“We lost each other.”
“Angelheart, you didn’t think I cared, but I was listening. I always listened to you. I wasn’t man enough for you back when we were kids.”
Rain clouds must have clustered while I was journaling, because they released a soft mist. Grandma’s face angled skyward, as though she were washing away the cobwebbed remains of their troubled past. Birdsong erupted at that moment, much louder than the raucous score this morning.
This wasn’t a regular plot of land Grandpa George had developed to be his second home. And it was a heck of a lot more than an inn whose bookings would fill his retirement coffers, more than a retreat for writers and artists, more than a sanctuary for a wounded family.
Arms hugged around myself, I looked upon the beautiful, improbable truth, lifting my eyes from the rooflines of the fairy houses to the matching roofline of Grandpa’s creation. No wonder Ohia had felt so familiar. Its inspiration came from our original fairy village. But this was conceived and designed and built with love—only love—for one woman: Grandma Stesha. I wanted to hold her hands in mine. I wanted to stare into her beautiful violet eyes that had looked upon parts of the world that few ever saw, those eyes that penetrated people’s souls where few ever ventured. Most of all, I wanted to tell her, For a woman who can see far into the future, you can be awfully shortsighted about people. Just look around you, Grandma. Really look.
The moon rose, illuminating the new night, but it was still dark enough to conceal large roots on a path that might trip up an older woman. As if my grandmother had heard my thoughts, she linked her hand safely through my grandfather’s rock-solid and dependable arm as they made their way back home.
After my solo bike ride early the next morning, my heart nearly broke when I found no response to my text to Jackson. Just the silence I had asked for. What did I expect? Still, the space I had requested was harder to handle than I’d imagined it would be. What was Jackson doing? Thinking? Feeling? For the first time since March, I had no idea.
Inside Grandpa’s kitchen, I found Reid already seated, heeding the siren call of those macadamia-banana pancakes. His was the desperate hunger of the shipwrecked and starving. Five short minutes of watching Reid’s plate-to-mouth shoveling would have beat any weight-loss program for effectiveness. Trust me. I wanted to snap a quick close-up picture to document this wholesale piggery for Jackson. But I recalled my resolution to remain incommunicado until I knew for sure what I wanted.
So it was a testament to Grandpa’s amazing culinary skills that not only did Reid completely forgo writing his novel to focus on gorging, but I held up two fingers when Grandpa asked me, “One or two?”
Grandpa attended to the cooktop, crowding the griddle with large pancakes, far more than one famished, growing boy could eat. Far more than I could finish on my own. As though he had expected them, Grandma Stesha and Mom now walked through the front door, laughing at some shared joke, with my grandmother’s gaze lingering on Grandpa George. More than that tender look, I loved the relaxed ease of Mom’s expression, as though Hawaii—or perhaps this sanctuary itself—was healing her. In a gesture I had last seen in my childhood, Mom placed both hands on my shoulders and kissed me on the top of my head. Where before I might have been irritated at being treated like a little kid, now that simple affection filled me.
Without a word, Grandpa George plated their breakfasts, fanning caramelized bananas across their pancakes. The table was already outfitted with warmed syrup and a platter of fresh-cut papaya and pineapple. And there, beside a place setting that must have been Mom’s, was a mug of her favorite green tea, steaming hot.
“You cook?” asked Grandma Stesha, looking at Grandpa with astonishment, as though she had never seen him so clearly before. Maybe she hadn’t.
Grandpa merely shrugged before wiping his hands on the dishcloth. He glanced over at Reid’s plate, with its rapidly disappearing pancakes, and immediately poured more batter onto the hot griddle.
“Yeah, I do,” he said finally, serving himself last, sliding two misshapen pancakes onto his chipped plate.
What I remembered with chagrin was this: how I had gotten up from countless breakfasts, abandoning Mom to clean up after a meal she never ate herself. How I dumped my dirty clothes atop the clean, neatly folded ones in my laundry bin and thought Mom was being shrilly irrational about my not putting away my clothes.
