Rip Tides

by Toby Neal

He could tell Ellen was enjoying being at the head of the table with Pono on one side and Jared on the other. Lei and Stevens were across from each other, and Wayne was at the foot. The soft, warm night, filled with the sounds of conversation, leaves rustling, and crickets singing, was a balm to his spirit. He was almost glad in that moment that the house was gone and they could live so close to the outdoors.

  Even with all the undercurrents and the full table, Stevens couldn’t help glancing at his wife. Lei was beautiful in candlelight. He enjoyed the slender, toned lines of her body in the narrow tank top and black jeans—she’d left her weapon and jacket in the cruiser. Her tawny skin, stippled with those tiny freckles he loved, glowed in the candlelight. Tilted brown eyes picked up amber and brandy glints as the candles reflected in their depths, and her mouth stretched wide in laughter at the baby’s efforts to grab the spoon. Her wild hair was a curly nimbus that made him think of angels.

  God, he loved her.

  He caught Jared’s amused eye on him and shrugged. He knew he had it bad, and marriage hadn’t changed that. Seeing Lei laugh hadn’t stopped feeling good after their recent heartbreak.

  Looking at his mother in the soft light, almost pretty again, he hoped being here was going to be enough to heal her. But that cynical cop voice in his head told him it wasn’t likely.

  Jared and Ellen finished eating first, and he offered to walk her around the yard. They got up, and she took his arm, leaning into her son as he pointed out the trees Stevens had already shared with his mother.

  “I have to go to Oahu tomorrow,” Lei told Stevens. “I’m sorry to leave you with all this, but the case is taking me there. I wish I could tell you guys about it, but it’s too confidential. We have to go back out tonight.”

  “Those first twenty-four hours are critical,” Stevens agreed.

  Lei kept her voice low. “I hate leaving you without any help with your mom. I want to get to know her better.”

  “It’s okay.” Stevens took a bite of perfectly spiced and steamed laulau. “Between Jared and me, we can keep Mom busy and out of trouble.”

  “Don’t forget me,” Wayne said. “I can take her on an outing or two with the baby. But shouldn’t she have a medically supervised program? I mean, if she’s trying to get sober…”

  “I agree,” Stevens said. “I haven’t had time, but we’ll do some research tonight. I plan to dig in a little more on what her plans are.”

  “Well, I’ll be back late tonight. I’ll just sneak in as quietly as I can.” Lei’s phone went off, and she frowned, checking it. “It’s Omura. I have to take this.”

  She handed Stevens the baby spoon and stood up, then unzipped the tent and stepped out. He looked at Lei’s plate as she rezipped the screen, turning to walk away into the darkness with the phone to her ear. She’d eaten maybe one of the laulau. She’d gotten thinner since she lost the baby—she’d always been fairly indifferent to food, and it was worse now. The shadows under her eyes still worried him.

  Lei returned and gestured to Pono, who’d wisely shoveled in his dinner at top speed. “We gotta go into the station,” she said. “So sorry to dine and dash. I’m going on TV, so I have to change my shirt.”

  Ellen had returned with Jared. “I hope we have a little time to visit in the next few days.”

  “I’m afraid it won’t be right away—I have a hot case. Good thing Stevens understands my job,” Lei said. “Believe me, I’d rather be enjoying family time.” She bent to give Kiet’s head a smacking kiss and worked her way around the table with quick hugs.

  She nipped Stevens’s earlobe under the guise of a quick kiss on the cheek, and he felt it all the way to the soles of his feet, his body rising to meet her.

  “See you later,” she breathed in his ear. In moments, she and Pono were reversing the cruiser and driving back out.

  After he’d put Kiet to bed and Jared had walked his mom back to her tent, where she’d blamed jet lag for an early night, he and Wayne and Jared worked their phones and laptops for a list of treatment options for Ellen.

  “Only one on the island is Aloha House,” Stevens said at last. “And they’ve got a waiting list.”

  “I know a guy from my church who works there,” Wayne said. “I’ll give him a call, see what he can do.”

