AllFreeNovel
Share Us
CHAPTER1
August2023
Leilani Kealoha laiddown her paintbrush and stretched. She’d been working on this particular painting since early that morning and was close to finishing it, but she hadn’t stopped for lunch. For the past hour, the increasing scent of smoke had her concerned. She’d checked the latest report on wildfires burning east of Lahaina. At one point, the firefighters had reported the fires had been contained. By the smell, Leilani wasn’t so sure.
As she left her upstairs studio and descended the stairs from her apartment to the gallery below, the muffled, mechanical sound of a voice over a megaphone barely penetrated the walls and the large glass windows on the front of the gallery.
“Olina? Did you hear that?” she called out as she reached the bottom of the stairs and entered the back of the gallery. “What are they saying?”
Her friend, Olina, was a thirty-one-year-old single mother of three. She was the one person Leilani trusted to run the gallery while Leilani worked, creating beautiful paintings of the land and people she loved in Hawaii.
Olina wasn’t in the back of the shop, nor was she behind her desk in the middle of the gallery.
Leilani glanced out the front store windows. Her friend stood on the sidewalk in front of the gallery, her hand pressed to her cheek as a city police vehicle passed slowly, the officer making an announcement over his loudspeaker.
Leilani’s heart beat faster as she made out the wordevacuate. She hurried toward the front of the gallery, arriving at the door as Olina dove through it.
“I have to go,” she said in a rush.
“What’s going on?” Leilani asked. “I thought they had the fires contained.”
“Apparently not.” Olina shook her head and ran for her desk, where she grabbed her purse and fished out her car key. “The fire has almost reached the edge of town. It sounds bad. The police are announcing that everyone in Lahaina needs to evacuate immediately.” Her forehead creased in a worried frown. “I have to get to my kids. They’re home alone. They won’t know what to do, where to go...”
Leilani twisted the lock on the front door. “I’m going with you.” She ran to catch up with Olina, who had already exited the back of the building and was climbing into the older model Mazda sedan that always seemed to be held together by sheer will and bubble gum.
Leilani paid Olina more than she could really afford, but it wasn’t enough on an island with a high cost of living. Tourism had driven up the costs of housing, food and fuel to the point the locals could barely afford to live on the island their ancestors had inhabited for centuries.
Leilani had the advantage of inheriting a short row of buildings along Front Street from her grandfather. One of the buildings housed her gallery and apartment. Beside the gallery was their tour office, selling guided hiking tours and boat excursions to favorite snorkeling spots or sunset sailing trips on the catamaran.
Meanwhile, other locals like Olina and her children lived in government apartments not far from the gallery, eking out a living in the service industry catering to tourists.
Whether it was climate change or just a run of bad luck, Maui had experienced extremely dry weather, turning the vegetation into tinder, ripe for the potential of fire.
When Hurricane Dora had passed close to the chain of islands, it had stirred up such strong winds that local schools had closed. The children had been told to stay home. Many, like Olina’s three kids, were alone, their parents having to go to work. Olina’s oldest daughter, Mamo, was capable of watching out for her younger siblings, but she might not be aware of the encroaching danger of fire bearing down on their community.
Leilani jumped into the passenger seat and buckled her seatbelt.
Olina turned the key in the ignition and pumped the accelerator with her foot. The engine turned over once but didn’t start.
After Olina’s third attempt to start the engine, Leilani reached for her seatbelt buckle.
Olina tried once more. This time, the engine turned over, engaged and roared to life. The mother of three whipped the gear shift into reverse, backed out of the parking space, drove around the side of the building and met a wall of cars on Front Street, inching along, bumper to bumper. Smoke billowed over the tops of roofs, rising high into the air. When the line of cars stopped, people got out of their vehicles and stood looking to the east, shaking their heads.
“I’ll go ask them what’s going on,” Leilani said.
Olina shook her head. “This can’t be happening.”
Leilani hopped out of Olina’s car and ran up to the first man she came to, standing beside his vehicle. “Why is everyone stopped?”
The man turned with his cell phone to his ear. “The wind knocked power lines over onto the highway. The police blocked the road to keep people from running over live lines.”
Leilani’s gaze followed the dark cloud of smoke hovering ominously over the rooftops. “How are we supposed to evacuate the town if the road is blocked?”
“Good question.” He looked behind him to where other vehicles blocked any chance of him turning around and heading in the opposite direction.
Leilani hurried back to Olina, who was getting out of her car.
“I can’t wait for them to move,” Olina said. “I see flames, and they’re getting closer.” She took off, running toward the apartment complex several blocks from the gallery, heading toward the smoke and flames.
