Page 59 of Big Island Sunrise
“She looks just like her,” Lani marveled.
“It’s a trip, right?” He smiled at the picture and then tucked his phone away.
“Before I moved home, I never left Rory with anyone.”
Tenn nodded in understanding. “I get anxious when I don’t see her for a while, even if she’s with my parents. There’s just some caveman part of my brain that I can’t convince she’s okay when she’s not in sight. So my mom sends me photos. Even ‘Olena sends some.” He chuckled. “She thinks I’m a nuisance.”
“I’m sure she understands. I mean, we’re talking about a woman who started a co-op just so she could be with her girls all day.”
Tenn finished making sushi rolls and joined her at the bar again. The spicy ahi roll that he’d made for her was phenomenal. They enjoyed the food without talking much, just eating their fill and looking out at the moonlight that moved across the surface of the bay.
When he went into the kitchen to clean up, refusing any help, she checked her phone again. There was a picture of Rory and Kai, sound asleep in their elaborate blanket fort.
Stay out as long as you’d like, Emma encouraged her.
Lani’s ears burned with a blush. There wasn’t much nightlife in Hilo, especially for someone who didn’t want to step foot in a bar. There wasn’t even a movie theater.
Olivia was at her grandparents’ house. They weren’t… surely Tenn didn’t expect…
She shoved her phone back in her purse, willing her blush to fade before he came back out. She never should have agreed to a date. She wasn’t ready for this.
“Ready to head home?” Tenn asked as he walked back out. “I’m useless past nine these days, I’m always up so early for work.”
“Yeah, perfect,” she said quickly. “I want to get home to put Rory to bed.”
“For sure.” He held the door open for her and locked it behind them. As they walked out to his truck he said, “So. Next time. Up for a bike ride?”
“Sure.” She made an effort to keep her voice steady as her heart raced with a confusing mixture of anticipation and anxiety. “Next time.”
18
Emma
The Pualena farmers market stretched from the long gravel parking lot all along the sea cliffs. The stands were well back from the cliffs’ edge and the waves that sometimes lapped up over them, but the salt mist created by the crash of waves on stone hung heavy in the air.
Lani was helping Kekoa man the shave ice stand that had preceded his more permanent stand in town. He still set it up once a week on Sundays.
Rory hung close to her mom, eating her fill of shave ice with white pineapple syrup.
Kai stuck to Emma like a burr, even more ill at ease out among strangers than she was. Still, they had to try. Farmers markets were less stressful somehow than stores or parties. Anytime she felt overwhelmed, she simply turned to the east, and all she could see was ocean. Even the sound of the crowd was lost in the wide open space and the noise of water on rock.
Adam had been the sociable one, and she had been happy enough to go along. Kai had been social too once. The change in him after Adam’s death was so drastic that his grandmother had insisted that Emma take him to therapy.
Maybe her mother was right. Maybe Emma should have found him a therapist months ago. But he was so young. She wasn’t convinced that being made to sit in a room with a stranger every week would do him any good.
Probably she was the one who needed the therapist.
She shook her head, trying to step out of that self-imposed isolation in the middle of a crowd. The vendor nearest them was squeezing oranges and adding shots ofliliko’ijuice to each glass. She purchased one and took three big gulps before handing it to Kai, who proceeded to nurse the straw and peer out at the festivities with narrow-eyed suspicion.
At least they had gotten off of the property today. That was a small victory in and of itself.
She recognized a woman from their neighborhood who sold produce at a stand in front of her house every day, a mixture of home-grown fruit and vegetables from island farms. Her Sunday bounty was all that and then some. Emma stocked up on familiar vegetables, like oversized carrots from Waimea, and then pointed to a pile of lumpy root vegetables that she didn’t recognize.
“What are these?”
“Yams.” Seeing her confusion, the grandmotherly woman smiled and said, “Real yams. The African kind. Not sweet potatoes.”
She explained how she cooked them - “Just peel and boil, easy.” - and Emma bought two pounds.