  “We’d appreciate it.” Jared looked up at Stevens, his eyes blue flames in the candlelight. “It will be interesting to see if she really wants to get sober.”

  “Yeah. She said she wanted a change, coming here, but never said those words until you talked to her tonight. What happened when you left?”

  “She crashed my going-away party at my LA firehouse. Threw up in the trashcan right in front of everybody. It was the worst I’ve ever seen her.”

  “That’s a new low, even for her,” Stevens said. “Could be her way of objecting to you leaving.”

  “Yeah, whatever. It sure as hell didn’t make me want to stay. I didn’t say goodbye or give her any contact info when I left. I was hoping to be done with her.”

  “Sounds kind of harsh. People make mistakes and regret them. People can change,” Wayne said. Stevens knew his father-in-law was speaking from his own sketchy past as a felon who’d done time for drug dealing and manslaughter.

  Jared narrowed his eyes. “You haven’t been through what we have with this woman. She’s a user. Used our dad, used us to take care of her. It’s all about the bottle with her.”

  “I’m willing to be hopeful,” Stevens said. “It’s nice to see her with Kiet. Maybe having a grandchild, some sort of different future, will tip her into wanting to get sober and stay sober.”

  “We’ll see.” Jared’s mouth thinned. “You’ve just forgotten, bro.”

  “We can deal with her together,” he said, making eye contact with Jared. “We can’t let anything come between us. Deal?”

  “I can’t guarantee we’re going to agree on how to handle her,” Jared said. His mouth was tight. “You really like your role as the big brother hero, and she likes you in it. I’m pretty sure I’m just the second fiddle. Always have been.”

  “Jared. Dammit, bro.” Stevens turned to fully face his brother, leaning across the table toward the younger man as Wayne left them alone. “You saved our lives so recently. You’re the hero. Never doubt it. I don’t want that old shit getting in the way of what we have now, what we’ve built together. We’re family. Let’s agree on this right now—whatever happens with Mom, even if we disagree, we won’t let it come between us. I’m so glad you decided to come to Maui to live, to be a part of our lives. I love you, man.”

  Jared ducked his head, but when he looked up, his eyes gleamed blue flame in the candlelight. “I guess I needed to hear that. We’re good. Deal.”

  Stevens glanced over at the tent, hidden in the darkness behind the mango tree. He wished he’d searched his mom’s backpack for bottles. He had a bad feeling about her desire for bed and privacy. “I haven’t forgotten what Mom’s capable of. I wish I could.”

  * * *

  “God, it was hard to leave.” Lei hadn’t had time to do anything with her hair at the house, so was opting for restraint. As Pono drove, she twisted her shoulder-length frizzing curls into what her friend Marcella called the “FBI Twist,” a roll at the back of her head anchored with a row of bobby pins. Looking into the drop-down mirror, she dusted her face with a little powder and whisked on mascara and lipstick.

  Pono spared her a glance. “You look fine.”

  “You always say that. This is TV. Every time I’ve been on TV, I’ve looked like I was dragged backward through a bush and I have tiny eyes.”

  “So. Your mother-in-law. She looked rough.”

  “I know. I feel really bad leaving them to deal with her right now.”

  “Be glad you’re out of it. Tiare’s aunty drinks. She hasn’t
liked my two cents on how she should handle it at all.”

  Lei frowned. “So you guys don’t agree on what to do?”

  “I’m of the tough-love school. No contact until Aunty gets her shit together. Tiare can’t handle that, gives in to the whining. I think she even sneaks her money sometimes.”

  Lei felt her stomach hollow with stress at the thought of the complications Ellen might be bringing. “Just gonna stay positive for now. But I’m glad there are two of them to deal with her.”

  “So what’s the emergency that we couldn’t finish dinner?”

  “Captain has a press conference scheduled for us at nine-thirty and wants us to have an ID developed from your fingerprints by then.”

