Page 96 of Big Island Summer
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“My attention was scattered. Daisy, work, my mother, the custody drama. I was focused on everything but you.”
“All that and you still made time for us.”
“You deserve more. Iwantmore.”
“More what?”
“Time together.”
“Good. Me too.”
“There’s still a lot going on. I’ll still be focused on Daisy the next few weeks, helping her through this transition–”
“I wouldn’t expect anything less.”
“That’s one of many things I love about you.”
“They’re only little for so long. We have time.”
“Decades, hopefully. That’s what I was trying to say, Nell. I want you to know thatthis– you and me and them – this is everything to me. I’m all in.”
She turned her face up for a kiss. “Me too.”
27
Emma
It was a perfect blue-sky day when they arrived home from their camping trip in Punalu‘u. Summer had been a long time coming, but it seemed content to stay a while.
Their clingy orange cat wound between her feet while she unloaded the car, and the dog ran laps around the house.
“Zuko’s happy to see us,” Kai said, “and Dio’s happy to be home!”
“Definitely,” she agreed. “How about you?”
“What about me?”
“Are you happy to be home?”
“Yeah. The beach was fun, but I love home best.” His matter-of-fact tone touched her heart.
They were fast approaching the one-year anniversary of Adam’s death. In those early months of soul-crushing pain, she never could have imagined how far they would come in one year, or how much they would heal.
She missed her husband. She would always miss him. His absence from their lives would always be a source of grief.
But somehow, in spite of the grief that she carried – or maybe even because of it – she had built a new life that felt true to who they were and who she was meant to be.
Kai was thriving. They were surrounded with love. And she was… happy.
It was still a shock, sometimes. Not too long ago, she was certain that she had lost her capacity to feel joy, or even contentment. And she had, for a time. The closest she had come to happiness in those early months was some degree of respite from the shredding pain of her loss. She could still feel some things, even then – love, gratitude, guilt – but happiness seemed to have fallen out of reach forever.
Emma wandered away from her car – still half unloaded – and went to check on the jaboticaba tree that she had planted in honor of her husband. It was just a sapling, far too young to produce anything (according to what she had read) but it had flowered anyway. Now the trunk was covered in perfect globes. Some were still green, some burgundy, and some such a dark purple that they were almost black – nearly ripe enough to eat.
She sat next to the little tree, heedless of the damp overgrown grass that soaked through her pajama pants and cooled her skin, and turned her face up to the sun. She had found true happiness again, and it had happened so much sooner than she would have thought possible.
There was a strange sort of grief in that, too – in finding happiness without him. But she knew that it’s what he would have wanted, for her to be happy. That man would do anything to make her smile. And that more than anything gave her the courage to keep moving forward. Living for him, even after he was gone.
