Return to Me

  As I hustled to keep up with Grandpa, my gaze landed on a metal sculpture of an open hand, its palm a basin of water that cupped a pink water lily. Again, I thought of Jackson and how much he would love this place. I cleared my throat, trying to rid myself of my pining for a boy I could not allow myself to want. “Did you build your house yourself? Houses, I mean?”

  “I had some help.” He glanced back at me as if expecting me to grasp his meaning.

  To our left, a hut with a whimsical roofline seemed vaguely familiar. But where had I seen it? Again, Grandpa’s expectant look. I asked, “Are those solar panels?”

  He frowned slightly, as though his star student had made a careless error. “Yeah, that’s how I heat the water.”

  “And the cisterns?” Quickening my pace, I closed the gap between Grandpa and me so I didn’t miss a single word. “Do you collect rainwater?”

  “Most of us do up here.”

  “You’re so… green. I had no idea.”

  Over his shoulder, Grandpa said, “I can show you the plans later.”

  “Cool!”

  “But I’m just a builder.” As proof, he held up his callused hands, scarred tools of his many trades. Then he looked at me proudly. “And you are going to be an architect.”

  “There’s no ‘just’ to what you’ve created, Grandpa.” Again, I was struck by his soulful vision for this property, the hours he’d spent crafting it. This work was no less important, no less impactful than Dad’s in the office, shepherding a game to market. Who better than Grandpa to ask about my future now that I was questioning my college decision?

  As Grandpa lifted another branch out of my way, I told him, “I’m not sure about going to Columbia.”

  “What do you mean?” He turned his attention fully upon me, letting the branch fall safely behind me.

  “I’m thinking about taking a year off.”

  “Why?”

  “Mom needs me. And I might have to pay for college myself….”

  Only then did Grandpa look concerned. His forehead furrowed. “Your parents have it covered… right?”

  “The first year, but we don’t have as much money as we thought….”

  Grandpa looked grim, his lips parting as though he wanted to probe further but thought better of it. He started down the path, this time slower. “How do you feel about a year off?”

  “Confused!” A large rock nearly tripped me. “But in a weird way, I’ve been feeling like I’ve got to figure out whether I really want to go to Columbia. It’s superexpensive.” After I told him about my interview with Sam Stone, that mortification seared in my memory, I voiced my anxiety: “I’m not sure I’m meant to be an architect at all. You should have heard him talk about my ‘little’ ideas.”

  “Maybe you weren’t meant to be his kind of architect. I wouldn’t deviate from your dream just because of one naysayer. Life is littered with naysayers who are either insecure or pompous fools. In either case, it’s best to ignore them.” Grandpa’s eyes bored into mine, and he asked, “Are you planning on going to college?”

  “Yeah! Just not next year.”

  “Then it sounds like you could have an exciting year off.”

  I was so shocked that anyone—even Grandpa George—might support this radical idea, my voice boomed: “Really?”

  Grandpa George was dead serious. “Really.”

  “What should I do next year, then?”

  Grandpa stepped across a puddle. “There are hundreds of things you can do during your gap year.”

  “Gap year?”

  “A year off for students. What you’ll be doing.” A pair of massive boulders anchored the pocket grotto of ferns ahead of us. Grandpa climbed atop one of the guardian stones, scaling it easily. Sitting astride the boulder, he gestured me to clamber onto its mate. “The tradition started way back in the sixties when kids began taking a year off to travel or volunteer. In any case, I’m all for it.”

  “A gap year,” I repeated. It took me a bit longer than Grandpa to find my footing on the rock. Graceless as I was, I managed to haul myself up on my own. Traitorous mind, I could easily picture Jackson scampering up with a wicked smile. I refocused on Grandpa across from me.

  “A year to explore. You never know what you’ll discover about yourself or the world in a year.” Grandpa tilted his head back as if he wanted to inhale the world itself. “You might decide you want to make furniture for a year. Or create paint colors. Or plant trees in a dying forest to learn about wood. No experience is wasted, Reb.” He shrugged. “At least that’s what I’ve found.”

