Page 5 of Big Island Moonlight
“With him and Fern?” Cody glanced at her and then looked back at the road. He was the most careful driver she knew.
“Yeah. Fern’s completely moved upstairs now, and they’ve been renting the downstairs unit out… but they want me to move in. At least, my dad does.”
“Fern doesn’t?”
“She said that she does… but I’m sure she’d rather have a traveling nurse downstairs covering their rent. Not some teenage mom mooching off of her.”
Cody gave her a stern sideways glance. “You’re too hard on yourself.”
“Maybe.” Jun shrugged.
“What doyouwant to do?”
I want to live with you.
She sighed, looking out the window. For all of his work ethic and ambition, Cody was still just a teenage kid living with his mom.
He was actually in one of the cabins on Summers Ranch. But a rough, unpermitted studio down the hill from Tara didn’t sound like a step up to Juniper… and Cody hadn’t asked.
Her room was barely big enough for her, never mind her towering boyfriend. The guest room downstairs wasn’t much better, and she worried that living down there would feel more like squatting in the middle of someone else’s life than living on the third floor did.
At least in her tower room, with its wide green view of the orchard and the forest beyond, she was able to get some distance from all the problems and worries that gnawed at her whenshe was down at ground level. But it wasn’t exactly suited for a family home.
“I want a place of my own,” she said quietly, “but rental prices are insane. It’s even worse than Redwood Grove. They charge two grand for studios up there too, but at least they’re not full of black mold and roaches.”
“We’ll find something,” Cody said. But, bless him, the man couldn’t lie to save his life. There was no conviction in his voice. He knew exactly how hard it was to survive on the Big Island, never mind raising a family.
There were moments when Juniper lost her faith in him, lost all faith inherself. Raising another human being felt like an impossibly daunting task. At the same time, it had never really felt like a choice. It just… was. And so she would figure it out. Somehow.
When they pulled up to the wide green field that held the Hamakua Harvest farmers market, Cody refused to let her do any of the work. Just a couple months before, she refused to be treated like an invalid. Now… well, hauling her boat-sized belly around was enough without trying to carry tables and the massive glass containers of tea too.
Cody was an old hat at this, anyway. He popped the tent up without help, arranged the tables and tablecloths, and hung up theLocal Organic Teasign that Juniper had painted with the twins when they still lived next door. Then he arranged the drinks in perfect rainbow order: ruby-red hibiscus, orange lilikoi, yellow lemon-balm lemonade, golden mamaki, a jade-green herbal blend, sapphire-blue butterfly pea, and a royal purple blend that Juniper was especially proud of. While he hauled those out of the truck, she busied herself with setting up a display of dried herbs that she had packaged for tea. Tisanes, technically, but she got enough looks of blank incomprehension using that word that she had stopped trying.
The wind was whipping past off of the ocean, but the sun was already high and bright. It would be a good day for sales, Juniper predicted.
She was right. Before long, there was a steady flow of market-goers handing over their refillable bottles and buying packets of mamaki chai for cold winter mornings up the mountain.
“You should sit down,” Cody said, gesturing to the oversized camping chair he had set up behind their stand. “I can man the tent for a while.”
“No way,” she said with a grin. “I sell twice as much as you do.”
“I can’t argue with facts.” He put a hand between her shoulder blades, working on the stubborn knots that had settled there. It made her want to lean into him and purr like a cat, but she had work to do.
“Good morning!” She stepped up to greet the family who had paused in front of her display. “Care for a sample?”
Cody squeezed her arm in passing and went to load up on boxes of veg for Island Grown Meals. Tara had upgraded from her old kitchen to a commercial space in Hilo that she shared with other market businesses. She had two women working for her now, and she only had to cook two days a week. Cody still did all of the deliveries, and he managed a fair bit of the sourcing as well.
Something like pride swelled in Juniper’s chest as she watched him talk story with local vendors and carry boxes of food back to the van.
He was seventeen, but he didn’t look it. Between his height and the well-earned muscles in his arms, he could easily pass for mid-twenties. It seemed like everyone on the island knew him, and they treated him with respect.
As she watched him out in the world, Juniper’s faith and confidence began to regenerate. Yes, it was hard to find decenthousing in Hawai‘i, but Cody had lived there all his life. Sooner or later, a door would open for them.
She winced as their son woke up and stretched, already pushing the boundaries of his enclosure. The kid must get his height from his dad; she wasn’t sure how she was supposed to get through another six weeks of this.
“Jun!” A powerful voice pulled her attention back to the space in front of her stand. ‘Olena stood grinning at her, and Juniper grinned back.
“Auntie ‘Olena! Hi!”
