by Hester Young
If my own attempts to unsettle Jocelyn were an abject failure, Kai’s stricken voice does the trick. She does not want her boyfriend worrying over her sister.
“Yes!” Jocelyn hollers. “She’s dead! She’s been dead for a while!”
Kai breaks into tears. “Oh, no. No, no, no, no. It was Elijah, wasn’t it?” His asthmatic weeping brings to mind a large, dying bird.
Jocelyn turns her back to him and doesn’t answer, which he takes as confirmation.
“Oh God,” he sniffles. “This is . . . my fault, Joss. My fault. Me. I can’t . . . can’t carry this around anymore. I need to tell you . . .”
“Kai.” Rae pulls him to his feet. “This isn’t the time. Come on.” She informs the dispatcher that we’ll be walking to our own vehicle and hangs up.
He follows her down the path, still crying.
I shoo Jocelyn along and bring up the rear, so I can keep an eye on her.
“It’s not right,” Kai moans. “I can’t keep lying to you, Joss. It’s eating me up.”
Jocelyn wants none of his confession. “Don’t,” she tells Kai. “Whatever it is you want to say, don’t. This night has been bad enough.”
But her boyfriend will not be derailed. “I’m so sorry,” he says, pausing only to gulp air. “I didn’t tell you before because I didn’t want to hurt you . . . and Lise made me promise . . . she made me promise I wouldn’t say anything . . . and then she was missing and I didn’t want to . . . didn’t want to add to your stress. But now . . . now I have to tell you. I have to take responsibility.”
“Shut up.”
Her words fall on deaf ears.
Kai keeps talking through his tears, eager to unload and buffered by the presence of Rae and me. “I know why she’s dead, Joss . . . maybe I knew all along . . . the thing is . . . Elijah killed her because of me . . . because Lise and I . . .” His sobbing intensifies. “We were together. Over the summer.”
“She already knows,” I tell Kai wearily. “Lise told her about you guys the night she died.” I don’t connect the dots for Kai, don’t tell him he’s got the Elijah part of the equation all wrong. The last thing this kid needs right now is to slip into another asthma attack when he realizes who he’s been dating.
Kai wipes at his face. “Wait . . . what? Lise told you? That doesn’t . . . make sense.” He stops walking. “Is that true, Joss?”
Jocelyn pauses, her face just inches from his, and for an awful moment, I think he’s done for. She’ll charge him like a bull, run him the twenty yards to the edge of the caldera and finish what she started. Jocelyn never quite reacts as I anticipate, however. “Yes,” she says without emotion. “Lise told me about you guys. In more detail than I cared to hear.”
“But . . . if you knew about us, why didn’t you say something? Why have you been pretending everything’s okay?” Kai’s guilt turns to indignation. “That’s so . . . messed up!”
“Why have you been pretending?” Jocelyn retorts as Rae grabs him and directs him to keep walking. “You could’ve told me that you were sleeping with my sister, but you didn’t, did you? Well, you know what? I was glad that you didn’t. Because it’s not something I really wanted to discuss! It’s humiliating.”
“I don’t understand.” Kai’s hands go to his head. “Lise said we couldn’t tell you, that it would hurt you too much. She ended things. I had to promise her over and over I would never say a word. After all that, why would she turn around and tell you about us?”
“To rub my face in it? To clear her precious conscience? Who cares?” Jocelyn surges ahead of him, no longer interested in the conversation. “You cheated on me, the both of you, and you can’t take it back.”
“I’m sorry, Joss. I’m really, really sorry.” His tears have abated, and the albuterol is working its magic on his airways. Maybe honesty has finally bought the kid some peace. “I should’ve broken up with you a long time ago, I get that now. I was just . . . scared. Scared of how you’d react.”
“A legitimate fear,” Rae mutters.
“You deserve to be happy,” Kai adds, a breakup line so unnecessarily cliché I wince. “You deserve more than I could ever give you.”
The vog has receded somewhat, carried away by the fickle breeze.
Ahead of us, Jocelyn’s shadow cuts a lonely figure against the brilliant night sky. “What is it about Lise, anyway?” she asks softly. “Why does everyone always like her better?”