  Another measure of burden released from me at Grandpa’s permission to deviate from the path I’d been groomed to take. I slid off my boulder before Grandpa did, suddenly needing to be on the ground as a monumental thought occurred to me: I was secretly happy I didn’t have to work with Sam Stone for the rest of the summer—not because I was scared of him but because I felt trapped every time I thought about designing his signature buildings: cold, gargantuan, imposing. That was his vision, not mine. The vision I’d prefer to follow and study was Peter’s: small, soulful, sustainable.

  “You know,” I said thoughtfully, looking up at Grandpa perched on his boulder throne, “this place looks like what our architect, Peter—”

  “Nakamura.”

  Grandpa unscrewed his water bottle and offered it to me, but I was so stunned that he knew Peter, I could only stare up at him. He laughed. I asked, “How do you know him?”

  “He consulted on this project.” Grandpa grinned at my surprise. He leaped down easily but winced, shaking out his legs. “Your grandmother always said there are no coincidences, that everything in life is connected. Stesha’s the one who introduced him to your mom.”

  “She did? How does Grandma Stesha know him?”

  As if that was a question for the oracles, Grandpa threw back his head and chortled. “How does Stesha know everyone? She collects friends the way other people collect salt and pepper shakers.”

  “That is so Mom, too!”

  He recapped the water bottle and stretched from side to side before heading back on the trail. “Peter and his nephew went on one of your grandmother’s tours.”

  I followed Grandpa closely. “He never said anything about this place.”

  “I asked him not to.”

  “Why?”

  Grandpa shrugged. Another secret. The path led us to a large building made up of a single room, bare of everything except the bamboo floors. The far wall was painted a soothing orange.

  “A yoga room?” I peered through one of the windows. “Do you practice yoga now?”

  “More like for twenty years.”

  “I had no idea!” And there it was again, the troubling notion that I barely knew the people I loved. That I had so little insight into their lives beyond the intersection with mine.

  “People are surprising,” Grandpa said, leaning against the wall.

  “Doesn’t it scare you?” I asked. “Not knowing people the way you thought you did.”

  “As long as you know a person’s heart, you know them. Everything else is exploration. And trust me, you want someone who’ll take a lifetime to explore. Life is long, sweetheart. The last thing you want is to be bored.” Grandpa walked us over to another garden alcove, trimmed with smooth stones. He motioned to the path ahead. “Why don’t you take the lead?”

  “I don’t know the way,” I told Grandpa, flustered.

  “Just choose a direction.” He shrugged as though he had all the time in the world for me to figure things out. “We’re in no hurry.”

  So I stepped in front of Grandpa, and together we wandered home.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  As soon as we approached the main house, Grandpa oh-so-casually suggested that we take another circuit around the property so he could point out a few other sustainable features that might interest me. He didn’t fool me. I knew he wanted to check in on Mom, no different from the way Jackson was checking in on me with
his most recent text: Call yourself a tea drinker all you want, but I know you’re sneaking in a cup of Kona….

  “Good news?” Grandpa said over his shoulder when he noticed that I had fallen behind.

  I grinned. “Great news. How’s your coffee?”

  “Out of this world.”

  “Really?” In my head, I automatically composed a response to Jackson, even though I didn’t send it: Reliable source says Kona is awesome. Stay tuned. Through the screen door, I spotted Mom tucked in the window seat with her computer. We hadn’t made a sound, but Mom must have sensed our presence, because she looked up immediately and motioned us inside.

  Grandpa pounced on the breakfast basket I hadn’t seen at our feet, untouched on the welcome mat.

  “You haven’t eaten,” he said, cradling the basket.

  “I forgot,” Mom admitted.

  “Well, come on, then,” he crowed almost gleefully. “I’ll fix you something.”

  At that, instead of touring me around, he ushered us straight to his house, where he pulled an aromatic soup from the refrigerator.

  “Dad, since when do you cook?” Mom asked when Grandpa waved us to the rattan stools at the kitchen island. After pouring the soup into a pot, he filled heavy glasses with iced tea. I could smell the sweet hibiscus as the tea splashed over ice.

