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Leilani led Olina to the harbor, the heat bearing down on them.
When they reached the water, Leilani couldn’t see the children. The tide churned, tossing waves of ash against the shore.
A scream sounded in the distance. Through the haze of smoke, Leilani caught a glimpse of Mamo holding Noa, and Palili drifting away from them, arms flailing, her little head dipping below the surface.
“Palili!” Leilani yelled. “I’m coming!” She dove into the water and swam with all her heart. No matter how hard she swam, she didn’t seem to be getting nearer. Palili’s head dipped beneath the surface one last time and didn’t come back up.
“No!” Leilani cried. This couldn’t be happening. It had to be a nightmare. A dream that she could wake from. None of this was happening.
Leilani stopped swimming and tread water as she concentrated.
“Wake up,” she said aloud.
Ash-laden waves splashed over her, pushing her under.
“Wake up!”
Leilani sat up in bed, her body drenched in sweat, her pulse pounding. Darkness surrounded her like black smoke. She didn’t want to breathe and inhale it into her lungs.
Desperate for air, she leaned over and switched on the lamp on the nightstand. As soon as the light chased away the darkness, Leilani sucked air into her starving lungs. She filled them with air and then released it all in a rush.
“Just a dream,” she whispered and hugged her pillow to her chest, rocking back and forth in an attempt to calm her racing heart. “It was just a dream.”
For the next fifteen minutes, she sat upright in her bed until sleep dragged at her eyelids. She was afraid to go to sleep and end up back in the ashy sea where Palili had sunk beneath the surface. If she stayed awake, Palili would live, safe in her bed next door. If she slept, Palili would be lost forever.
So, she rocked until she dropped off out of sheer exhaustion and slept like the dead until the incessant ringing of her alarm jerked her awake.
Leilani dragged herself out of bed and into her bathroom, where she splashed water on her face until she’d washed the remaining fog of sleep from her eyes.
She made a note to herself to give Palili extra hugs the next time she saw her. Just to prove to herself she hadn’t drowned like she had in her nightmare.
When she glanced again at the clock, she freaked. With less than five minutes to dress and brush her hair and teeth, she sprang into action, fighting off the lingering weight of her nightmare.
Leilani had just shoved her feet into her tennis shoes when a knock sounded on her door. She ran to answer it, fully prepared to throw herself into Angel’s waiting arms.
When she flung open the door, it wasn’t Angel standing there.
She blinked in confusion at Peter Brentwood and half a dozen other men crowding in on her. “What the hell’s going on?”
“I got word you were ready to sell.” Peters waved a sheath of documents in her face. “I brought the contract. All you have to do is sign, and it’s done.”
“That’s bullshit,” another man Leilani had seen before stepped around Peter with his own set of documents. “I got the message to bring a contract this morning that Ms. Kealoha was ready to accept our offer.”
“I don’t know what kind of game you all are playing?” another man said. “Ms. Kealoha agreed to sell to my client. I got a message from her last night, asking me to bring the contract at seven this morning.”
The men all started talking at once, their voices rising.
Leilani pinched the bridge of her nose, a dull ache growing at the base of her skull. “Enough,” she said.
When the men didn’t stop talking over each other, she drew in a deep breath, ready to scream.
Before she let loose, a tall man with broad shoulders, wearing a baseball cap pulled low over his forehead, muscled his way through the crowd of brokers.
“Hey!” one man protested.
Another lurched to the side. “Watch it, man!”
A third man spun when a shoulder rammed into him. “What the hell?”