Maybe it was her lack of murderous impulses, I think. People seem to respond to that.
“It wasn’t that I liked her better,” Kai protests. “I just . . . loved her.”
“Loved her?” Jocelyn doesn’t look back, doesn’t change the pace of her walk at all. “You loved her?”
“I told myself I didn’t,” he says. “I told myself that you were better for me, focused and going places. But I couldn’t stop thinking about her, Joss, no matter how I tried. I kept waiting, looking for a way to tell her. And then this one night, I finally got her alone and . . . stuff happened.”
“That’s fucking, not love,” Jocelyn says flatly. “Don’t you know the difference? Lise didn’t love you. Not by a long shot. You know what she used to say about you? That you were shallow. A follower. ‘Another dumb bro, just a little cuter than the rest.’ She played you, Kai.”
“You’re wrong.”
“What do you think she liked about you?” Jocelyn presses. “What made you so irresistible? Your personality? Your intellect? Your dimples? No.” She shakes her head. “It’s the fact that you were mine. She used you to screw with me.”
For once, Jocelyn’s telling the truth. The girl in the freezer worried about Elijah. She still simmered with resentment for her sister. But Kai? She gave him little thought.
Rae interrupts this unpleasant revelation before he can process the truth of it. “I think we’re almost to the parking lot,” she announces. “Kai, are you doing okay?”
“Okay” doesn’t really describe the shell-shocked boy beside us, but he’s breathing well enough. I give his shoulder a little squeeze.
Moments later, as we finally reach the lot by the steam vents, a pair of headlights swoops in from the main road. A car door slams and a high-powered light blinks on in our direction. Park ranger, I determine from the goofy hat. About damn time. The police must have contacted them.
“Hey,” a male voice says. “I’m looking for a Jocelyn Nakagawa.” His light plays across Kai, Rae, and me—wrong gender, wrong race—and settles on Jocelyn. “That you?”
Showtime. Jocelyn steps forward, lies locked and loaded. “Yes,” she says, and her voice is tearful and small, a vulnerable girl in need of protection. “That’s me.”
after
Kalo Valley, Hawaiʻi
thirty-two
On Wednesday evening, I sit on the back patio at Koa House waiting for Rae to pack the last of her belongings. It’s five o’clock. Our flight, a red-eye to San Francisco, leaves in a few hours. Inside, David is welcoming his latest guests, a couple celebrating their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. I can hear their happy exclamations as they describe their drive from Kona, how much they love the landscape, how thrilled they are to see the island.
I look down, discover a cheeky gecko nibbling at my half-finished papaya, and smile. “Enjoy your spoils, little fella.”
After chatting on the phone with Noah and the girls for the last half hour, I’m feeling generous. Tomorrow, I’ll be home again. There will be shopping with Tasha to accommodate her growing sense of fashion and a trip to the gem and mineral store to pick out new specimens for Micky’s collection. Sipping tea with Grandma. Cuddling with Noah on the couch after the girls have gone to bed . . .
I can’t wait.
One might think three extra days in Hawaiʻi would be a welcome treat. Three days spent speaking to investigators, however, proved a special kind of pu
nishment. No one seemed to believe my version of events, that Jocelyn could be so treacherous. Maybe, they suggested, given the bad blood between Miss Nakagawa and myself, I had misread her intentions. Maybe I had inadvertently caused her to fear for her safety, leading to the unfortunate freezer episode. After admitting that Jocelyn had never fully confessed to killing Lise in so many words, what could I do or say? There was no physical evidence to support my claims, certainly nothing to show that she’d intended to kill Kai.
Jocelyn fed them an irresistible story about a guy Lise had been secretly seeing. She hadn’t mentioned him before, she said, because she believed her sister alive, thought that Lise had in fact run away with him. Now she knew that he must be Lise’s murderer. She blamed herself for not coming forward earlier. Naturally, the cops ate this tale right up. Easier to pin things on a menacing mystery man than to recognize a sixteen-year-old girl with a penchant for recycling could have such a dark side. There are some sick guys out there, one detective told the local paper. We’ll do everything we can to hunt this one down.
