Maddie murmured.
Kai made a growling noise and stepped in front of her. “Do not try to make this about you,” he said forcefully. “She didn’t commit suicide because of you, and it wasn’t your job to diagnose and treat her mental illness, either. You were a child, Maddie. Look at me.” He caught her eyes. “It was not your fault. You could not have done anything to stop it. And beating yourself up about it now will help absolutely nothing.”
A stupid idiot.
“I didn’t tell you any of this so you could dwell on it — that’s exactly what I don’t think you should do.” Kai stopped and ran a hand through his hair, as if suddenly uncertain of himself. “But you have to understand… everyone on the island knows what happened, and eventually someone was bound to—”
“Yeah, I get it,” Maddie agreed, cutting him off. “I’m glad you told me. Thanks.” She pivoted and looked different directions around the field. She probably looked like she was expecting a bus, but in reality it was just creative fidgeting.
It would only make her feel guilty! Her father’s voice taunted her again.
What would make me feel guilty, Dad? she thought. What made you so sure that I would think Mom committed suicide because of me? Didn’t you think that explaining the disease would be enough? Why did you never tell me she had a disease at all? Why have you still not told me to this freakin’ day?
Maddie whirled and faced Kai again. “Did my mother leave a suicide note?”
Kai looked taken aback. “I… I’m not really sure. Nana would know.”
Maddie stared at him. The darkness hid a lot, but between the tone of his voice and what she could see of his face, she was pretty sure he was telling the truth. “I see.”
“What are you thinking?” he asked.
“I’m thinking lots of things,” Maddie answered. And with those words, she realized that her face was no longer hot. She was still angry, but there was no fuel left for the fire. She felt dull, suddenly. Weary.
Kai stood silently a moment, watching her. “Would you like to go back now?” he asked.
Maddie envisioned herself lying in bed, staring at Nana’s ceiling. She shook her head.
“Do you… want to cry again?” he suggested.
“No,” she said honestly. “I’m too mad for that.”
“How about taking a swing at me?” he teased.
She shook her head. Although if you were here, Dad, we would definitely have some words. She thought of all the times she had asked her father to tell her more about her mother. Things about their life on Lana'i that she couldn’t remember. Things about her mother from before Lana'i. Maddie had been over eighteen and filling out health forms, for God’s sake — never once had her father wavered from his insistence that Jill died of “heart disease.” Maddie had even gone to the trouble of having her own cholesterol levels checked!
Afraid of uncomfortable emotional confrontation, indeed.
Something rippled along her skin, chilling her. But this sensation was not the wind.
Oh, you don’t really want to do your post-doc on the islands, do you? her father had said discouragingly. It’s so expensive there! Your mother and I can’t help you anymore, you know. We’ve got to save for your brothers’ educations. Can’t you go somewhere closer?
Her father had never been enthusiastic about her plans to work on Maui. She had thought he didn’t want her to go so far away.
Right.
He didn’t want her finding out the truth.
Ever.
She felt so cold.
“If there’s anything I can do,” Kai said patiently. “Just tell me.”
Maddie looked up. She had almost forgotten he was standing there. Earnest. Concerned. Her own father wouldn’t tell her, her family wouldn’t tell her, his family wouldn’t tell her… but he would. He had told her because he thought she deserved to know. He had done it decisively, within a mere three days of meeting her again. He’d done it even though the odds were high that she would totally flip out on him. And he had awakened her in the middle of the night to do it.
What a sweetheart.
She could definitely go for another hug. But she would not.
She grabbed his hand and pulled him toward the rock, then she hopped back up on it and gestured for him to follow. Once they were comfortably settled again, she tilted her head back and looked at the sky.
The array of the stars above them was truly stunning. From large and bright to tiny specks, they were strung across an uneven field of blue-black that was wholly dark in some places and washed with a film of milky light in others. An owl hooted from farther away in the fields. Otherwise, the island was silent. The air felt moist with the coming dew.
“Okay,” she announced. “Now you can bore me.”
Kai chuckled.
She did love that deep, rumbling sound. Not that the old high-pitched snicker hadn’t had its charms.
“Excuse me?” he retorted. “Are you saying astronomy is boring?”
“It’s not astronomy! You just make stuff up!”
“I did not,” he insisted. “Well, maybe I did sometimes. But now I won’t.” He pointed above their heads. “That’s Gemini, the twins. And see there, that’s Leo. You always hated Leo.”
Maddie choked out a laugh. “I hated Leo? Why would I hate a constellation?”
“How should I know? You just did.”
“Okay, fine. I’m sure I had an excellent reason.”
“Well, you shouldn’t anymore. Look, now it’s special, because it has Jupiter appearing right inside it! How cool is that?”
“You do realize I just see a bunch of spots, right?”
