“I don’t understand,” she finally said.
Bernard fixed his eyes on her. “You have to swear not to tell.”
“How can I promise if I have no idea what you’re about to say?”
“Because the location of this cave is sacred to me. It’s underwater.”
In the search after his disappearance, men from town had searched the coast and scoured beaches and ravines without any sign. No one mentioned a cave. She was torn between wanting to believe and the truth of what they might find.
She stared back at the old man. “Wouldn’t someone have noticed by now?” Unable to stop herself, she envisioned a body, or more accurately, a pile of bones. Her heart pounded against her ribs like it wanted out.
“Only one way to know,” he said. “It depends on the tides. The swim is only makeable a few times a year. Even then, it’s a couple-minute breath hold. Last January, so happened the surf was up on the full moon. Stayed that way for a few weeks.”
“Who knows about this cave?” Parker asked.
“Just me an’ Kawika, my nephew. My father showed me. His father showed him. It was a rite of passage to be taken in. Boy to man. Plenty tigers in the area, so nobody but us crazy enough to dive there.” Translation: tiger sharks.
The possibility that Herman’s body had washed into this cave was far-fetched, to put it mildly. But what if Bernard was right? “It seems unlikely. And wouldn’t a body that washed in be gone by now?” she asked.
“Way the current moves it’s almost a whirlpool. Debris collects on a high beach ledge. We go in for opihi, but it’s also a boneyard. Cattle fallen from the cliff, driftwood swept in by storms, shipping ropes.”
Lord God, why hasn’t he mentioned this sooner?
“Can you show us where the cave is?” she asked.
“Because I liked the man, I will. But not ’til January, second night of the full moon.”
“Last I checked, the full moon was the full moon,” Parker said.
Bernard looked out the window. “Akua, hoku and mahealani. Three nights, all full.”
Violet knew this only because Mr. Keko’olani had schooled her in the Hawaiian lunar month while explaining how his honeybees often swarmed during a full moon. By the next time a full one rolled around, Parker would be halfway across the ocean.
Bernard soon reached a state where conversation was impossible. One eye drooped shut and his mouth twitched to the side. Every so often, his head fell forward. Without warning, he stood up, pointed to the top shelf and mumbled, “Blankets.” Then he burped and stumbled out the back door.
Akala lifted her head and watched him go. There was comfort to the pig’s steady breath and Violet was glad to see her stay.
Parker pulled down the stack of blankets. “I can sleep on the floor, if you don’t mind parting with a pillow,” he said.
The bed was only a double. Curling up next to Ella was one thing, but sharing a bed with Parker was another matter entirely. Why, she was having a hard time erasing the kiss from her mind. Everything—pillows, blankets, sheets—smelled like mildew. Dampness and a proliferation of green.
Violet offered a weak smile. “Take them both.” The floor was cold and hard and housed a pig.
He must have read her mind. “I’m used to it. I sleep in far worse conditions than this, regularly.”
One of the blankets was wide enough to double up, and he spread that out on the bottom. She watched him lay the moth-eaten one on top and felt a stab of guilt for hogging the bed. Akala wasted no time in trotting over and rooting it with her wrinkled snout. “Hey, get out of here!” Parker cried.
“She just wants to snuggle.”
“I don’t suppose you want to switch places?”
“No, sir,” she said.
Parker shook his head. There was that moon-sliver smile again. The one that sent her stomach lurching and stopped her lungs in their tracks. It crossed her mind that sleeping with Parker in the same room might prove problematic. She also wondered how she could be thinking such inappropriate thoughts. Perhaps time had been working behind the scenes, whittling down her edges like everyone said would happen. Violet bolstered up her willpower. For Herman, but also for her own heart.
After he blew out both lanterns, leaving only a glass candle burning on the table, he lay down. It was like being at camp, only your bunkmate was the man who scrambled up your thoughts and turned you half-crazy with longing.
Another round of thunder exploded around them and the sky flashed brilliant. Not two seconds later, Akala burrowed deeper into the blanket near Parker’s feet. There was nothing for him to do but surrender.
“I feel sorry for the poor thing,” she said.
“Me or the pig?”
“Both of you, actually.”
She might not have the same affinity for animals as Ella, but that didn’t mean she was heartless. She’d seen many a horse or dog lose their minds with fear during a storm. Something about a change in the atmosphere to stir everything up.
Parker rested his head in his hands and stared up at the ceiling. “So, what do you make of his story?”
“I don’t know what to think, but I have to see for myself now.”
“You think he had anything to do with it?” he said.
“My gut says no. What about you?”
“Same. I only wish I could help.”
It grew quiet.
“The not knowing eats away at you. Finding out if he’s dead or alive means everything to me,” she said.
“I know it does.”
The tenderness in his voice was too much to bear, unleashing a wall of tears. Gushing, drenching, clear-away-the-grief kind of tears. The best she could, Violet wiped her face on her sleeve. Her nose had turned on and didn’t want to stop.
