Page 4 of Big Island Sunrise
2
Emma
Hilo was quiet.
It had rained all night, and soon the bayfront town would be filled with birdsong and traffic. But now, just for a moment, there seemed to be no sound at all.
Thick fog hung all around, and the whole building was shrouded in mist. Even the trees a few feet away were hazy and gray. It gave everything an otherworldly quality.
Emma sat on the hotel balcony. The sliding glass door was cracked open so that she could hear her son when he woke up. She had a hot cup of coffee between her hands and a blanket around her shoulders, but she still felt cold.
She was always cold.
Grief had taken hold of her body like a chronic illness. It had settled into her bones, an interminable ache and leaden weight. Food repelled her. Sleep eluded her at night, only for her to collapse into bed midafternoon and sleep for hours.
When she looked in the mirror, she hardly recognized herself. Her skin had taken on a grayish hue. Grief had dimmed the light in her eyes and carved dark circles beneath them. Even her auburn hair had lost its shine.
They had come to the Big Island to deal with an inheritance. At least, that was what Emma had told her family. And it was true that she needed to figure out what to do with the land that her six-year-old son had inherited. But it was also true that she had desperately needed to get away from her hometown.
She had needed to escape the house where Adam wasn’t.
She’d also needed a break from the suffocating sympathy of her family, from friends who were getting on with their lives as if nothing had happened and acquaintances who stopped her in the street to tell her what a hero her husband was, how grateful they were to him and his team for containing the awful wildfire that had nearly destroyed their homes.
As if she cared.
She would gladly see every building reduced to ash if that could bring her husband back.
Worthless, futile thoughts.
Emma shook herself and sat up straighter. She took a long sip of coffee.
She had to keep moving forward. One blind, stumbling step at a time.
With his dad gone, Kai needed her more than ever.
For months she had been a shell of herself, failing to show up for him in even the most basic ways. Her family had picked up the slack, making sure that there was food on the table, seeing that the trash went out, reminding both of them to eat and bathe and sleep.
Enough was enough.
For the first time in her life, she had to learn how to function on her own.
Emma and Adam were teenagers when they fell in love. She had gone straight from her parent’s house into Adam’s arms. And, despite everyone’s assumptions that their romance would flare and fade, it never had. Adam was it for her.
And Adam was gone.
How many times would she have to say that to herself before it felt like a fact? It was still a hollow, impossible thing. A nightmare that refused to fade.
But he was. He was gone, and she was here, and she just had to learn how to live with that.
It was thehowthat she was still figuring out.
Adam’s father had only outlived him by a few weeks. When he died, his property went to his only grandson under the condition that Emma would be responsible for it until Kai turned eighteen.
Kai hadn’t just inherited land. There were animals that needed to be cared for or rehomed, bills and property taxes to be dealt with. The family had been patient with her in the wake of Adam’s death, but there were decisions that needed to be made. And when Adam’s aunt wrote to her, asking them to come for John’s memorial service and stay a while to untangle Kai’s inheritance, the idea of Hawai’i had felt like a lighthouse in the distance.
She couldn’t see where she was going. Not yet.
But it at least gave her some direction through the fog of her grief.