“Apply your brain,” he ordered. “You can do this. Follow where I’m pointing. First look for the brightest star right off the tip of my finger…”
Maddie settled her head into the crook of his shoulder and pretended to follow instructions. She was pretty sure she’d never actually figured out which stars were supposed to look like a lion back then, either. But when stargazing in a field in the middle of the night in your pajamas, the constellations weren’t important.
What mattered was the company you kept.
Chapter 22
Maddie dragged herself to Nana’s table the next morning feeling like her skull was packed with wet cotton. She pulled out a chair and fell into it.
She had not slept well.
Nana peered at her over a steaming cup of coffee. “I was going to offer you some guava juice,” she said, her voice gravelly. “But
now I’m guessing black coffee for you, too.”
Maddie nodded.
Nana started to rise, but Maddie waved her off and got up herself. She shuffled over to the counter and poured herself a cup of coffee, then struggled to wake up her brain enough to make Nana a second pot. She managed — thanks to Nana calling out a few corrections, anyway — and collapsed back into her seat with her mug.
“How were the stars?” Nana asked, smirking slightly.
Maddie looked back at her and felt a disturbing urge to cry. She had not succumbed to that urge yet and didn’t want to. She was still too damn mad.
“It wasn’t that kind of outing,” she replied flatly. “Kai told me that my mother killed herself. He was afraid I’d hear it on the streets otherwise. And he was right. I would have.”
Nana set her coffee cup down slowly. Her dark eyes met Maddie’s squarely, with empathy but not with pity. Nor with apology. She nodded. “I see.”
Maddie felt a flicker of annoyance that Nana hadn’t been willing to do the deed. Shoot-from-the-hip Nana, who always prided herself on “telling it like it is.” Why wouldn’t she say anything? It made no sense. But Maddie couldn’t stay angry with Nana. Nana always did things — or not — for a reason. And that reason was never cowardice.
Unlike some people.
“My father never told me she was depressed,” Maddie explained, aware of the bitterness in her voice and not caring. “Not a hint. All those medical forms he filled out for me while I was growing up… you know, where you have to give your family history? In the mother’s column, he’d leave all the mental illness stuff blank, including depression. But he’d always check heart disease. Every time.”
Nana made a grumbling noise. She shook her head and took a swig of coffee.
“I don’t understand, now, how I could have been so blind,” Maddie said with disgust. “I might not have known what depression was then, but I learned about it later. And yet I never put it together. It never even occurred to me! How stupid is that?”
Nana set her cup down so forcefully that a bit of dark liquid sloshed out onto the table top. Maddie jumped.
“Now you just stop that kind of talk right now, do you hear?” Nana demanded. “You were a child. I’m no doctor, but if there’s one thing I do understand, it’s keiki. Their world looks different. They think different. They remember different. You didn’t see anything wrong with your mama because she was the only mama you ever knew. The way she was, the way your family went about its business — that was your normal, child. And you just accepted it. You were a sunny girl and you didn’t go looking to find problems for yourself. As long as you had food and clothes and a roof over your head and Kai to run around with, you were happy.” Nana stopped and smiled a little. “Sweet Jesus, child. Half the time you didn’t care about the clothes or the roof!”
Maddie felt herself smiling, too. Yeah. She could see that.
“You had no reason not to believe what your father told you,” Nana continued more sternly. “None. Now when you came back here and maybe remembered a few things you’d forgotten… well, of course you were confused. Maybe they didn’t make good sense with the story you’d heard.”
Maddie shook her head. “They didn’t. But I dismissed them. I didn’t want to think about it.” She took a swig of coffee and grimaced. It was crazy strong. How did Nana drink this stuff? “I guess that makes me no better than my father.”
Nana reached out and laid a wrinkled brown hand over Maddie’s pale one. “You are nothing like your father, child. You ask me, your brain was playing tricks on you, fighting with you, because that’s what kids’ brains do when they’ve got no other protection. I’ve seen a whole lot of keiki who’ve been through a whole lot of suffering, and I’ve watched it happen more times than I can count. They block it out. They put it away. I know it’s all the fashion now to make them drag it all out again when they grow up, but you ask me, that’s a mistake. The brain knows what it’s doing. Sometimes, for the little ones, forgetting is the very best medicine there is.”
Maddie considered. “You think I forgot the really bad times?”
Nana shook her head. “No, I think you remember what happened well enough. You just didn’t want to think about why it was happening. You blocked out what really hurt you, and that was your mama’s not caring — her apathy. But that was the depression. You understand what I’m saying, child?”
Maddie’s mind flashed to all the times since she’d returned to Lana'i that her instincts had screamed “don’t think about that!” It was true, wasn’t it? When it came to her feelings about her mother, her inner psyche didn’t want to upset the apple cart. It wanted to leave well enough alone.