If that weren’t frustrating enough, some genius in the media got wind of my involvement in the Lise Nakagawa case. Though I refused to grant any interviews, the story received national coverage. Frankie got his fifteen minutes of fame telling the world that Lise had appeared to me in my dreams and I believed I had to help her—file that one under Things I Wish I Hadn’t Shared While High. The headlines were brutal. PSYCHIC MOM ARRIVES TOO LATE, CNN reported, as if Lise’s death were my fault, my failure. Why do they label you a mom? Rae grumbled. You’re a journalist! Your kids have nothing to do with this.
But they will. Noah’s had his share of reporters buzzing around, looking for a scoop, and it will be worse when I return home. Who knows how long I can keep them away from my children? If showboating Tasha has her way, we’ll land a TLC series in no time.
Thinking about the future makes me jumpy. I can’t ignore the stories about me forever. Sooner or later, I’ll have to make some hard choices. I hope it’s later. I wander the yard, restless, snapping a few photos of the trees and shrubs that I think Noah would appreciate. He’ll want to learn all about them: blooming cycles, root depth, growth patterns. My heart calms at the thought of Noah, and I finger my engagement ring. God, I love that man. It’s time to set a date and tie the knot already.
The sun drops slowly in the sky, casting an eerie shimmer on the grass. For a moment, the lawn looks so inviting, I consider removing my shoes, reveling in it barefoot. Then I remember Hawaiian centipedes, rat lungworm, those slimy purple snails. To live in paradise, you must be tougher than I realized. Long-term, I don’t know that I could cut it.
I’m not sure if I regret coming here. With its jagged shores, misty mountains, and lush tropical jungles, what I’ve seen of the Big Island has certainly been beautiful. Yet beneath the seemingly impenetrable black rock flows a hot and destructive force that will inevitably surface again. The ancient Hawaiians understood something I’m still trying to wrap my brain around. You can’t stop Pele’s fire. Sometimes all you can do is minimize the damage.
Isaac called almost as soon as the Lise story broke, positively giddy about the discovery of a body on what was supposed to be my vacation. “I had a hunch about this!” he chortled. “What did I tell you? Did Victor Nakagawa give you an amazing scoop or what? And you’re in the news again! I know you aren’t doing interviews, but I think being reclusive could work to our advantage. People will be that much more curious to read your book if you go all J. D. Salinger.”
When I told him I had no intention of writing about the experience, he pretended to back off. “I know, I know. Too soon. You need time to process. That thing in the freezer, wow—you’re going to need a good therapist and a night light.”
I do wonder about that. Will I leave this island with a whole new set of phobias? Will I have flashbacks every time I feel the cold rush of an open freezer door? Probably not, but it’s a hell of an excuse if I want to avoid cooking.
My eyes stray to the dense forest that marks the Yoon property line. Isaac, CNN, the Squealer—they will never know about the children I did help, and I’m grateful for it. Those boys deserve a fighting chance.
Thom heard through the Kalo Valley grapevine that Elijah’s foster mom registered him for school today. Hard to say how Elijah will fare at a public high school. There’s not a kid in Kalo Valley—and probably all of Puna—who doesn’t know his story, that he’s the boyfriend of the dead girl. But Jocelyn’s preposterous Mystery Man story has at least shifted the blame from him. With luck, there will be another girl, a girl with a rebellious streak and an eye for wounded birds, who will see Elijah and fall hard. He strikes me as the kind who will always find someone to take care of him. And Raph’s a scrappy kid. He’ll turn out fine.
It’s Adam I worry about, still living on Wakea Ranch without his brothers or a clue about how to survive in the real world. Nineteen makes you legally an adult no matter what scars you bear. How will he learn to join a world he’s never been allowed to experience?
I walk a little closer to the tree line, debating whether or not to pay him a visit. I haven’t seen him since the night he turned up on my balcony. Despite his pseudo-stalker behavior, I feel for the kid. His boundary issues aren’t exactly surprising under the circumstances, and I’m the one responsible for all the changes in his life. To disappear without so much as a good-bye after pushing him to speak out against Naomi—that would be heartless. I should check in on him one last time.