I hadn’t even finished my pancake when Grandpa approached me with another, so large it draped over the ends of the spatula. There we were, reaching across the table to help ourselves to the warm syrup, drinking our mugs of freshly ground Kona coffee and hot tea. All of those fixed for our pleasure, placed for our convenience.
“Here,” I said, beckoning Grandpa close. “Sit down and eat with us.”
Without a word, Mom dragged over a barstool, not caring that it was too high for the table. Just as she was about to take the odd seat for herself, I wriggled onto it, brushing off her protests. Grandma Stesha in the meantime had rearranged the table settings and was now opening the space next to herself. I noticed that. Meanwhile, Reid was fetching Grandpa George a clean fork. In our own ways, none of us saying more than a word or two, we all made room for one another at the table.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Late that night, Grandpa and I fell into what had become our routine of assembling breakfast baskets and delivering them before everybody roused the next morning. On tomorrow’s menu: chocolate–macadamia–graham cracker muffins, apple compote, and homemade granola. We didn’t talk. It was enough to stand beside each other, Grandpa fixing me what had become my favorite beverage—freshly ground, rich Kona coffee with a splash of whole milk and coconut syrup—while I spooned thick batter into muffin pans.
Looking more energetic than she had in two weeks, Mom breezed into Grandpa’s home, holding not her usual clipboard but a new hot-pink journal, embroidered with a vivacious spray of sunrise-orange orchids.
“It’s over,” Mom announced as she set the journal on the counter with a satisfying sound like a single drumbeat that signaled the end of one stanza, the start of another.
I admit: Part of me had been holding out for a miracle, that my parents would get back together. But I didn’t contradict Mom, not when I noticed that she had removed both her wedding and engagement rings, and certainly not when she finally looked at peace.
As I was about to fetch the green tea for her, Mom interrupted me: “You know, I think I’ll try some decaf coffee myself tonight.” So instead I handed her a tiny jug of milk.
“I’m going to find a job,” Mom announced purposefully, and opened her journal, the first page labeled in all caps: IDEAS. I had wondered what she’d been up to for the bulk of the day, and now I knew. She was gathering herself together in her Nookery, concocting her famous to-do list, which I never would have guessed could actually make me smile. But I was beaming now. Mom continued, “A fabulous job. I’ve got a few ideas.”
Grandpa nodded proudly at her before he pulled a bag of decaf coffee beans from the refrigerator. “Of course you do. What’re you thinking?”
“I could go back to PR,” Mom said, and uncapped her pen. “Maybe work at a PR agency, or one of the nonprofits where I’ve been volunteering for the last couple of years.”
Even a tone-deaf person could hear how lackluster Mom sounded as she reviewed the other top contenders for her reentry into the workforce: marketing at Synergy, project manager at a tech company, account manager at an ad agency. It reminded me of how Jackson had challenged me when I bemoaned the internship at Stone Architects—Why would you want to work there? Now I understood. Listening to Mom recite her reasons for why each job made sense, all drily practical without even a suggestion of passion, made me picture a hummingbird caught and caged.
After a moment, Grandpa leaned against the kitchen island and said, “Maybe instead of thinking about what you’ve done and can do, you should begin with what you love to do. And you’ve always loved gardening. Creating
planters, outdoor spaces, herb gardens. You’ve done that since you were a little girl.”
“Yeah, Mom, you were offered a segment on TV for your container gardening,” I said as I opened the oven door and slid the muffin tin inside. “Why don’t you create your salad bowls as a business?”
“I can’t make a living by potting plants,” Mom objected. She flipped to a page scribbled with figures. “The numbers don’t work out.”
“So design gardens,” Grandpa said.
“Then I’d have to get a degree in landscape architecture,” Mom said, even as she circled one of the bullets in her journal. “There’s so much I don’t know. And it’s entirely possible that I’ll need to get a job before I can go back to school.”
“You could work and go to school at the same time,” said Grandpa. “People do that all the time. And I could help you.”
