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Wills stared at the woman. “She’s dead. ”
“Oh,” the woman said. “I’m sorry. ”
God, but he was tired of those words. “It would mean a lot to her that you remembered,” Johnny said tiredly.
“She had a beautiful smile,” the woman said.
Johnny nodded.
“Well. ” She patted his shoulder as if they were friends. “I hope the island helps you. It can if you let it. Aloha. ”
Later, as they walked home in the fading light, the boys were so tired they started fighting. Johnny was too weary to care. In the house, he helped them get ready for bed and tucked them in, kissing them each good night.
“Dad?” Wills said sleepily. “Can we go in the water tomorrow?”
“Course, Conqueror. That’s why we’re here. ”
“I’ll go in first, I bet. Luke’s a chicken. ”
“Am not. ”
Johnny kissed them again and stood up. Pushing a hand through his hair and sighing, he walked through the house, looking for his daughter. He found her on the lanai, sitting in a beach chair. Moonlight bathed the bay. The air smelled of salt and sea and plumeria. Heady and sweet and seductive. Dotted along the two-mile curve of beach were fires, around which shadowy people danced and stood. The sound of laughter rose above the whooshing of the waves.
“We should have come here when she was alive,” Marah said. She sounded young and sad and far away.
That stung. They’d meant to. How many times had they planned a trip, only to cancel for some now-forgotten reason? You think you have all the time in the world until you know you don’t. “Maybe she’s watching us. ”
“Yeah. Right. ”
“A lot of people believe in that. ”
“I wish I was one of them. ”
Johnny sighed. “Yeah. Me, too. ”
Marah got up. She looked at him, and the sadness he saw in her eyes was devastating. “You were wrong. ”
“About what?”
“The view doesn’t change anything. ”
“I needed to get away. Can you understand that?”
“Yeah, well. I needed to stay. ”
On that, she turned and went back into the house. The door slid shut behind her. Johnny stood there, feeling shaken by her words. He hadn’t thought of what his kids needed, not really. He’d folded their needs into his own and told himself they’d all be better off.
Kate would be disappointed in him. Already. Again. And even worse, he knew his daughter was right.
It wasn’t paradise he wanted to see. It was his wife’s smile, and that was gone forever.
This view didn’t change a thing.
Four
Even in paradise—or maybe especially in paradise—Johnny slept poorly, unaccustomed as he was to being alone, but each morning he woke to sunshine and blue skies and the sound of waves that seemed to be laughing as they rolled onto the sand. He was usually the first to waken. He started his day with a cup of coffee on the lanai. From there, he watched daylight come to the blue waters of the horseshoe-shaped bay. He often talked to Katie out here, saying things he wish he’d said before. In the end, as Kate lay dying, the mood in their house had been as somber as gray flannel, hushed and soft. He knew that Margie had let Katie talk about what scared her—leaving her children, knowing they would be sad, her pain—but Johnny had been unable to listen, even on that last day.
I’m ready, Johnny, she’d said in a voice as quiet as the brush of a feather. I need you to be ready, too.
