Page 8 of Rough Ride

“I think you misunderstand,” Mr. O’Keefe said. “This has nothing to do with family and everything to do with Joe’s wishes.”

“She has no right,” her uncle bellowed. “This is my land.”

“Sir, I would like you to sit down,” Mr. O’Keefe said, but her uncle paid no heed. He stood and took a step toward her.

“Do you think some haole should have a right to this land? She isn’t a real Kaheaku.”

“I think you might want to settle down, Sam,” Eli said. There was no change in the expression on his face, and his voice was so soft she could barely hear it. There was no doubt in Crysta’s mind that he had just issued a threat. She glanced around the room. Apparently, everyone else picked up on it too.

“I will take care of all of this if you want to skip on out of here,” the lawyer said. It wasn’t until then that she realized he had walked over to her and her father. O’Keefe nodded and looked at her father, who gestured with his head.

She stood and walked to the door. She wanted to glance and look at the family, but she was afraid it might cause another outburst from her uncle. She worried that Eli would lose patience and start hurting people. She didn’t know him well, but Eli St. John struck her as someone who only gave his opponent no more than one warning.

Once they were out in the hall, she couldn’t get away from that room fast enough. She sped up her steps in a near run. By the time she burst outside, she wanted nothing more than to run away. She didn’t, but the urge to just run was there.

“You can’t keep running, Crysta.”

She turned and gave her father a look that told him she wasn’t happy with his common sense again.

“I know I can’t.” She studied her father. “Did you know about this?”

He shook his head. “No.”

His answer wasn’t that convincing. “Dad.”

“No, I promise. I didn’t know about it. I had a feeling he was up to something because of some of the things he said the last few months when we talked.”

She sighed and collapsed into the wicker chair. Her father leaned against the railing on the lanai.

“Like what?”

He shrugged. “Things like his time was getting short. That the one regret he had was that he didn’t show you your homeland. Things like that. I didn’t think anything of it at the time. He’d mentioned it in the past. He also thought of you as his one link to his sister—which was true. But, it was more that he wanted to leave you a legacy.”

“And St. John.”

Her father nodded. “I think he sees… damn.”

She watched as the grief hit her father again, feeling that same pain herself. Every now and then, she would remember that she would not hear John’s booming voice over the computer when they video chat.

She reached out and grabbed her father’s hand, squeezing it before letting it go.

“He saw St. John as a surrogate son.”

“And you decided not to tell me all of this why?”

“Truth is, I thought maybe his illness made him think about the past. I knew the feeling. You have a lot of time to think when you’re lying on a hospital bed.”

She sighed. Her father’s cancer had turned her life upside down. He had always been her rock and when he had been diagnosed, she had barely been able to keep it together. The woman who never let life intrude on work, walked away from it. She had realized that her father was the most important person in her world and she had to take care of him.

“So, I guess I have to stay here.”

“I’m sure you’re not trapped on the ranch and you will have time to go back to the mainland and get your things. Joe wouldn’t have left you without some time off. He knew what the last year had been like.”

“I don’t like leaving you.”

Her father laughed. “Now you’re making me feel old. Really old. I can take care of myself.”

“But what if the cancer comes back?”

---