“Hey, sorry if I said something wrong,” he said.
She shook her head and buried her face in the musty pillow. Words would have to wait. And then he was sitting next to her on the bed. His hand smoothed her kinked hair and rubbed her back. She hated to cry in front of people. For a year after her father left them, Violet’s mother had cried to anyone that would listen, to the point where all the town avoided her—except Mr. Smudge.
Parker didn’t say anything, just let her cry.
When her sucking breaths had slowed, and she thought she might be able to speak, she said, “I’m a mess.”
“Who could blame you?”
Violet turned her face away from the wall so one eye looked up at him. “This is partly your fault,” she said.
“My fault?”
“Because you’re leaving us and who knows when you’re coming back.” The words tumbled out, and what was the point in stopping them, anyway? She burned for him in a way she never had for Herman. That was the simple truth.
Parker squinted down at her with a look that said she was crazy. “I’m not leaving you. Not by choice, anyway.”
“Either way, you’re gone. What would you do in my shoes?”
The faint smell of liquor still hung on his breath. She wanted to look away, but couldn’t. “You really want to know?” he said.
It was difficult to answer with his mouth pressed hard against hers, like he was trying to breathe her in. Through his thin shirt, she felt his heart beating against her ribs. Warmth and hardness all wrapped together. Her arm was stuck, but she didn’t stop to notice. “Violet...”
Finally, she pulled away, dazed by the force of his kiss. She shook her head and whispered, “I can’t, Parker. I just can’t.”
She watched him back away and look at the floor, and in those seconds missed him. If that was possible. Her mother always said that when it came to love and death, no one was immune. Was that what was going on here? All she knew was that she was in big, moon-shaking trouble.
Say something. Put your lips back. Don’t listen to me
.
But he did listen. He slipped onto the floor and tucked himself into his makeshift bed without a word. She felt blindingly awful, like she was split down the middle and being pulled apart by both arms. All this feeling, and she couldn’t accept it, not now, anyway.
After a few minutes, he said, “Try to get some rest.”
If only she had earmuffs to blot out the silence.
* * *
Sometime later, Violet woke with a start. The candle had blown out, but a single star shone through the window. She inched to the edge of the bed and looked down. It took all of her might not reach out her arm and run her finger along his face, or to climb down and slip under the blanket with him. She stayed like that for a while, watching him breathe.
The night sounds were of a different breed, particular to this valley floor—the continuous croaking of frogs, dripping rainwater and a creak in the floorboards. At some point, maybe she had drifted off again, Violet swore someone was standing behind them. Was Bernard in the room? She held her breath and debated whether to risk waking Parker. That was when his eyes shot open. His body stayed motionless. Then, without warning, he bolted upright and swung around.
By now, her eyes had adjusted to the dark. Standing in the middle of the room was the form of a small animal with pointed ears. Either yellow or white. It made no move. Parker reached over slowly and lit the lantern. As soon as Violet saw it, she squealed. The animal in question was a scrappy yellow dog. One ear pointed to the ceiling, one to the floor. It stared at them but made no move to come any closer. After a short standoff with Parker, the dog loped over to the blankets with Akala and lay down. Akala grunted and they rubbed noses.
“Jesus H. Christ, how did that thing get in here?” Parker said.
“The door must be unlatched.”
He let out an enormous sigh and leaned back against the bed. A little bit of sleep seemed to have loosened the air between them and he ruffled up her hair. “You’re beautiful when you sleep, you know that?”
“And how would you know? You were gone before I was.”
“So you thought,” he said.
Oh, boy, had he known she was watching him? She wanted to tell him plainly that her heart simply could not take another crushing. That this whole thing was doomed to begin with. Instead, she mumbled, “Good night. Sleep tight.”
She sank farther into the dip in the mattress. After all her rejections, it was a small miracle he still wanted to be around her. A line of shudders ran the length of her body. This time, she had pushed him away for good. Sleep would not come. She tried counting sheep, but instead saw lions and pigs and lop-eared dogs. Not to mention piles of bones.
“Violet?” His voice rattled the after-storm calm.
“Yes?”
“Do you think I was meant to come here? To find you?”
She thought about the war in Europe and the four billion other places on earth he could have been sent. “Right now, I don’t know what to think.”
“To me, it seems that way. With Ella and Roscoe and you. We’re like that puzzle piece that fits into place when you least expect it.”
Violet sent him a sideways glance. “If you were meant to be here, why are you being sent away right off the bat?”
“I think this time you’re going to need to learn to trust whoever is pulling the strings up there.”
No doubt about that. There was a time when she had been a great truster. As a young girl, she trusted the earth to sprout food, that her father would eat dinner with them every night, and her mother would bake pecan pie on Saturdays. She trusted that she would go to college, become a newspaper correspondent, marry, and probably grow old in Minnesota. The house groaned as she remembered when that notion abruptly ended. On the inside of her mouth, she tasted blood and realized she’d bitten her cheek to a pulp.