“How? You’ve got this inn to run, and the cost of a master’s degree…” Mom sighed, and her gaze unconsciously slid over to me. I could read the worry in her expression, the trade-off calculations in her mind. How could she pay for her education when we might not be able to afford mine? Mom was going to insist in a thousand different ways that I attend college this fall, employing every bit of persuasion in her arsenal and hocking every one of her possessions to make it happen. But I wasn’t willing to add to Mom’s burden.
“No censoring, Betsy,” said Grandma as she strolled into the house, sweaty in her yoga outfit. For a woman of seventy, my grandmother had an enviable body. She smiled at Grandpa, who grinned back before he filled a glass of ice water for her. “We’re just ideating right now.”
Between Mom’s list of career ideas and her equally long and well-prepared objections, I knew she had brainstormed becoming a landscape architect on her own earlier and rejected it soundly. But why? How many times had I found Mom bent over her horticulture books? How many hours had she spent researching plants for Ginny’s dad and his healing garden? And what about all her doodles of gardens I’d find around the house, wallpapering the kitchen bulletin board and bookmarking her cookbooks?
“I have to do something soon.” Mom’s hands rubbed against her denim skirt.
Perhaps Mom’s infamous lists weren’t created because she was compulsive. Nor were they only methods to cope with disorganization, as Grandpa told me once. But could they be emergency plans to change a vision of the future Mom had foreseen and didn’t like? Perhaps her knee-jerk rejection had nothing to do with the impracticalities of applying to graduate school and everything to do with being fiscally practical to protect us from an impoverished future she saw and didn’t want for us.
“Frank Lloyd Wright never got his architecture degree,” pointed out Grandpa.
Grandma Stesha wiped the sweat off her forehead and chimed in, “And Bill Gates never got his college degree. Didn’t stop them.”
Like the other half of a practiced tag team, Grandpa finished, “They both did what they loved, even if people thought they were crazy. And look at them.”
Instead of considering other successful people with nontraditional beginnings who had pursued their passions, I studied the ones flanking us: first my grandfather, then my grandmother.
“That’s what you both did, isn’t it?” I said now. “I mean, look at this place, Grandpa. This is what you’ve loved doing. Creating places. And taking care of people.”
“Oh, this is nothing. Let’s keep brainstorming,” Grandpa said quietly, but he stirred the still-hot granola on the cookie sheet so vigorously that chubby clusters of oatmeal, honey, and macadamia spilled over the edge.
My eyes widened because for the first time, I saw the likeness between my freewheeling grandfather and my task-oriented mother. “Mom, this is just like you… and your healing garden!”
To my ears, Grandma Stesha’s sudden intake of breath was as loud as a shouted cry: Eureka! But what she murmured softly was this: “Exactly.” Her eyes gleamed as she nodded in encouragement at Mom, then beamed at Grandpa with such warmth, Cupid would have blushed, which is precisely what my grandfather did.
“And, Grandma, you love to take care of people, too,” I said now, wondering how I had missed that critical heartbeat in her work.
Grandma shrugged, then added humbly, “And travel. I love to travel. That’s why my tours are the perfect job for me. You know, when I first started, I thought I’d have enough clients for a trip or two to some Native American medicine men. I never thought that almost twenty-five years later, I’d still be at it and traveling around the world.”
Mom picked up a fallen chunk of granola from the counter, popped it into her mouth, and chewed thoughtfully. While she may not have said anything, I could hear her mulling over what we were suggesting: Live your dream.
Could I dare the same?
“You know,” Grandma said, nudging Grandpa in the shoulder, “I think we need to take a road trip and show them our favorite place on the island. Tomorrow.”
“Where?” I asked.
“It’s a surprise,” said my grandparents in perfect unison, as though no time or history had separated them at all.
Chapter Twenty-Six
The truck bounced uncomfortably along the bumpy one-lane road that wound past endless fields of—what else?—black lava. Unbothered, as though we were driving on smooth tarmac, Grandpa kept explaining the strict laws that had regulated ancient Hawaii. Taboos had dictated every part of life, from eating to worshipping, marriage to childbirth.
“Break one,” Grandpa said, “and the penalty was death.”
