by Edie Claire
Being no slouch in the art of conversation, Ben also managed to get her to divulge that she had been born in Dayton, Ohio and had lived in Sandusky, Ohio until her father landed a middle-management job with the two five-star resorts on Lana'i. She told Ben that her family had left the island because her father was offered a better position managing several state park resorts in Kentucky, but in that explanation she had been less than truthful. For one thing, the new job wasn’t better. For another, not all of the family had returned to the mainland. Her mother had died on Lana'i.
But Maddie didn’t want to talk about that.
“Nick!” Ben called out suddenly, gesturing to one of the younger crewmen, “Code green, starboard.”
“Got it!” Nick answered. He slid down from his position near the mast to assist the stumbling Cory, who had left his place near the bow and was attempting to move to the back of the boat. The waves had become increasingly choppy farther from shore, and as the boat pitched more and more Maddie could see why walking steadily on the deck would take some experience, even for a sober person. The agile Nick had no trouble reaching Cory, but the overgrown frat boy would never have made it to the rear corner of the boat if not for the ship’s rail on one side and Nick on the other.
“Whoa, take it easy, man,” Ben called out as Cory hurled what was left of his breakfast into the churning wake. “Don’t worry. Happens all the time.” Ben’s voice was suitably sympathetic, but as he turned toward Maddie with a muttered, “What a shame,” he made no effort to hide a grin.
The next hour flew by in a happy haze of blue ocean, white sea spray, and the giant, gleaming backs and fins of several obliging whales. The weather was a perfect seventy-five degrees, drifting clouds were few and far between, and as the boat neared the sheer cliffs of the southern edge of Lana'i, Maddie’s voyage felt increasingly surreal. When the catamaran pulled within sight of Pu'u Pehe, the Sweetheart Rock, she felt sure she must be dreaming.
She had seen countless photographs of the landmark since adulthood, but none of those images had ever come close to the ones that burned so brightly in her memory. The colors were never as vivid, the angles never as sharp. Photographs could show nothing more than a slant-topped chunk of reddish rock rising from the ocean to form a sea tower. Videos did a better job of showing the tower’s dramatic placement, sitting like a punctuation mark a hundred fifty feet out from the highest point of the cliff that separated the Manele boat harbor from the Hulopo'e swimming beach. Travel books could gush about how, by catching the trailhead at the beach and walking along the cliffside path, one could reach the overlook a hundred twenty feet above the ocean and gaze over at the surface of the sea tower to see the burial mound of Pehe.
But none of the above could create the feelings that rushed through Maddie now. It was not only the sights she was seeing. It was the warmth of the sun on her face, the movement of her hair in the wind, the taste of the salty spray on her lips. Her eyes could see only one side of the Sweetheart Rock, but her senses remembered so much more. In a flash she was again standing high atop the cliff, half her hair still braided while the other half flapped around her eyes trying to blind her, her bare toes caked with the powdery red dirt, her mouth dry with thirst from the climb. There was no guardrail before her, no paved path, no warning sign. Just a couple more feet of flat dirt, then a straight drop clear to the ocean. She was with a half-dozen other rowdy, school-aged children whose parents had only the vaguest idea where they were and wouldn’t have cared if they did know. No other adults were around.
She was fine.
She was sure, in fact, that life held nothing better. Far below her feet, the ocean crashed into the rocks, sending up a curtain of white spray that looked tantalizingly cool. It was one memory. It was a hundred. She was seven years old. Ten. Eight. The rocks, the ocean, and the red dirt never changed. The curious rectangular arrangement of dark stones atop the sea tower never changed, either. Though an obvious product of human hands, it had stood there, looking just as it did now, for hundreds of years.
I think there’s bones in it, she had insisted.
There’s not, Kai had contradicted.
Nobody knows for sure.
They do, too!
Do not!
It could have been one argument. It could have been fifty. From what she remembered of her childhood charms, it was probably closer to the latter.
Maddie snapped back to the present. Ben was entertaining the other passengers by telling them the traditional legend of Pu'u Pehe, which involved two lovers, a sea cave, an unexpected storm, and a Romeo and Juliet ending complete with tomb. He was a good storyteller, but Maddie could not keep her mind from drifting. She was back at the top of the cliff again. And it was a boy who was talking.
There’s nothing WRONG with the story, Kai had explained. I just get tired of it. Why does everybody always have to tell the same story over and over again? If it’s not true anyway, why can’t I make up new ones?
