Page 45 of Big Island Sunrise
“I’m fine,” she said automatically.
Her chin dropped a bit, and she gave her an earnest look. “Really?”
“No, not really.”
She nodded and crossed to the kitchen counter. “Do you want some tea?”
“Sure. Thank you.”
“We have to figure out what all is growing here. Because I don’t know much about herbs, and I still found a bunch of plants growing. There must be others I didn’t recognize. I picked thismamakiand lemongrass earlier.” She put huge green leaves and chopped rounds of grass into a pot. “There’s hibiscus back there too, the kind you use for tea.”
“I’d love to learn more about the plants that are growing here.”
Lani’s voice and the everyday kitchen clatter cut through the haze of her grief, pushing the pain back until her thoughts were coherent again.
The ache for her husband was still there, like a phantom limb that pained her constantly. But engaging with the world, this place, kept it under control.
With the kitchen lights on, she could see puddles on the kitchen floor. She looked up and saw a drop of water fall from a damp spot on the ceiling.
“We’ve got a leak.”
“Yeah, there’s one in my room too. I put a pitcher under it.”
Emma looked out the window and watched the rain flying sideways. “How do the chickens get through these hurricanes?”
Lani burst out laughing.
“What?”
“You think this is a hurricane? This isnota hurricane.”
Another crack of thunder shook the house. “Close enough.”
Lani shook her head, but she didn’t argue. The pot on the stove started to simmer, and she turned it off. Lemongrass-scented steam filled the air.
Emma mopped up the puddle and set a pot on top. The steady ding of water drops was swallowed by the raging storm outside. When she looked back at Lani, she was looking down at her phone with a stricken expression.
“What’s wrong?”
Lani shook her head quickly, like she was shaking herself out of a daze. “My ex.” She turned her phone off and put it in the far corner of the kitchen.
“What about him?” Emma asked.
“More threats.” She pulled two mugs down from the cupboard and filled each of them with tea. “I blocked him on everything. I got a new phone number. Then he made new accounts so that he could spam me on socials. I should just get off of all of them altogether.”
“This is Rory’s father?”
“Not exactly.” They carried their tea into the living room, where the noise of the storm wasn’t quite as loud. Lani blew on her tea, looking off into middle distance.
“We worked on ships together,” she began. “Me and Zeke. Cruise ship culture was very work hard, party hard. It was fun for a while. I was just getting out of college, trying to escape myself. I think that’s why I stayed away for as many years as I did. With my parents both gone and Adam in California, no place felt like home anymore.
“Anyway, we drank a lot. We were only allowed beer and wine on the ship – though of course plenty of people snuck booze on too - but in port we really cut loose.
“Rory’s father was an Italian guy I met in Greece. A one night stand. I don’t even know his last name. By the time I realized I was pregnant, we were long gone. I had no way of finding him again.
“Rory’s ‘Dad’,” she continued with heavy air quotes, “was a coworker of mine. He heard me crying to a friend about it, because I didn’t know what to do. I had only ever worked on ships, and I’d gone up pretty far. Managing my department on the boat, you know? No chance of doing that with a baby.
“I could have come home to Hawai’i, but… I don’t know. Showing up pregnant, no idea of who the father was, it was a humiliating prospect. And I wasn’t ready to give up the career I had dedicated my whole adult life to. I’d never planned on having kids.”
