Page 25 of Big Island Sunset
“She was fine before Juniper. Her addiction started with postpartum depression, and then–”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about.” She didn’t speak harshly, but she was firm. “You weren’t even there. You were off traveling. You didn’t evenknowLaurel.”
Toni was silent for a moment. Then, her tone clipped, she said, “Enlighten me.”
“She was never well. I don’t know why she was so troubled, but she was. Always. She used to cut herself.”
There was a startled silence. “When?”
“Early high school. Before Ethan.”
Toni was quiet for a moment. Then she said, “I didn’t know.”
“Those early years with Juniper were the only time I ever saw Laurel happy,” Emma told her sister. “Like, really truly happy. Ethan was working crazy hours, but she had her baby. She had her art. She was good. At least… I thought she was.”
Emma had been absent too, for most of it. She didn’t go far away for college, but she still left. Laurel was alone in a yurt in the redwoods with her baby, but she’dseemedhappy. She’d seemed stable…
“So what changed?” Toni asked.
“I don’t know. I never knew her that well. She never confided in anyone, except maybe Ethan.” Emma sighed. “Juniper was four the first time her mom went to rehab. She must have been three when Laurel started hanging out with other artists and got into… whatever it was she got into.”
She hadn’t known the specifics of Laurel’s struggles with addiction, even then. It was an old source of shame, that she hadn’t been there for her sister-in-law… but how could she support someone who refused to let her in?
Emma had been away at college, wrapped up in her own life, and her increasingly halfhearted efforts to connect with her brother’s wife had never yielded anything. Laurel had always been a closed, quiet person. Not unkind, just… distant.
“I’m so worried about her,” Toni said after a while.
“I know.”
“She’s so young.”
Emma sighed. “I know.”
“I think she’s making a mistake.”
“If you tell her that, you risk losing her.”
“At least she has you.” There was a bitterness to Toni’s voice that Emma had never heard before. Toni missed the niece she loved like a daughter. She was devastated to see her protege take a path so drastically different from her own.
But Emma didn’t have the energy or the patience to coddle her big sister. She didn’t have any desire to try to talk her brother around. She was just… done.
“I need to go.”
“Wait,” Toni said quickly. “I’m sorry. I’m just… freaking out, honestly. I’ll get my head on straight before I get there. I promise.”
“Okay.” She let out a breath and tried to relax her shoulders, which were hunched up around her ears. “I’ll talk to you later.”
“Emma?”
“Yeah?”
“I love you.”
A reluctant compassion for her sister overtook Emma’s exhaustion. “I love you too.”
The grass was cool against her arms as she lay back and watched the massive leaves of the breadfruit tree move fitfully in the breeze. High above, the pointed oblong leaves of the blue marble tree jumped and danced. She turned her head to the side and looked at the jaboticaba tree, thinking of the box of California ashes buried beneath.
For the first time in a long while, she let her thoughts turn fully to her husband: the bright intelligence of his dark eyes and the mellow warmth of his voice. More than anything else, even more than the sound of his voice or his laughter, she missed his steadiness. His arms around her, holding her together.
