Page 22 of Big Island Neighbors
Lani stumbled to a stop when she spotted a familiar sketch. The stark lines and oversized eyes of a mako shark stared back at her, surrounded by other sketches of sea life and island plants. Hastily scrawled at the bottom was her email address.
It was the menu she’d doodled on that first day at Pualena Cafe.
“You kept it,” she murmured, looking up into his eyes.
“How could I not?” he said lightly. “It’s a Lani King original.”
She stilled, wanting him to kiss her again, but he squeezed her hand and led her through to the next room.
“Mama, look!” Rory shouted when they walked into the kitchen. “Muddy buddies!”
“What are muddy buddies?” she asked with a laugh in her voice.
“Cereal coated in peanut butter, chocolate, and powdered sugar.” Tenn’s voice was vaguely apologetic. “I used to make them with my dad when I was a kid. Microwaving chocolate chips was as close as he came to cooking. Now Olivia and I make them on very special occasions.”
“Like movie night with you!” Olivia was a sweet little girl with golden hair and dark blue eyes. Lani had to look closely to see any resemblance to Tenn, but when she did she could see similarities in the shape of her eyes and the curve of her smile.
It was a relief that Olivia was so happy to have them over. She supposed that Tenn having a new woman in his life was alot easier to accept when she came with a tiny plus one who was convinced that Olivia had hung the moon.
“Do you want to make necklaces?” Olivia asked. “My grandpa gave me rainbow beads!”
“Yeah!” Rory stuffed one last handful of sugared chocolate in her mouth, and Lani forced a detour to the kitchen sink before letting her loose on the beads.
“Look at this!” Olivia said when they joined her in the living room.
“Wow!” Rory ran to the table and looked down at the plethora of beads. “I wish I had a grandpa!”
“At least you have a mom,” Olivia said in the casual tone that only very young children could use when discussing life-shattering events. Her focus was on the beads, carefully threading them one by one onto a clear length of plastic. “My mom is dead.”
“That’s rough, buddy.” It was a line from her favorite cartoon, delivered in a tone of true commiseration.
“Is your dad dead?”
“It’s complicated,” Rory replied. The words that Lani used habitually when she was trying to buy time to conjure up an honest yet age appropriate answer to Rory’s questions.
Her baby had been glad to leave Lani’s increasingly erratic husband behind. But as time passed and positive memories of Zeke resurfaced, she had started to ask about him.
“He’s not really my dad,” Rory continued, “but he’s known me since I was a baby, so he misses me sometimes.” Like Olivia, her eyes were on the beads that she was stringing in rainbow order. “I’m gonna talk to him tomorrow.”
Lani’s breath caught in her throat, and she ducked back into the kitchen. Pressing her back against the wall, she took deep breaths to quell her rising panic. Tenn followed her through and ran a hand down her arm.
“Court mandated calls start tomorrow?” he asked softly.
She nodded, squeezing her eyes shut. “It’s so hard to know what to say to her. She doesn’t know about the courts or any of that. I didn’t want to tell her that this is something wehaveto do.” She laughed weakly and opened her eyes to look at him. “Luckily, it doesn’t occur to her to ask why anyone would want to schedule a weekly video chat with her.”
“You’re doing so good.” Tenn moved closer, bracing his weight on the wall with one arm and leaning forward until his forehead rested lightly against hers. “Look at the life you’ve given her.”
“Olivia too.” Suddenly, with him so close, she couldn’t remember what she had been so upset about. Everything else felt faraway and manageable, unimportant compared to what they had here and now. Their girls chatting happily in the living room, Tenn’s thumb tracing the line of her jaw.
“Daddy!” Olivia called from the next room.
Tenn sighed and straightened reluctantly, pushing himself away from the wall. “Yeah?”
“Can we have milk?”
“Sure.” He looked back to Lani. “Can Rory have goat’s milk?”
“Yeah.” She was at risk of emotional whiplash from this constant back and forth between date-night energy and parenting… but she didn’t hate it.