“Right now, all I know is that I’m terrified about every last drop of life. Ella, me, you, Zach, Setsuko and Takeo. Even Roscoe, that poor lion so out of his element. I feel like I’ve swallowed all the world’s problems.”
“There’s a law that says for every minute spent worrying, you have to spend another one laughing.”
Violet laughed despite the heaviness in the room. The next instant, she felt his hand flopping around on the bed. “Give me your hand,” he said.
It was an order.
His palm was like a siphon, draining out small bits of hurt. They stayed that way until sleep came.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Ella
In the first few days after coming back from the valley, Mama hardly said a word. Usually I was the one having nervous problems, so this was unusual. When she walked me home from school she spent a lot of time looking at the grass, and at home in the kitchen, she wore one of those stares like her mind had traveled to some faraway place. Even I couldn’t reach her.
I resorted to practicing origami and leaving Mama to her daydreams. Our Japanese home-schooling had never taken off because we had more important things to do in our spare time. Making pies and tending our victory gardens and listening to the radio as if our lives depended on it. Still, sometimes Setsuko would come over and show us how to do a new animal, like a carp or a crab or a dragon. I had trouble. Mine looked like little kid versions of Umi’s, and I was determined to make a good lion, but I had miles to go. Hiro made nothing but airplanes of all shapes and sizes. I got the idea to make some for the soldiers, thinking they might want a small model of Roscoe to take to war with them. Setsuko said it wasn’t smart. Nothing Japanese should go with them.
One afternoon, when I was laying out my plans for Christmas presents, Mama sat me down at the kitchen table with a glass of milk and told me that Bernard Lalamilo had an idea where Papa might be.
My mouth puckered up. This was such a shock that I could feel my heart pounding in my nose, of all places. She looked confused by my reaction. I couldn’t blame her.
“You know you’re the spitting image of your daddy?” Mama said, smiling through me, like she was looking at someone else.
A full minute went by as I contemplated telling her everything I knew and why I really kept the cane knife between my mattress and my box spring. Because I knew that one of these days, I might be the next victim. Or her.
I could barely feel the back of her hand as she touched my forehead. Instead, I poured all my concentration on the pincher bug weaving its way through the banana stalk on the table. Another thing Uncle Henry had taught me.
“What is it, sweetie?” she asked.
When I finally managed to speak, the words came out all jumbled. “What did you say?”
“Leave it be, Mama.”
She looked at me and blinked. Her face had gone milk white. Before I knew what was happening, she grabbed me by the arm and shoved her face an inch from mine. I could have counted her eyelashes we were so close.
“Ella, if you know something, you tell me this instant. We’ve been through this again and again. The way you act makes me think you’re hiding something.”
I burst into tears and told her, “I just don’t want you to die. Please, Mama.”
“What makes you think I’m going to die?”
At that moment, if I had had one wish, it would be to rewind the clock to the morning Papa went missing. I would have been able to prevent it, knowing what I know now. But time only moves in one direction, and it’s not backward.
Between sobs, I managed to say, “I just do.”
“Look at me, Ella.” I looked. Her chin was quivering. “Are you telling me everything?”
Lying is bad and I don’t want to be a convicted liar, so I ramped up my crying. It was the only thing I could do. When our eyes met, Mama looked like her heart had split down the middle.
I hugged her with all my might.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Violet
The
floorboards creaked as Violet stepped into the police station and shut the door behind her. The smell of wood polish and hair spray almost knocked her back. This was one of those places that would forever be associated with the worst kind of anguish. The early days of loss. Iris sat at her desk, pounding away at the typewriter, and didn’t look up.
“Good morning. I need to speak with the sheriff.”
His door was closed.
Only then did Iris acknowledge her. “Mrs. Iverson, is this about your husband?”
“It is.”
A moment later, Violet was sitting on a peeled vinyl seat across from Souza and a big mug of coffee. His eyes passed over her, disinterested. Violet felt her hair rise.
“How can I help you?” he said.
“I have news.”
He put down the newspaper he’d been reading and leaned forward. “News about what?”
What else?
“Bernard Lalamilo says he knows where my husband might be.”
Souza sighed for so long it sounded like someone letting the air out of a tire. “Violet, the man is a drunk. We’ve been through this. You can’t put stock in anything he has to say.”
She smoothed out her dress and sat rod straight, giving him her sharpest look. “Sheriff, I’m telling you that there may be a lead on my husband’s disappearance and this is your reaction? Shame on you.”
“Easy, ma’am. I just don’t want you to get your hopes up.”
A vein pulsed in her temple at being ma’amed. “Hopes or no hopes, we need to follow every lead.”
“I’ve already talked to him and got a load of gibberish. Nor do I think he had anything to do with this.”
“He might know where to find Herman. Does that mean anything to you?” Her throat seemed to be narrowing and she had to push the words out.
“Not a day goes by that I don’t think about this case.”
Island of Sweet Pies and Soldiers Page 22
