Page 30 of Big Island Horizons
“The wall on the alley side is overdue for some fresh paint. Your work is really intriguing. If you were able to do that in one day with kids underfoot, I can only imagine what you could do with more time and space. We would pay you, obviously. What’s your fee?”
“I’m not sure. Can I get back to you?”
“But you’ll consider it?”
“Yeah, sure. Of course.”
“Wonderful. I’ll be in touch with the details. I’d love to talk more, but I’m already running late.” She went back to the edge of the water and shouted, “Mateo, if you don’t come onto dry land this instant, we are not coming back tomorrow!”
Lani laughed at the thought that no school could be considered a threat. Her own school experience had been decent, but skipping a day had still been an exhilarating reward.
Of course, for her skipping school had meant getting out of a concrete building and going to the beach for the day. For these kids, it meant missing out on a day with their friends and being stuck in… a Hilo art gallery, apparently.
“Look at you,” said ‘Olena. “My cousin, the up and coming artist.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“Did you decide what you’re going to paint for Kekoa yet?”
“I haven’t decided.”
“Get on it. You’ve gotta do that job in Pualena before you go take one in Hilo.”
Lani nodded and took her first deep breath of the day, steadied somehow by the prospect of work. Not just any work, but work doing what she loved most in the world. Being paid to paint. She could hardly believe it.
Her life here was good.
She refused to let the ghosts of her past take away from that.
11
‘Olena
The families dropped their kids off at the usual nine o’clock start time, which left them with an hour to kill until the Pana?ewa Rainforest Zoo opened at ten. Luckily it wasn’t raining – well, barely – and the kids easily entertained themselves running around the big empty parking lot, chasing chickens and climbing trees.
“Wasn’t Nell going to ride with you today?” Georgia asked.
“Yeah. She texted this morning and said that she couldn’t make it.”
“Ugh. I hate it when people flake like that.”
‘Olena just nodded, her eyes on a couple of kids who had climbed high up into a banyan tree. She worried that there were darker reasons behind Nell bailing on them at the last minute… new bruises or just coercive control, she didn’t know. If it were something normal, like a kid with a fever, she would have just said so. But her message had been vague.
‘Olena tried not to get involved in other people’s lives unless they asked her to. She had enough problems of her own… and you couldn’t save people from themselves.
If Nell wanted to make a change, that was a decision that she had to make on her own. ‘Olena could offer her community, but the fallout and inevitable custody battle that would come when she left her abusive husband… well, ultimately that was on her.
Escaping an abusive relationship when the abuser was the father of your children was no small thing.
‘Olena had seen it before, too many times.
One dear friend of hers had lost custody of her children for six months when she finally left her abuser; he had filed a temporary restraining order against her on behalf of their children, and the court system had been so backed up that it had taken half a year before she could finally appear before a judge and get the order overturned.
The kids, only four and five at the time, had spent those months in foster care.
Eventually, both parents were granted shared custody. With the help of the courts, the father had removed the children from ‘Olena’s co-op and enrolled them in public school. The whole ordeal had been excruciating for mother and children both.
So what Nell was navigating… that was her business and no one else’s.
