Page 12 of Talk Story

I wasn’t sure who hugged who first, but we twined together like the perfectly matched six-foot-one people we were. We leaned into each other for a long moment, our foreheads together, as we shared the breath of ‘hā’—an ancient Hawaiian kiss. I shut my eyes. The ocean thumped its timeless heartbeat around us, rough but steady in the evening light. It was so good to be in Keone’s arms.

“How’s your mom doing with all of that?” I asked, pulling away at last. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Tiki had found something of interest near the waterline and was conducting a private investigation with her nose.

“Managing,” he said. “She called her attorney after the meeting broke up, which is the right move. Then she told me she was going home to cook.” He gazed out over the ocean. “She’s making poi and chicken long rice. Which means she’s processing.”

“Good processing or worried processing?” I cocked an eyebrow.

“Both. Mom’s stress cooking,” he said. “Maybe she’ll even add laulau to the menu.” He said it with the specific, affectionate resignation of someone who monitored his mother’s cooking as emotional weather data.

How great that he had a mother to love that way. Remembering the loss of my parents shot a dart of pain through my heart; it still ambushed me. I touched the ring on my right hand to comfort myself. The nacre of the pearl caught the last gray light of sunset gleaming off the moody ocean.

“Come over for dinner?” he asked. “There’s guaranteed to be too much food for the two of us.”

“How much poi and chicken are we talking?” I teased, to give myself a little time to consider; I’d been anticipating a quiet evening with Aunt Fae after the rigors of the day.

“I told Mom you’d come.” He tilted his head, sheepish.

“You assumed I would.” I felt bad about my negative response, but couldn’t seem to help it. A few weeks ago we’d been happily living together in his cottage beside Ilima’s and had eaten with his mom at her house at least weekly. What was wrong with me? “I have to check with Aunt Fae.”

“I hoped you’d want to come,” he said, and the small careful distinction of hoped instead of assumed landed somewhere in my chest—and stayed there. “Mom hoped so too.”

“Okay, fine,” I said. “Dinner. And time with you at your place after, if you’ll have me.”

“Hell yes. I was hoping for that, too.” He took my hand, lifted it to his lips, kissed it. “I’ll make it worth your while.” He waggled his brows.

“Now that I’ll look forward to, Mr. K.”

Tiki appeared from the waterline and fell into step beside us, smelling of fish and appearing satisfied, which was her default state after eating.

Keone rubbed my ring with his thumb as we walked back toward the parking lot; it felt good but was also a reminder that I’d put the brakes on us moving toward a wedding date.

Tough kitty. I wasn’t going to be rushed into anything, no matter how much pressure was on me from him. His mother. The whole freakin’ town.

Hell, only Aunt Fae seemed to want me to stay where I was, in the house with her—and maybe that was why I was still living there.

I stopped at the post office on the way to Ilima’s for dinner to secure the day’s late mail delivery—one of the perpetual rhythms of the job that didn’t pause for petroglyph theft or garden vandalism. Keone had taken his truck and gone before me, so the brand-new parking lot was empty. Pua had locked up, so the building was dark. The mynah birds that usually occupied the coconut palm beside the shack behind the building had already gone to roost. My stomach rumbled in anticipation of Ilima’s stress cooking dinner of tasty Hawaiian food.

The new asphalt was still giving off that hot tar smell even in the cool evening air as I approached the back door, where Chad the delivery guy had dropped the afternoon’s waterproof mail bag into a handy wooden storage bin. I could’ve left it there until tomorrow, but I never liked to do that for security purposes; once a Secret Service agent, always a Secret Service—yadda yadda and all that.

I undid the combination lock of the bin, unlocked the back door, flipped on the lights, and hauled in the bag. I dumped the bag of mail onto the sorting table, so it was ready for tomorrow morning.

An envelope slid out and landed in front of me: my name, printed in block letters: KAT SMITH, POSTMASTER OHIA.

A nasty feeling chased away the hungry rumble that had been in my belly as I snapped on a pair of rubber gloves and worked the flap open carefully. Inside was a single sheet of plain paper, the message on it in the same neat block printing as the envelope:

POSTMASTER KAT:

SOME THINGS IN OHIA ARE OLDER THAN YOUR CURIOSITY.

STAY WITH YOUR MAIL.

THIS IS A FRIENDLY REMINDER.

I read it twice. Then I photographed it, front and back, photographed the envelope, and photographed the mail bag from whence it had come.

“Right.” I slipped note and envelope into a plastic zip bag from my supply drawer and stuck it in my desk beside the petroglyph. I locked the desk, and then I locked my office door. Not that any of that mattered to a determined intruder, but I had to try for my own sense of control. “Friendly reminder, my big toe.”

I shut the building, armed the alarm (which Pua had left off) and called Malia Peahi on the drive to Ilima’s, leaving a voicemail with a description of the note. I called Lei next and left the same message.