“Harsh,” said Reid. I could tell from the glint in his eye that this tidbit had spurred new thinking for his book.
“You’d have to paddle madly to a Place of Refuge, eluding every single pursuer. That’s where we’re going this morning, a Place of Refuge,” Grandpa said, grinning in the rearview mirror.
“So you could be a coward who flees in the middle of the bloodiest battle in history?” asked Reid.
“Forgiven.”
“And all your soldiers are killed because of you?”
“Forgiven.” According to our grandfather, Pu’uhonua o Honaunau, now a national park, had been a Place of Refuge where defeated warriors or hardened thieves could undergo a purification ceremony to absolve them of all their wrongdoings if they paddled safely to its shores.
“Whoa,” said Reid as he slumped against the car door and began writing madly in his leather journal. His fingers were gripped around his pen so tightly, they looked frostbitten white. I leaned over to peek at what he was writing, but he angled the book so I couldn’t read a single word. “Geez, Reid, what’s happening to your poor oracle now?”
His response was a wicked cackle. Not comforting.
Before long we reached the sanctuary’s parking lot. As we strolled toward the visitor center, Grandma caught my hand just as she stumbled on the uneven asphalt. I grabbed her around the waist to stop her fall.
“Grandma, you okay?” I asked anxiously as Grandpa ran to her side, concerned. No wonder Grandpa was anxious. Regardless of how limber Grandma Stesha was for a woman her age, she really was getting older, and she really was slowing down. How was she going to manage her overseas tours two years from now? Five?
At the stone altar laden with fragrant plumeria and smooth stones, Mom and Reid decided to stay with Grandma when she declared, “I’m sitting down here.” Grandpa nodded approvingly.
So it was just my grandfather and I who trekked across the lava rock toward the ocean, as if we were both on a mission for forgiveness.
“Are you sure we’re allowed to do this?” I asked, looking around nervously, since I could almost imagine security guards and ghosts of Hawaiians past hauling us to our immediate death. “I feel like we’re breaking a hundred taboos.”
“Respect this place. That’s the only rule that counts,” Grandpa answered over his shoulder. “So this particular refuge happened to be reachable only by swimming.” He pointed at the bay. “That used to be called the sharks’
den.”
I shivered, imagining these dark waters infested with all kinds of lurking dangers: man-eating sharks, tentacled jellies, and who knew what other beasties that could bite, attack, and drown a girl. Making my way to the water’s edge required my full attention, the black rock was that uneven. I didn’t want another lava scrape as a souvenir of my time here.
Up ahead at the point, whitecapped waves crashed over rocks. The water swirled violently below us, and I grabbed Grandpa’s hand. He was our family’s guardian, who’d brave even the most threatening tsunami waves for any of us. What would compel me to paddle through waves, risk being capsized, flirt a second time with death by drowning?
I knew who I’d risk my life for: my family. My friends. My Jackson.
Boyfriend or friend, I knew I would be Jackson’s personal Place of Refuge whenever he needed. There was comfort in owning that. And even more comfort in acknowledging that Jackson would be the same for me. No matter what happened, he would be at my side, supporting me, even at three in the morning. With a hundred percent certainty, I was confident of that.
If only I could say the same about my father, but my emotions swirling around him were chaotic, a deadly whirlpool.
“I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to forgive Dad,” I said, feeling guilty and disappointed in myself at the same time.
“Forgiveness is a process, and sometimes it’s an entire life’s work. What we can aim for is understanding and peace,” Grandpa said, gazing over my shoulder. I knew who he was studying: Grandma Stesha.
“How can you even get to peace?” I asked. The surf crashed hard, spraying me with droplets of salt water. I wouldn’t have been surprised if the waves had gouged a chunk out of the rock. “Half of the time I’m so mad at Dad for leaving us… and right after moving us, too! And what about college? What about Mom and Reid now? And then, other times, I miss him so much.”
“We’ll figure the college part out, darling. And don’t you worry about your mom and Reid. What’s more important is that you don’t let what your father did eat you forever. I’ve seen what happens when people let themselves marinate in bitterness.”