Page 40 of Talk Story

Keone’s cottage sat on a little knoll above Hana Bay, tucked in the shade of Ilima’s bigger plantation house. From the bed a wedge of water was visible through the window, pale silver and glossy as a mirror in the early light. A gecko chirped somewhere in the rafters. On the nearby screened lanai, Ilima’s orchids made little silhouettes against the brightening sky.

I’d lived here once, briefly, in the in-between time after Keone’s proposal and before Aunt Fae broke her foot. Lying here now, with the pillow still holding the shape of Keone’s head beside mine and his old Hawaiian quilt pulled up to my chin, I let myself imagine it again.

Not as a temporary thing, somewhere I was crashing while my life sorted itself out, but as mine.

Ours.

Coffee on the deck every morning. The plumeria tree dropping its blossoms on the grass throughout the day, the Bay going from this pale silver to deep windblown cobalt by noon to a soft, bruised purple at dusk.

The ring’s pearl caught the light. I gazed at it for a while. I thought about moving it to my left hand—further than I usually let myself go.

“You’re awake.” Keone appeared in the bedroom doorway, filling it the way he filled most spaces, a dishtowel over one bare shoulder and two mugs in his hands. “I heard your brain start up. It’s loud.”

“It is not.” I snorted. “Gimme that Elixir of Life.”

“Your brain’s like a little outboard motor. Putt-putt-putt.” He handed me a mug and sat on the edge of the bed; the mattress dipped under his weight, and something in my chest went warm and uncomplicated. “G’morning, Trouble.”

“Morning.” I wrapped both hands around the mug, a joke monstrosity that read, PILOTS DO IT GEAR DOWN. “What’s that smell? Besides the coffee.”

“Portuguese sausage, eggs, and the last of the sweet bread before it goes stale. Figured we earned a real breakfast.” He tipped his head toward the lanai. “Come eat with me outside. It’s too nice a morning to waste.”

We took our plates out to the little deck off the front of the cottage, where two mismatched chairs sat angled toward the water, and ate with the bay spread out below us and the morning coming up gold over the eastern point. The sausage was crisped, the eggs were soft, and the sweet bread, toasted, was exactly as good as the last of a loaf ever is—better, even, for being nearly gone. Down the hill, a rooster was working through his material. Somewhere in Ilima’s garden a sprinkler ticked on.

“I’ve been thinking,” Keone said, around a forkful of eggs.

“Always dangerous,” I said, around a mouthful of sweet bread.

“I think we take today for ourselves. The whole thing. No case, no phone, no driving to Kahului, no Changs, no petroglyphs, no other people’s drama.” He gestured at the bay with his fork, taking in the shining morning. “We’ve been going flat out for a week. Yesterday you pointed a gun at a woman before lunch and watched a guy get arrested on a body cam after. We earned a day. Let’s just—be together. Swim. Nap. Eat. Be boring.”

“Boring together,” I said. “Hmm. You really know how to sell a girl on domestic life.”

“It’s underrated.” He reached over and took my hand, the one with the ring, and turned it over in his big warm one. “I like being boring with you. Best kind of boring there is.”

“Speaking of boring. I miss the cat,” I said. “Is that pathetic? It’s been one night away from Tiki.”

Keone grinned. “No, I miss her too. The deck’s not the same without twenty pounds of tortoiseshell judgment supervising us.”

We’d left Tiki with Aunt Fae overnight because I didn’t want to leave her in the car during our date, and because Ilima’s cat Mango and Tiki maintained an armed truce that required active human management.

Auntie had accepted the loan of the cat with the studied indifference of a woman who was secretly delighted, and Tiki had accepted time with Fae and her grown kitten Misty with the aplomb of a feline who knew which human kept the good treats. The two cats had probably slept like a pair of contented dragons on a hoard of Liver Bits in Auntie’s bed.

“Let’s get her this afternoon,” I said. “She’ll punish us for a few hours and pretend she didn’t miss us at all.”

“As is her right. So. Today. . .” Keone leaned back, stretching his legs out, his face turned up to the sun. He was something to behold; I pinched myself that he was mine. “You in? Swim, nap, the whole nothing day?”

“I’m in,” I said.

And then my phone rang on the deck rail where I’d left it. It buzzed and lit and chimed with a prioritized number. Keone and I both glanced over, then glanced at each other; Mr. K let out a long breath through his nose that was almost a laugh.

“You jinxed it,” I told him. “You said ‘no phone’ out loud. You woke it up.”

“Don’t answer it.”

But I’d already spotted the name on the screen. “It’s Lei,” I said, and that was that, because you don’t let a call from Lei Texeira go to voicemail.

Keone knew it too; resignation was already settling over his face as I thumbed the phone on and put it on speaker so he could hear.

“Tell me you slept last night,” I said by way of hello.