Page 46 of Big Island Sunrise
Lani paused and sipped her tea before she continued. Outside, the wind picked up to a frenzied whine as it grazed the side of the house.
“Zeke owned property in Alaska, an old family place. He said I could stay there a while, rent free. I spent a few summers working on ships up in Alaska, and a big group of us spent a week up at his cabin once. It’s so beautiful up there. A friend said she would help me, take time off between contracts and be there when the baby was born.
“I was–” Lani’s voice cracked and she looked down, pulling at a loose thread on her pajamas. “The idea was to have the baby there and give her up for adoption. So I could go back to work.”
She squeezed her eyes shut and took a long, shuddering breath.
“We had the nicest family lined up, this older couple who lived a little ways south of there. I had my doubts the whole time, but I tried to ignore them, to talk myself out of them. I had this whole plan, you know? I was a couple years away from being an operations manager. A decade of that and I could have retired so young. I had it all planned out.
“And then I met Rory.” Tears spilled from her eyes, and she smiled. Emma reached out and took her hand. “She was born at night, at home. The northern lights were going crazy outside, and I stood in front of these huge windows watching them. Then I held her for the first time, and I just… I knew I could never let her go.”
She wiped the tears from her face and grabbed a tissue for her nose.
“And Zeke?” Emma asked.
“He said I could stay as long as I needed. I had plenty of savings for groceries and stuff, so I wasn’t worried about finding work right away. I just spent those first months in this happy little cocoon with my baby. I was so in love with her.”
She sighed, and her expression darkened. “Then Zeke proposed. And I said yes. I’m not sure why, exactly. I wasn’t in love with him. I mean, I was fond of the guy. We had worked together on and off for years. And I was grateful. But I think… deep down, I think I was scared that he was the best I could do. For me, for Rory… Here I was with this baby, and there was this man on one knee offering to be her father, and… I said yes.
“It was okay, for a while. Zeke was at work three months out of four, and I was home with Rory all the time. I loved it. And he was nice enough, when he was home. It felt cozy. Domestic.
“Then he stopped working. More and more, he had been obsessing over what I did when he was gone. He was scared I was seeing someone, which was crazy. I was with Rory literally all the time. She would only sleep on top of me. But he quit his shipboard job and came home full time.
“Things got steadily worse after that.”
“Worse how?” Emma asked.
Lani shrugged and looked away. She was quiet for a while, the sound of the storm outside taking over.
Eventually she said, “I stayed longer than I should have. It got bad enough that Rory was terrified. I couldn’t hide it from her anymore. He would go ballistic at bedtime, screaming at us and slamming doors because Rory wanted me to sleep with her, and he wanted me in bed with him. He would always apologize the next morning. Sometimes he’d cry and beg me to stay.
“Then one night, he dragged me out by my hair. He slammed the door and locked Rory in the dark. She was screaming for me, terrified, but he wouldn’t let me go to her.”
A single tear fell, and Emma squeezed her hand.”
“We left the next day,” Lani continued, “while he was out at a construction job he’d picked up. We stayed a few nights with some old friends in Juneau. I hadn’t seen them in ages, hadn’t seen anyone. Zeke didn’t like it. But they let us stay with them, even drove me down to the courthouse so I could file for divorce. And then they drove us to the airport.”
“I’m glad that you’re here.” Emma put an arm around her and they sank deeper into the old sofa.
“Ditto.”
There was another crash of thunder, so close that it came in the same moment as the lightning and shook the walls. The lights cut out, plunging them into complete darkness.
“Shoot,” Lani said. “Do you have your phone on you?”
“No, but I have a flashlight on my keychain. It’s hanging near the door.”
She stood and walked with exaggerated caution towards the front door, still not familiar enough with this house to find her way in the dark.
Another flash of lightning lit up the house for a second, long enough for her to orient herself. She made it to the door and fumbled along the wall until her fingers found the familiar shape of her keychain.
The little flashlight put out a narrow beam of light that enabled her to find the candles and matches she’d come across earlier that week while she was cleaning the kitchen. Once the first was lit, Lani used the tiny flashlight to check on both of the kids while Emma lit more candles downstairs.
“Both still sound asleep,” she said as she came back down.
“Once Kai is asleep, he’s out. He’ll sleep through fireworks, anything. I still have to wake him up at two in the morning to pee, or he’ll sleep through that too.”
“Rory’s the same way. She’ll sleep through anything. I can’t remember the last time I slept like that.” She was quiet while she poured two fresh mugs of tea. Then she said, “I have nightmares.”
