Page 53 of Talk Story

The living room was very quiet. The kitchen timer ticked on—and then went off with a BRRRRING! that made both of us jump.

“Keone wasn’t referring to you, and you know it,” Auntie went on, gentler. “He meant a woman who flew in to take from this place. You flew in to give to it. There’s the difference. You’re smart enough to see that when you’re not busy licking an old injury like a dog that needs a cone around its neck.”

I snorted a laugh as I sat there on the arm of the couch. I felt the truth of her words, the way her hug worked too, rare and undeniable.

“So.” Aunt Fae moved to the kitchen, brisk now, lecture delivered, the matter settled as far as she was concerned. “Here’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to go take a shower, because frankly, dear, you smell like low tide on mud flats. You’re going to put your face on and wear something nice. And then you are going to drive over to that sweet man’s house and serve him a nice big slice of humble pie—Maine style, generous portion, no skimping. You’ll tell him you’re sorry you bailed.” She settled her reading glasses back on her nose. “And you’re going to do it tonight, while you’ve still got the sense God gave a nene goose. Don’t let a good thing sour over a misunderstanding. Life’s too short and too uncertain. I’ve buried enough people to know.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said, because there was nothing else to say to that.

I went and took the shower.

And under the hot water, with the ground-in mud and the salt sluicing off me and swirling down the drain, with my aunt’s voice ringing in my ears and the bruise on my cheek throbbing in counterpoint, I held up my right hand and gazed at the ring.

Keone’s grandmother’s ring was a vintage pearl in a gold setting that he’d slid onto my finger under the Heritage Garden’s plumeria tree. A ring I’d worn on the wrong hand, telling myself I wasn’t ready, telling myself I needed more time, telling myself a hundred lies that all came down to the same big one Aunt Fae had named: belonging to people is dangerous because they could leave.

I thought about Victor Chang in the pit, and how fast and far a person could fall.

Dr. Patel, who’d tried to have it both ways and had ended up ruined, probably going to jail.

And I remembered Keone in the deep blue water with his forehead against mine, our breath exchanging.

I was done being scared.

I slid the ring off my right hand. I held it for a second in my wet palm, the pearl catching the overhead light. And then I moved it to my left, to the proper finger; it settled there perfectly.

It fit. Of course it fit. It had always fit, even though I’d been afraid to let it settle there.

I stood under the water a moment longer with my left hand held up in front of me, the ring where it belonged. The heaviness in my chest dissolved—not into sadness, but into something warm.

Then I got out, dried off, and got ready.

I scooped up Tiki, who had crept out from under the bed to supervise, and now allowed herself to be loaded into her carrier with the wounded dignity of a cat extracting an apology. “We’re going to see Keone,” I told her. “You can yell at him about today too. Spread the bad vibes around.”

She gave a single chirp that might have been forgiveness or a threat; with her you never quite knew.

I kissed Aunt Fae’s cheek on the way out. “Thank you, Auntie.”

“Mmm,” she said, which from her held a world of comment. “Tell Keone he owes me one.”

I went out into the warm Maui night with my cat in her carrier and the ring new and strange and just right on my left hand.

20

The drive to Hana settled me the way it always does, the dark road unspooling through the trees, the smells of mud, ginger and saltwater breeze blowing in through the open windows. Tiki grumbled soft commentary from her carrier every time I took a curve a little too fast. By the time I crested the last rise above Hana Bay, I felt almost human again.

I wore Elle’s gift to me, a clingy wrap dress in deep cornflower blue she’d pressed on me weeks ago with the firm declaration that it “matches your eyes and will make Keone lose his mind.”

I’d told her I had nowhere to wear such a thing. She’d told me I’d figure that out. As usual, she was right.

Keone’s cottage was lighted by a single lamp gleaming warm light from the screened lanai out front. I loved how his little place was tucked on its own knoll beside Ilima’s big plantation house.

Lights blazed everywhere at his mother’s, per usual—she kept that house bright as a lighthouse most nights. Family and community business flowed in and out of it at all hours.

But Keone’s cottage held a quiet, private welcome I’d come to think of as ‘ours’: the plumeria tree pale with blossom on the seaward side, Mango the orange tabby a fat shadow dozing on the lanai railing among orchids “loaned” to Keone by Ilima. The sea a heartbeat in the background.

I parked Sharkey in the grass beside the lean-to garage and let myself in through the kitchen door we never bothered to lock. Surprising Keone was the whole point. I had a speech half-built in my head: ‘humble pie, Maine style, generous portion’, a ring on the proper hand at last, and my grumpy cat, too. I was ready for . . . action.

I grinned to myself; I was that confident.