“There were no human remains found at the site,” Ben finished. “But archeologists do believe the structure was a form of Hawaiian temple, or heiau.”
Maddie chuckled, and Ben looked at her curiously.
“Sorry,” she said. “I just realized I owe somebody an apology. A rather long-overdue one.” Too bad he won’t be here to apologize to, she thought with a sudden pang.
She shook off the feeling as quickly as it had come over her. Kai Nakama would be twenty-five years old now, the same as her, and he was no more likely to have stayed on Lana'i than she was to have stayed in Paducah, Kentucky. She knew that. She hadn’t expected to find him here, or any of her other childhood friends. She knew that most if not all of them would be gone.
Just please, God, let Nana still be okay, and be here. And Mr. and Mrs. Nakama. And old Mr. Li and Mr. Kalaw…
Several passengers in the bow of the boat cried out with delight and pointed forward.
“Spinner dolphins!” Ben announced. He launched into a description of the familiar marine mammals as they frolicked at the mouth of the bay.
Maddie looked eagerly toward the sleek gray fins, but found her eyes drawn beyond them to the road past the marina that headed uphill towards Lana'i City. She felt a sudden and unexpected chill as she remembered something else.
But Dad, can’t I even say goodbye? Won’t everyone wonder where I’ve gone to?
I’m sorry, honey, but there isn’t time. Your grandparents are waiting. I’ll make sure everyone knows what’s happened and pass along your goodbyes for you, okay?
No. It was not okay. It was not okay at all.
Tell them I still want to go to the mountains, just as soon as I get back. Okay?
She couldn’t remember her father’s expression when she’d said that. Most likely, he had paused before answering. Perhaps even fought back a tear. He had to feel guilty for deceiving her, but she realized now what the poor man must have been going through himself. His wife was dead. His only child needed family, who lived thousands of miles away. He had no idea what tomorrow would bring.
She had not come back. Ten-year-old Maddie Westover had simply disappeared one day, never to be heard from again.
Well, almost never. She had written Kai a letter once. Mailed from her grandparents’ house in Dayton.
He hadn’t written her back.
The stinking rat.
“Maddie?” Ben was looking at her with concern. “You okay? If you’re getting cold feet about this little adventure of yours, you’re more than welcome to come back with us later today.”
Maddie stood up. The catamaran had pulled into the harbor and the water was calm. “Thank you,” she said genuinely, flashing him one of her better smiles. “But I’m fine. Just momentarily overwhelmed with a rush of childhood memories, that’s all.”
He smiled back at her. “Good ones, I hope.”
“With few exceptions, they were the absolute best,” she said honestly. A lump formed in her throat as she spoke, and she fought back the fe
ar that gnawed at her gut.
Her recollections of the island had always been glorious. Idyllic. Warm, wonderful, and carefree. They were a child’s memories, true. From a child’s perspective. But with every fiber of her being, she longed for what she’d left behind here. For goodbyes left unsaid, for hugs not given, for endings never written.
She had to come back.
She was not naive. She knew that her memories could have become tainted with time. Whitewashed, slanted, perhaps some even wholly fabricated. Even if most of what she remembered was accurate, both the place and the people could have changed by now, at least as much as she herself had changed — which was a whole hell of a lot.
She knew that. She also knew that, as a child, her memory was likely to contain certain omissions. Omissions that could prove much more relevant to her experience of the island as an adult. What if nothing was as she remembered? What if all the people she had loved were gone? What if they were all still here, but were not the people she believed them to be? What if all those years of built-up hope and dreamy anticipation had done nothing but set her up for one colossal fall?
“We’re here!” Ben called out merrily once the catamaran was secured to the dock. “Welcome to Lana'i, everyone!”
A strong gust of wind blew across the bank ahead of them, jostling green fronds of palm and threatening to lift off the hat Maddie had replaced mere seconds before. She raised a hand and clamped down on it, her heart leaping with joy as another of her senses awakened to memory. It was the scent on the air — the scent of Lana'i. Exactly what that aroma consisted of, she had no idea. The volcanic earth, its microflora, the peculiar Cook Island pines… a blend of all of the above? She could not describe it; she had no words to do so. She hadn’t realized that such a scent existed, much less that she would recognize it.
But here it was.
And here she was.
Welcome back, Maddie, the island whispered.
Keep reading here! Thanks so much!
Edie
Table of Contents
ALASKA Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
NOT ALASKA Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
ALASKA AGAIN Epilogue
Author’s Note
Books and Plays by Edie Claire
Excerpt from Leaving Lana'i
