Page 15 of Big Island Sunrise
Lani put a compassionate hand on her arm, and Emma jumped like she was startled to see her standing there. She pressed her lips together into a grim, apologetic smile and sniffed back tears that she hadn’t let fall.
“I’m so sorry, Lani. That was too much.”
“It’s okay. I get it.” They walked upriver after their kids, who were wandering towards the calmer bend in the river where otherkeikiwere laughing and splashing.
“I don’t know how to be normal anymore.”
“Normal’s overrated.” Lani bumped her hip into Emma and saw the shadow of a smile cross her face. “I get it. I do. I didn’t even know how to be here with my parents gone. I had to leave the island. Being here without my mom was hard enough. Staying here after my dad died felt impossible. So I got on a ship. Without them, this just didn’t feel like home anymore.”
“My house feels like a tomb,” Emma said so quietly that she could barely hear her. After a moment she asked, “Did it help? Getting away?”
“I don’t know,” Lani admitted. “I think running away just stretched the hurt out longer. Trying to outrun my pain and being alone, away from family… I made a lot of mistakes. I didn’t have guideposts, any mirrors. Family gives us that. Community does.” She put an arm around Emma’s waist. “But you have family here too. You’re not running away.”
“My family thinks I am.”
“They don’t know. Look at Kai.” Their two kids stood next to each other now, and Kai was showing Rory how to skip a flat stone across the still water. “Half his family is here. Have you been to the Kealoha place yet?”
“Yeah, we slept there last night.”
“How long are you here for?”
“I don’t know yet.”
Lani turned to look at the paddle out. Her aunt and uncle and cousins were barely visible,part of a bobbing circle far out beyond the breaking waves, saying goodbye to John. “There was a big stink about the paddle out, did you know?”
“What do you mean?”
“The older uncles wanted something more traditional. There was a spot for John in the cemetery near his parents… and mine.”
“Are paddle outs not traditional?” Emma asked. “We all paddled out together years ago for a friend of Adam’s, remember? He always said that he would want that over a funeral.”
“Surfers have been doing paddle outs for over a hundred years, but it’s not exactly an ancient tradition. Cremation was more of a punishment than an honor back in the day, and some of the older uncles are upset that he won’t be in the cemetery with his parents. But this is what he wanted. To join Adam in the Pacific.”
There was a comforting continuity to the ocean. Lani had always felt it on the ships, and in Alaska. However many thousands of miles she might be from Hawai’i, so long as she was by the ocean, she wasn’t too far from home.
Next to her, Emma wiped her eyes and nose with the corner of a beach towel. They walked closer to where the kids played and settled down in the sand.
They sat like that for a long time, shoulder to shoulder, with their back to the memorial and their faces towards the sun.
6
Emma
Emma felt as if she had been handed the captainship of a boat without having the faintest idea of where it was headed or how to get there.
Just milking the goats in the morning, which had taken Tara less than twenty minutes, took her nearly two hours.
Tara had offered to help her find homes for the many animals that lived on the Kealoha property. Emma just had to keep them alive and well in the meantime.
Having seen to the goats, she went back inside to strain their milk and put it in the fridge.
“Can I have some?” Kai asked.
“Of course.”
She looked at the table and realized that he had found her phone and pulled up YouTube videos while she was outside. Pretty impressive for a kid who was still learning how to read.
“No more videos,” she said as she poured him a glass of raw milk.