  “Not gonna happen.” Pono rubbed his mustache briskly. “I’ve got at least fifty prints to process. It’s seven forty-five. We aren’t going to have time to do anything but get there and change.”

  Lei and Pono hurried to the fingerprint lab with the samples he’d collected from the van, but there were too many to scan and log. Omura, alerted to their predicament, called every available officer in to help with the scanning, but there were only two machines anyway. Lei and Pono left the other officers at it and, after putting on clean shirts, went to the conference room Omura liked for press conferences. Its gracious koa-wood podium and big brass Maui Police Department emblem on the wall sent a solid and dignified message.

  Lei, Pono, and Captain Omura sketched out their announcement, and Lei felt somewhat ready when the reporters and a cameraman from KHIN-2 News came in. Omura brought the conference to order and addressed the group, giving the sad news confirming the homicide in a carefully worded statement: Surf star Makoa Simmons had drowned, and “foul play was suspected.” She introduced Lei and Pono as primaries on the case and opened up the floor for questions.

  Lei felt nervous sweat prickling under her arms as she stood beside Pono under the bright camera lights. They ended up having to say, “We can’t answer that at this time,” way more often than Lei liked, but she finally ended the conference by looking straight into the camera and making an appeal.

  “This young man was one of the best and brightest surfers to ever come out of our island. If you have any information about who might have wanted to harm Makoa, please call Maui Police Department and let us know.” The hastily-set-up tip line number would run at the bottom of the clip. Once the conference was over, she and Pono went back down to the lab and relieved the officers who’d been scanning the prints.

  “I’ll scan, and you get the computer working, looking for matches,” Pono said.

  It was one a.m. when Lei called it a night. “You can send me the results if and when you get an identity off these.” She yawned. “I’m going home for at least a couple hours of sleep.”

  “Sounds good. I’m going to stay and keep working,” Pono said.

  “We have another full day tomorrow. Don’t stay too late.”

  Lei drove home on autopilot.

  The tent was a dim shape in her yard as she parked, the cottage a dark bulk. Someone, probably her dad, had plugged in a nightlight in the kitchen so she could find her way through the living room where her dad slept, a hunched shape on the couch. She felt her way to the little back bedroom, cluttered with a queen-sized bed and the baby’s crib.

  Moonlight shimmered in through the window, and there was a nightlight on in there, too. Lei could see the dark blot of Kiet’s black hair as he slept on his back, one hand curled up beside his cheek, the other down alongside his body. Looking over at the bed, she could see Stevens on his back in exactly the same pose. She smiled at the sight and peeled her clothes off quickly, leaving the garments where they lay on the floor.

  Because no matter the privacy challenges, time constraints, and limits of physical tiredness, she needed her husband.

  Now.

  The cotton sheets were silky on her nakedness as she slid in beside Stevens, and as she moved against his length, the heat of his body warmed her cool one. Stevens woke at her nearness, then woke further at her wandering hands and turned toward her.

  His touch trailed liquid fire over and through her body, and in minutes they were joined in a moving, breath-held, quiet intimacy that felt like the solid rightness of a key sliding into a lock and opening a box of treasure. She’d never get tired of all there was to discover between them, from long, fragrant, noisy hours of extreme sensation to this soft, tender clenching in semidarkness, others asleep nearby.

  Lei fell into a deep and dreamless sleep for the few hours given her, held close in his arms.

  * * *

  Stevens sat up and hit the Off button on the alarm. He was still in bed, since Kiet had slept later than usual. Lei had left early. The bed still smelled like her…and he wasn’t eager to leave the nest of warm sheets.

  As if discerning this thought, Kiet rolled over and, using the bars of his crib, pulled himself upright. He was early at that—and many other milestones, they’d discovered. Spotting his father still in bed, he smacked the top of the bar with his hand.

  “Da, da, da!” he stated.

  “Daddy,” Stevens enunciated carefully, sitting up and realizing he was still naked. He reached over onto the floor for last night’s boxers, shed during that surprise visit from Lei. “Da-da-da-ddy.”

  “Da-da!” Kiet yelled happily.

