“Why don’t you like birthday pictures?” she asked.
“Oh, um, I don’t know. I guess they’re just boring,” I said, opting for a generic answer instead of revisiting the painful truth—I didn’t have any birthday pictures of me after my mother died.
“Hannah!” Ashley snapped as she briskly walked toward us. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”
“She’s been sitting here with me since she got in the pool,” I told her with a sickeningly sweet smile.
“It’s time to open presents. Everyone is waiting for you,” she hissed.
I turned and looked at the group of children still wildly splashing in the center of the pool. “Well, if it’s time to open presents, it’s time to open presents,” I said loudly and clapped my hands to get everyone’s attention.
Ashley briefly narrowed her eyes in anger before she forced a smile and turned to face the crowd.
“Why does she get to open presents twice?” a girl asked petulantly.
“Pictures,” Ashley said. “It’s time for Hannah’s pictures. Please, continue enjoying the pool. My apologies for the confusion.”
At the time, I didn’t know what came over me. Without an ounce of consideration, I reached over and scooped Hannah into my lap. “We’re ready,” I said cheerfully. “Where’s the camera?”
Ashley tried to mask her genuine reactions behind a broad smile, but I saw them—the irritation, the anger, the hate. “Just a minute,” she gritted out and stomped away.
“You made Mommy mad,” Hannah whispered.
“Yeah,” I admitted. “But she’s mad at me, not you.”
“She’s always mad at me.”
“Why?”
Hannah shook her head and visibly shrunk in my lap.
“Does she yell at you?” What in the hell was I thinking?
Hannah nodded.
“What does she yell about?”
“Pictures. And Uncle Matthew.”
Before I could ask her anything else, Ashley returned with a man holding a basic point-and-shoot camera.
“You must be the photographer,” I said. “Where would you like us?”
The man turned to Ashley as his forehead wrinkled with confusion. “Photographer? What the fuck are you telling people?”
Ashley’s face heated with embarrassment. “This is my brother, Matthew. He’s not a professional, but he’s good with a camera, so he’s acting as our event photographer.”
“Ah,” I said, as if I understood. I did, but not in the way she thought. She wanted me to think he was doing her a favor. He might’ve been, but she was also full of shit. I didn’t believe for one second that a woman who could afford to live in a mansion in Hilo and hire mermaids for her daughter’s pool party wouldask her brother to photograph the party with a fifty-dollar digital camera.
“Are we good right here? Or do you want us to move?”
Ashley elbowed her brother. “Oh, uh, you’re good right there. Perfect lighting.”
He was full of shit too. The lighting was awful for portraits. I wasn’t a photographer, but I’d seen enough photos in my life to know overcast skies and cloudy backgrounds weren’t the top choices. But I kept my mouth shut and went along with whatever charade they were up to. Because I wanted to know more about Uncle Matthew. If he was anything like my Uncle Chet, he was going to be a dead man.
TWO
KALANI
