Page 93 of Big Island Sunrise
“You didn’t hang it up by the door?” Tara stood and stretched her aching back.
“I thought I did, but I can’t find it.”
“Did you look in the car?”
“It’s not there either.”
“I’ll help you find it before we leave tomorrow.”
“But I want it tonight,” she insisted. “I wanted to draw on it with my new sharpies.”
“I’ll come help you look in a few minutes.” She hefted the pile of weeds that she had pulled and tossed them over the fence into a wheelbarrow. Here in the tropics, she never bothered with formal compost piles. This batch of weeds would go under the banana trees, where the chickens would root through them and the rain would melt them to fertilizer almost overnight.
“Dinner will be ready soon. Cody and I made Nana’s chicken pot pie.”
“You’re a rockstar.”
“I know.” Paige ran off towards the house, and Tara heard the kitchen door slam when she went inside.
She smiled and crouched back down to start on another row.
Before she dug in, she called her husband and ran a cord from her phone to her ear so that she could keep weeding while they talked.
Idle hands were a foreign concept to her; she couldn’t just sit and talk on the phone. At least not without feeling like she wanted to crawl out of her skin.
“Tara, hi,” he answered on the second ring. “I’ve been meaning to call you.”
“It’s been a few days.” She had been meaning to call him too, but life got in the way and before she knew it he had already been gone for a week.
They had discussed - for all of two minutes - the whole family going to the mainland together. But between the cost of five roundtrip tickets and the thought of finding someone to take over the daunting list of farm chores, family vacations weren’t really on the table.
“How are you?” He sounded odd, but then again it was already late at night on the east coast. He was probably just tired. “How are the kids?”
“All’s well here, just a normal week for us.” A moment after she said that, she frowned. She probably shouldn’t say that as if their lives were no different without him… but that was the truth of it. Mitch commuted to Hilo and worked long hours, then collapsed onto the couch when he got home. If anything, this past week with him gone had felt smooth and easy.
The kids had been happier without his loaded questions about schoolwork or his ill-tempered snapping. Cody had even played board games with her and the girls in the evenings instead of retreating to his room like he normally did.
What did it say about their family, that everyone was happier with him gone?
Maybe they had just needed a bit of a break.
“How was your reunion?” she asked, a solid minute too late. “That was tonight, right?”
“It was yesterday.” His voice was heavy. Unease prickled through her chest. She sank back on her heels, giving the conversation her full attention.
“And you fly out tomorrow?”
“About that…” He cleared his throat. “I’m not ready to come back just yet.”
She straightened up and brushed the dirt from her hands. “What about work?”
“I hate that job.” The vehemence in his tone surprised her. He’d hated driving a UPS truck the last few years he’d worked the route, but he’d been over the moon when he landed the manager position a few years back.
“Mitch, what are you saying?”
“My first day back, I ran into… I reconnected with Stacy.”
It took a few seconds for the name to find purchase. “Your highschool girlfriend?”