Too bad that was no longer possible.
She might as well get it all out in the open. Then, with luck, she could pack it all right back up again. “There’s something else I’d like to know,” she asked.
Nana nodded. But her eyes held a disturbing glimmer of angst.
“Did my mother leave a suicide note?”
Nana didn’t answer for a moment. She took another sip of coffee and seemed lost in thought. “She did,” she answered finally, setting down the cup again. “And this isn’t really my business and never was, but if your dad’s not answered you in all these years…”
“Please, Nana,” Maddie begged. “He may or may not tell me the truth, even if I can get him to talk to me now.”
Nana nodded grimly. “I didn’t see the note myself. But Maria did. You remember Maria, my son Rodrigo’s wife?”
“Kai’s aunt Maria,” Maddie nodded, remembering the name now. “She worked with my dad at the resort.”
“That’s right,” Nana agreed. “They divorced years ago, but Maria was a good woman. She got to know your father as well as anybody, and… well, he was a mess when it happened, child. Just a mess. The note sent him into hysterics, and he showed it to Maria and she read it. She tried to help him understand it. To see that it was the depression talking and not the woman he fell in love with.” Nana’s kind brown eyes sought Maddie’s and held them. “I’m guessing that your mother was beyond thinking how her words might make you or your father feel. I’m guessing they made him feel pretty bad. And I’m guessing that if you’d read them back then, they could have messed up your sweet little head pretty bad, too.”
The coffee Maddie had swallowed soured instantly in her stomach.
It would only make her feel guilty!
Nana patted Maddie’s cold hands. “Don’t be too hard on your papa, child,” she ordered. “I’ve wanted to shake the man myself more than once, I won’t lie. Drove me crazy how he’d ignore what was right in front of his face, how he could talk a blue streak and never once say what he really meant. But his heart was in the right place. He wanted to protect you from the same awful pain he was feeling. And the guilt. You can’t blame him for that now, can you?”
Maddie didn’t reply. But she did, suddenly, feel a whole lot more like crying than breaking something.
“He did try to help your mama,” Nana continued. “He took her to a doctor on Maui every month, and she saw somebody up at the health center sometimes, too. She was supposed to be taking medication. But when it happened—” She shook her head with a sigh. “It really was a shock. No one saw it coming. That’s part of what made it so hard on your father. He thought she was getting better.”
“Had she—” Maddie wasn’t sure she wanted to ask the question. She decided to get it over with. “Had she ever tried before?”
Nana nodded slowly. “Maria said her first time was what made your father decide to move here. Her doctor on the mainland thought that year-round sunshine might help, and your dad decided right away that that’s just what he’d give her.”
Now Maddie definitely wanted to cry.
“I know you feel like your father could have handled things better back then,” Nana said, her voice gaining an unexpected edge. “And I agree with you on that. None of us were happy about you leaving the
way you did. And we didn’t care for being told that a ‘fresh start’ was more important to you than we were, either. But it was your father’s decision to make, not ours, and we all agreed to abide by it, although to be honest I wish I hadn’t. And as angry as all that makes me now, I can’t judge your father, Maddie, and neither should you. The man was a wreck. He was falling apart.”
Maddie blinked. “You… agreed… what?”
Nana exhaled, long and loud. “Your father didn’t want any long, sobbing goodbyes. He also didn’t want us pretending it was all just temporary and promising we’d see you soon — because he knew damn well he was never coming back to Lana'i. There was nothing we could tell you that he didn’t think would make things worse, so he just decided your grandparents should take you away and that would be that. He didn’t mind if you kept up with Kai and your other friends once you got back to the mainland, but he wanted everyone else — especially me, even if he didn’t say it — to step back and let you get used to depending on your grandparents. The sooner, the better.”
“But—” Maddie couldn’t finish. There really were no words.
“I know, child,” Nana finished for her. Her voice caught. “I’ll never forget sitting there in that hotel room, holding you while the tears just rolled down your cheeks, but they had you so drugged up… I’d talk to you but you wouldn’t answer me. I’ve never seen any child before or since who could sleep and cry at the same time like that.”
Despite Nana’s sadness, her words caused a tiny spark of joy to flicker through the fog of Maddie’s brain. “The hotel room?” she breathed. “You came to see me at the resort? After Maria took me there and I asked for you?”
Nana looked back at her with surprise. “Well, of course, child. I had to go back and forth, because Kai was… Well, I went out there twice, but I couldn’t tell if you were awake or not. And then once your grandparents got—”
Maddie sprung out of her chair. She threw her arms around Nana’s shoulders and fell to her knees as she pulled the older woman into a crushing hug. Then she did cry. “Oh, Nana!” she exclaimed when she could talk again. “I never knew you were there! I thought you didn’t come. I wish I’d known. I missed you so much!”