  “Okay, close enough, little man.” Stevens picked up and changed the baby on his little changing table nearby, talking to him as he did so. Kiet grinned, kicking his legs. Kiet was such a joy. He thought of their lost child with a pang. It would have been challenging but fun to have two babies. Lei would have been seven months along by now if she hadn’t had the miscarriage.

  Stevens thought of the Big Island case that had brought them so much heartbreak. An old enemy from Lei’s past had been behind a series of vicious attacks, and the stress of dealing with them had caused Lei’s traumatic miscarriage. That was his secret opinion, in spite of the doctor’s “these things happen” commentary, but he’d never say so because Lei blamed herself, questioning her ability to be a mother.

  It was going to take time, and the love and relationship she had with Kiet, to heal her enough to be ready to try again.

  He mentally shrugged off the sorrow, setting Kiet on the bed as he got into a cotton robe. He carried the child out into the kitchen. “Let’s go over and get your grandma up for some coffee.”

  Wayne was already up and had the fragrant Kona brew going. So, a few minutes later, Stevens, clad in robe and rubber slippers with a mug of coffee in one hand and the baby on his hip in the other, made his way across the dewy morning grass to the tent.

  “Mom?” He couldn’t see inside because the interior flaps were zipped shut. “Mom, I brought coffee.”

  No answer. He frowned and set her mug down on the grass. Awkward with one hand, he drew up the zipper and poked his head in.

  Alcohol fumes met his nose, along with a musky smell he associated with old people and closed spaces. “Mom?”

  Kiet wriggled to get down. He loved to play in the tent, and now Stevens had to use both hands to keep a grip on the baby. Kiet grunted and writhed, eager to crawl around, and Stevens stepped back out. Making a decision, he backtracked rapidly across the yard and up the steps, setting Kiet in the playpen in the living room.

  Wayne turned away from refilling his mug. “You’re back quick.”

  “Mom’s been drinking. I need to leave Kiet here.”

  “No problem.”

  Stevens walked rapidly back to the tent. He peered inside again. “Mom?”

  Still no answer. He unzipped the tent and entered. He squatted in the dim light beside the air mattress. He reached out a hand and shook her by the shoulder. “Mom.”

  Her head flopped, but her mouth opened, and he heard and smelled her boozy exhaled b
reath. His stomach tightened with repulsion and frustration. He glanced around, spotted the empty quart bottle of Scotch. She’d always been fond of that particular liquor, believing that it was the drink of “real women.”

  Stevens was just lucky she hadn’t puked all over Lei’s nice patterned rug, but there was still time for that to happen. He backed out of the tent and strode across the grass to the newly erected carport, where he found a plastic utility bucket and brought it back, setting it down next to his mother’s passed-out form.

  Just in case.

  He backed out and rezipped the tent. His gut churned with familiar emotions: anger, disappointment, disgust, and grief, too, that she’d come all this way and this was what happened on day one.

  No wonder she’d wanted to go to bed early. She’d had that bottle waiting. He left the coffee mug where he’d set it down. She could drink it cold when she woke up.

  He reached in the pocket of his robe and pulled out his phone to call Jared.

  “I should have searched her backpack,” he said when his brother answered. “She had a bottle, and she’s passed out in the tent.”

  “Listen to you, bro,” Jared snapped. “She got drunk, and it’s your fault because you didn’t take away her booze in time.”

  A long pause. Stevens pushed a hand through his unruly hair, struggling not to snap back at his brother even as he admitted to himself Jared was right. Fighting each other wasn’t going to help them, or deal with the problem of their mother. It was frustrating to be tested this way so quickly after their pact of the night before.

  “I’m sorry for biting your head off,” Jared said, heaving a sigh. “I just woke up. Haven’t had my morning coffee. And I admit I was a little taken in last night. Let myself get hopeful. She was so sincere. So happy to be a grandma.”

  “I felt the same,” Stevens said. “And you’re right. Searching her, trying to prevent her getting something—none of it works.”