Page 7 of Big Island Moonlight
“See?”
“No, I don’t see. Cody, she hates me.”
“She doesn’t hate anyone,” he said firmly.
“Well, I’m obviously not her favorite person.”
“You used to be so close. You would come over and cook, and I would hear you two laughing in the kitchen.”
“And then you knocked me up, and I haven’t heard from her since.”
He was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “You stopped coming over. Before you even told me. You stopped talking to us.”
Juniper picked at her food. Her hunger had deserted her.
“Just come over for dinner,” he pleaded.
“Maybe,” she said, but she knew she wouldn’t. She would say that she was too tired after working the market all day. And that would be the truth.
She hauled herself to her feet.
“I should get back and relieve ‘Olena.”
“Yeah, okay,” he said.
Juniper trudged back across the grass, feeling the extra weight she carried more than ever. She might have cobbled together ‘ohana there on the island, but her baby’s actual family was fractured and broken. One grandma was already gone, and the other… well, Juniper didn’t have the energy to try and shift that boulder. She had enough to carry.
3
Lani
“Mommy, look!” Rory held up her drawing, and Lani gave it a cursory glance. It was a riot of color, cartoonish flowers with butterflies and bees floating above them.
What really held her attention was her daughter’s face, beaming with joy. She was giving Rory the exact childhood that she had dreamed of, a level of joy and security that had felt impossible just a couple of years prior. The sheer relief of that brought tears to her eyes.
“It’s beautiful,” she said, her voice thick with emotion.
Satisfied, Rory grabbed a fresh piece of paper and started another drawing.
Olivia’s blond head was down, her full focus on the ocean scene that she was coloring. Music floated out from the kitchen, where Tenn was cooking dinner.
It was a quiet Sunday afternoon, a respite from soccer practice and birthday parties, and Lani’s heart was full. This lifewas everything that she had ever wanted for her daughter, and she was deeply grateful for that.
At the same time, there was a niggling restlessness in her chest. Not discontentment, exactly, because she loved her life. But still, she wanted more for herself. Opportunities for murals had dried up, and she didn’t want to work at Kekoa’s shave ice place forever.
She had started designing coloring books over a year ago, a group of projects that ranged from cartoonish sea creatures for littles to more intricate designs that she’d hoped to market as zen coloring books for older kids and adults. Tenn had even given her a special tablet for sketching and designing, but the projects kept getting pushed to the back burner as other things demanded her immediate attention.
On New Year’s Eve, she’d resolved to take her creative work more seriously. The commercial side of publishing and marketing coloring books was daunting, but she’d laid out a plan to study and tackle every side of the business.
Of course, the first order of business was to actually finish the books.
She had finished her first book of Hawai‘i-themed coloring pages for little kids, and she was researching various printers. Hopefully, some local stores would be interested in selling the Big Island coloring books.
What she really wanted to finish was her collection of more complex designs. Each one was a visual scavenger hunt with dozens of small treasures hidden within the larger design.
That day, she was working on an intricately detailed parrotfish, zooming in to draw other fish and flowers and sea stars hidden in its scales and in the coral that branched out below. The world around her faded away as she drew tiny crabs crawling between the lines on the tail fin.
“Dinner’s ready,” Tenn called from the doorway.