  “Don’t believe the cynics who say people can’t change,” Grandpa said, and placed a tiny canister of raw cane sugar before us. He swiveled back to the cooktop to stir the soup. “And don’t believe breakfast purists for a second. Soup is the perfect morning food, a little protein, not too heavy. I hope you girls are hungry.”

  “Better dig in, Mom, before Reid wakes up. You know he’ll eat everything,” I said.

  Even more astonishing than Mom finishing the bowl of soup was her admission of truth: “Dad, Thom’s wiped out our savings.” A few weeks ago, that confession would have been a state secret if I were anywhere in earshot, but the boundaries of our relationship had blurred, no different from the weeks before graduation when teachers started talking to us as college students. Mom might not see me as an equal, an adult, exactly, but I was no longer a child who needed to be sheltered, either. I liked that.

  Grandpa stopped chopping a spiny pineapple to give Mom his full attention. “What about your Synergy stock options?”

  “We sold the last of them for the remodel, and the earlier options to diversify our portfolio. It takes a couple of bad investments before everything’s gone.”

  “Bastard.”

  “Dad!”

  Grandpa set the knife on the bamboo cutting board and propped his hands on the counter. “How much do you need?”

  “Dad, I don’t want your money.” Mom’s words were so emphatic, her rejection so visceral, I could feel Grandpa’s hurt.

  “All I’m saying is I’m here to back you up. You don’t have to worry, sweetheart.” His gaze stayed on her, his blue eyes unwavering. “You’re not alone. You never have been.”

  The conviction behind those words was so definitive, so healing, tears welled up in my eyes. Mom’s, too. She sniffled and pressed a napkin to the corner of her eye. “Dad, he’s going to her parents’ anniversary party. While we’re still married. I don’t think he’s coming back.”

  I lifted my hand toward Mom’s arm to comfort her, but she shook her head slightly, an almost imperceptible movement. I had become so used to observing her closely these last couple of days—overseeing the few bites she managed, watching her reaction whenever Dad called—I caught her unconscious signal. So as Grandpa scooped fresh fruit on top of yogurt, I walked around the kitchen island to give Mom a modicum of privacy.

  “This one’s for your mother,” Grandpa told me, adding an extra dollop of Greek yogurt to her bowl.

  “Thanks, Dad,” she said, “but you can’t support me for the rest of my life.”

  “I’m just your bridge.”

  “I know.” Mom smiled ruefully. “You always have been.” Then, as if she felt the full weight of what she had acknowledged so easily, her eyes widened. “Dad, you’ve always been there. You.”

  Mom rarely spoke about her past. The most I ever heard were veiled allusions to the privations of living with a tarot-reader-turned-teacher of a mother and a pursuit-of-the-moment father. In fact, once at book club, Ginny’s mom had pointed out, “Betsy, you never talk about growing up.”

  Mom demurred: “Trust me, nothing much happened. We didn’t have the money.”

  “But what was your dad like? Is he anything like Thom?”

  “Like Thom? No.” Her laugh was uncharacteristically harsh, accompanied by a swift shake of her head. Not a hair moved, trapped stiff with hair spray. “Thom’s rock solid, Mr. Dependable. It’s why I married him.”

  Now, at Mom’s visible appreciation, Grandpa’s cheeks flushed. Self-consciously, he turned to check the soup, but not before I caught his touched expression.

  “What’s scaring me is that I’m forty, and I have to start all over,” Mom said, spearing a wedge of pineapple with her fork. “I seriously thought I had hit the lucky jackpot with Synergy, made my killing, and was done working. I know. Spoiled. How many people win the lottery like this? But… it’s all gone.”

  “That asshole.”

  “Dad, that’s not productive.”

  Grandpa grunted.

  I skewered a chunk of mango from the cutting board and waggled it in the air with my fork as I said, “But it feels good to say it.”

  We all laughed because it was true. My thoughts echoed Grandpa’s: Dad really was acting like a jerk. Grandpa finished heaping the remaining bowls with the fresh pineapple and mangoes, and I placed one next to Mom for Reid, ready for whenever he woke from his Rip Van Winkle sleep.

