Page 73 of Big Island Neighbors
“Do you want me to starve?” he demanded.
She held up her muddy hands and tried to make a joke of it. “I can’t make French toast now! It would get all muddy.”
“Do you think you’re funny?” He used the snide, deliberately hurtful voice that he had been trying on lately. “You’re not funny.”
She sighed. “I’m going to finish up in the garden, and then I can come in to make you some food.”
“I want foodnow!”
“There’s food in the fridge–”
“I don’t want that food!”
“Well, that’s what’s available.”
“You’re the worst mom in the world!” he shouted, then turned and ran.
“Remind me why you never had kids?” she said to Toni.
“How is he doing?”
“Better, if you can believe it.”
Her whole family had seen Kai’s downward spiral after Adam died. He had suffered terribly in the weeks and months that Emma had hardly left her bed.
She worried that her near-catatonic state had been even more stressful for Kai than his father‘s sudden disappearance, but there was no undoing that now.
There was only moving forward as best they could.
“More good days than bad?” Toni asked.
“Yeah, I think we’ve eked our way past fifty-fifty,” Emma joked weakly. She stabbed her spade into the ground and stretched. “If I give him a ton of attention, he’s okay. As soon as I try to do anything else, anything beyond the daily chores that he’s gotten used to, he flips out.”
“That sounds hard.”
“It is. But I get it, I’m his only constant. He lost his dad, moved to a new place…” She sighed. “The real difficulty is taking good enough care of myself that I can be steady for him. And managing to do that without him feeling neglected. Some days it feels easy enough. We hang out around the house, do our homeschool stuff, go to the beach. But it doesn’t feel like there’s room for me to do anything else.”
“It’ll get easier with time,” Toni said.
“Yeah,” she agreed. “For sure.”
But as she said goodbye to her sister and went to look for Kai, she wondered just how much time had to pass before she felt like she had her head safely above water.
22
Lani
Puddles splashed beneath care tires as yet another family arrived at the Kealoha place.
Lani opened the gate to let them through, and ‘Olena waved them over to the carport. The open-air garage had been transformed into a classroom for the day.
It was raining again, and the newcomers sprinted up the driveway before shedding their raincoats and joining their friends under the roof.
Between the kids’ chatter and the noise of rain on the tin roof, Lani could hardly hear herself think under there. She was happier on gate duty under her red umbrella, but she reluctantly joined the throng when the final group of kids arrived.
Once everyone was there, ‘Olena clapped her hands and called for their attention.
“Over here! Over here, everybody. Who remembers what we’re doing today?”
