Page 13 of Talk Story

Stay with your mail.

I thought about that as I drove the dark, familiar, winding road with its overhanging trees, reaching ferns, leaning bluffs and tiny bridges.

The note was meant to frighten me. It was also, in its way, an admission. You only warn people who are getting close to something. The note meant we were getting somewhere, and that there was somewhere to get.

Whatever that meant; I was too tired and hungry to unsnarl the whole thing right now.

I left Keone’s at 10 pm. I’ll be honest—it was hard to say goodbye, after a delicious dinner and conversation with Ilima, then sweet hot sexytimes with my fiancé. A girl can only take so much loving, though, and I’d told Aunt Fae I’d be back; I didn’t want to disappoint her. She’d probably be waiting up for me.

The drive back to New Ohia State Park was thirty minutes of winding coast road in the dark, the headlights carving a path through the trees, Tiki asleep in her carrier on the back seat with the deep unconsciousness of a cat who has had a satisfying day.

The light in the living room glowed warm through the curtains, and of course Aunt Fae was still up; since my parents died in that long-ago car accident at night, she didn’t sleep well until I was home. When I came through the door carrying Tiki, she glanced up from her crime mystery paperback with the careful expression of someone who had been listening for the door but wasn’t going to admit it.

“Long day?” she asked.

“Petroglyph theft, garden destruction, a developer with a suspicious family tree, and someone sent a threatening note to me,” I said. “Average day for life in Ohia.”

“I heard most of that but not that final bit.” She marked her page. “Come sit. I’ll make tea.”

“You stay off that foot.” I put Tiki down and indicated Auntie’s booted appendage, which was propped on a stool as I moved toward the kitchen. “I’ll make the tea.”

Aunt Fae let me, which meant she was more tired than she’d admit.

The kitchen was exactly as I’d left it that long-ago morning—dishtowels folded and hanging neatly on the rack, Kona coffee in its airtight canister, a small collection of Aunt Fae’s dog-eared cookbooks propped on the sideboard alongside a collection of Hawaiian food recipes that Opal had given her.

The kitchen had been the impersonal showpiece of a model house when we moved in, but now was the heart of our home. Was I ready to leave this place, and the woman who’d been my second mom since I was a girl? Even for Keone and his cozy cottage, I wasn’t sure.

I made chamomile tea and brought two steaming mugs to the living room. I sat in the armchair across from Aunt Fae. Tiki emerged from crunching kibble in the kitchen and arranged herself in her comfy basket beside her snoozing daughter, a gray-and-white tabby we’d named Misty.

We sat in comfortable silence, the frogs outside harrumphing and trade winds whispering through the potted palms on the lanai. This was one of the things I’d found here: the ease of this particular silence. I’d lived alone for a long time before Ohia—by design, mostly—and the ease of this was different from aloneness.

This was the ease of being with someone who knew you well enough that your silence didn’t need to be filled or explained.

“Keone ask about the ring?” Aunt Fae asked. “When you’re going to move it to the proper finger?”

I was wriggling the ring with my thumb again and she’d noticed. “He didn’t ask. He never asks. That’s the problem.”

Aunt Fae gazed at me over her reading glasses with the expression she’d been deploying since I was nine years old—a face that meant she was waiting for me to hear what I’d just said. It was a remarkably efficient expression.

“Right,” I said. “I know. That’s not actually the problem.” I took the ring off and set it on the coffee table. “Maybe I need a break from this entirely.” But that didn’t feel good at all; my finger felt naked and sad. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me, Auntie.”

“You’ll work it out,” she said. “You always do.” She took a sip of tea. “Now tell me about the threatening note. That sounds more interesting than your love life.”

I chuckled despite myself and told her.

5

Pua was waiting for me when I arrived at the post office the next morning, which was unusual. Normally she swept in at eight fifty-nine, heels clicking, designer bag swinging; she didn’t need to be early because she was already perfectly organized and punctual.

But today, she was behind the counter at eight forty-five, folding and refolding a piece of paper she clearly wasn’t reading. Her tilted brown eyes had tired circles under them.

“You heard,” I said, hanging up my windbreaker and backpack on the hook. “About your cousin, Victor Chang.”

“Ilima’s aide called me last night.” Pua set the paper down and met my eyes. Her pink lipstick was perfect, as always, but her expression was unreadable; she was being precise about how much to show. “About the corporate filings, specifically.”

I came behind the counter and settled against the edge of the sorting table, giving her room. The post office was quiet; the fluorescent light over the P.O. box wall buzzing at its one constant frequency, the smell of paper, ink, and adhesives a particular institutional blend that I’d come to find oddly comforting. Outside, a pair of mynah birds were squawking a disagreement in the parking lot with the passionate conviction mynah birds brought to all conflicts. “What’s up with your cousin, Pua?”

“Cousin.” Pua said the word the way you’d describe a weather event—factual, with the specific tiredness of someone who has spent a long time distancing from something damaging and has not quite managed to get all the way clear of it. “Uncle Raymond’s son. Younger than me by four years. We grew up on the Big Island together, on the Kona side.” She smoothed the paper flat with one hand, then smoothed it again. “Uncle Raymond stayed connected to the family business. But Victor was different. He wanted to build his own things. There was a disagreement between him and his dad about ten years ago. He left the family. We don’t discuss him.”