Inside the woods, birds chirp and trill at one another. The dwindling sunlight slips through cracks in the canopy and falls in delicate shafts. Even with Naomi gone and Lise found, I’m apprehensive about roaming around this big green maze. I’m still not sure I can navigate these paths without getting lost, and a trail of cloven hoofprints in the earth looks suspiciously like wild pig tracks.
Fortunately, no roving pigs make an appearance, and the ugly, magnetic pull of Wakea Ranch proves enough to guide me out. I stand at the edge of the meadow, recoiling at the slick, suffocating waves that roll off the distant house. The sickness of its inhabitants cloaks the land in wrongness. Do I really want to go in there?
In the end, I don’t have to. I find Adam scrubbing down the empty stables, his trousers muddy at the knees. He dips his rag into a bucket full of vinegar-smelling liquid and runs it over the wooden beams. The attempt to clean strikes me as a sad one. Those horses are never coming back, and he knows it.
“Adam,” I call. “Hi.”
At the sight of me, his face hovers somewhere between hope and wariness. “I thought you were leaving.” He wrings out his rag and drapes it over the side of the bucket. “Did you change your mind? Are you going to stay?”
“I’m leaving tonight, actually. Rae and I got stuck speaking to the police a few extra days.”
His face darkens.
“Nothing about your mom,” I add quickly. “We were trying to sort out the whole thing with Lise. You must’ve heard about that.”
“Oh. Yes. Marvel came yesterday to tell me.” Adam drags the back of his hand across his damp forehead, leaving a dirt smudge in his wake. “I was sad but not surprised. Lise was a sinner, and God punishes sin. If you don’t follow His teachings, you’ll burn.” He pauses. “I didn’t say that to Marvel, though. I know she loved Lise.”
“Good call.” I’m glad he has that little bit of social grace. After a few years away from Naomi, maybe he’ll drop some of the fire-and-brimstone talk. “Have you seen Elijah and Raph at all?”
“Not yet. The family court has to give me visitation rights. Maybe by the end of this week.” Adam brushes mud and old straw from his trousers. “They’re staying with Lani Chang. She sounds pretty nice. Raph says he likes her.” He digs into his pocket and produces the most basic of flip phones. “I got this, so I can talk to them.”
I grin. “Nice. You’re part of the world now.”
/>
“It might take a while for them to come live with me,” Adam says, not returning my smile. “I have to prove to a judge that I’m responsible enough to take care of them both.”
“Of course you are. You’ve been taking care of Raph for a long time.”
“I need a job, though. If I can just get a job, Marvel said the state should pay for Raph’s preschool.”
“Are you still thinking you want to be a driver?”
“Well,” he begins slowly, “Marvel wants me and Elijah to help start her restaurant.”
I’m taken aback. “The restaurant? Really? After everything that happened there, I thought she’d be eager to unload it.”
“She said Lise told her not to.”
My skin breaks into goose bumps. “When did Lise tell her that?”
“The other night,” Adam says. “Marvel saw her hanging around the crystal shop. Lise told her not to give up on Ono Place, that Elijah and I could still make it happen. So Marvel came by to ask what I thought about that.”
“Huh.” I wonder if his religious upbringing can accommodate such an event. “Do you believe her? Do you believe she saw Lise?”
“Maybe.” He looks torn. “Marvel said the lights in her shop were going crazy. I don’t think she’d lie about that.”
“Neither do I.” I wonder how long Lise Nakagawa will be hanging around, unnerving people with her electrical displays. The idea of giving Adam and Elijah a job doesn’t strike me as a terrible one, though. “Do you want to work at Ono Place?”
“Sure,” Adam says. “I would get to meet people. That would be nice. I’m a hard worker, you know. And I wouldn’t have to do it forever. Someday, maybe, I could work at a ranch.”
“A ranch?”
“Marvel says there are ranches all around the island,” he explains. “When my brothers get older, I could try to find a job on one. Maybe I could even board some horses here, if we don’t end up selling the land . . .” He stares at the empty stables, the stalls where Solomon and Malachai once resided, and I imagine he’s taking stock of his losses: the horses, the home, and of course, Naomi.