  “I need a job, and I haven’t worked in eleven years. Eleven,” Mom said, picking up and then setting down her spoon without tasting a drop of the yogurt. “Remember, I left my job when Reb was seven. Thom stayed at work, I stayed at home. That was our deal. Now he’s a titan, and I’m a relic.”

  “You’ve got plenty of options,” Grandpa said, and he winked at me.

  “Options? I’m a stay-at-home mom. I’m good at chaperoning dances and driving carpool.” She laughed wryly at this paltry inventory of skills.

  “Come on, Mom, just think about it this way: You’re taking a gap year with me,” I said, and pulled out the stool beside hers. “You get to figure out what life after being a stay-at-home mom looks like.”

  Strategic mistake. Mom frowned ominously. “Gap year? What are you talking about?”

  “We don’t have money for college.”

  “Your freshman year is paid for.”

  “But what about the next three?”

  “Your dad will cover it.”

  I hadn’t intended to share my plans for the upcoming year in quite this way. My eyes dropped to the mango, now drooping precariously from my fork. “Mom, I’m not even sure Columbia is where I want to go. And the last thing I want to do is go there for a year, then transfer somewhere else, where I’d have to start all over.” I looked Mom square in the eye. “I called Financial Aid, and they said divorced or not, savings or not, Dad makes too much money for me to qualify for a penny.”

  “I’m telling you,” Mom said sternly, “you’re not postponing college. Period.”

  Grandpa intervened before our argument could escalate. “Let’s first figure out the money situation. Then we can tackle college.”

  “Fine, like there’s anything I can do.” Mom threw her hands in the air, frustrated. “I don’t think anyone’s recruiting for housewives. The last time I worked, cell phones were bigger than bricks!”

  Grandpa wiped a few droplets of soup from the counter with a dishrag before answering. “Well, take a look at me. I didn’t settle on a career. Now I’m about to run this inn, and I realized that this is what I’m meant to do—and everything I’ve ever done has led to this. Who would have pictured me doing this? Not me. So, sweetheart, reinventing yourself is
actually a rush.”

  “Inn?” Mom and I asked at the same time. I continued, “What do you mean?”

  Shyly, Grandpa nodded. “Ohia is opening in a few weeks. You’re my first official guests. I can house six total. What do you think?”

  “This is awesome!” I said, glancing at Mom, since she was silent. Eyes dark with despair, she pushed away from the kitchen island. “Mom, what’s wrong?”

  “Dad, this is great, really great,” she said, scooting off her stool unsteadily. “You may be fine reinventing yourself every two years, but all I want is my old job back. I want to be a wife and a mother.”

  “You’re still a mother,” he pointed out.

  “I need to lie down.”

  I tried to hold her back. “Mom—”

  “We can talk later,” she said softly as she hurried to the door.

  I was about to follow, but Grandpa laid his hand gently on my arm. Mom receded down the path, a lonely figure, before disappearing into the thicket of rain forest.

  “She needs to process. This is a shock; it’s all a shock. I pushed her too hard.” He cupped Mom’s empty bowl between his palms as though it were a child’s rounded cheeks, but I wasn’t sure whose concern he was allaying—his, mine, or Mom’s. “But don’t worry. We’ll figure this out.”

  By then I had lost my appetite, too, and stirred my soup idly. “Dad told her he was giving her half of what he made into perpetuity. That’s what he promised. So why is she so worried?”

  Grandpa didn’t answer. Instead, he busied himself with refrigerating Mom’s unfinished fruit bowl.

  To fill that damning silence, I said loudly, “Dad wouldn’t leave us without anything. Not us. You heard Mom. He’ll pay for my college.” Despite my insistence, despite my own doubts otherwise that had spurred me to call Financial Aid, I begged for him to agree: “Right?”

  But Grandpa was a man who did not apologize for his life choices—not to Dad, who questioned his long list of short-lived jobs; not to Mom, who worried about his retirement. Above all, Grandpa was a man who did not lie, opting to say nothing rather than say something he did not believe. And he was pointedly silent while my phone rang. It was Dad. Now was my chance to talk to Dad, ask him point-blank, prove Grandpa wrong.