Ocean's Kiss

by Lani Wendt Young

  “Where did you go?”

  “To my house. First to the beach. Not that I expected any help from there,” a derisive bitter laugh. “Simone was partially right. I did go beat the crap out of my punching bag. Then I went through some of our old family photos.” He motioned to a cardboard box on the bedside table that hadn’t been there before. Me and my grandfather. No, my father. They told me they were my grandparents but they were my father and mother. The best parents anyone could ask for. I will honor their legacy all my life. And one day, God willing, when we have children, I’ll try to live up to their example when I’m a parent.”

  “You really caught me by surprise, you know? This Ronan thing hit me like a truck. I didn’t know how to deal. And then, hearing you defend him?”

  He sat on a nearby chair and his shoulders slumped in weary defeat. “Was kinda like you’d picked a side. Against me.” It was a rare moment of vulnerability from the man who had always been her rock.

  “Oh no!” Leila sank to her knees in front of him, peered into his eyes. “I didn’t mean it that way. I’m with you Daniel. Always. You tell me what you want to do about Ronan, whatever you decide, I’ll support you one hundred percent.”

  “You’re all I’ve got Leila. Both my grandparents have left me. I have no cousins, any other family. I need you to stand with me.” He cradled her face in his hands and the poignant appeal she saw in his eyes, ripped her up inside. “You’re my everything.” He raised her up and had her sit in his lap so he could hold her close.

  They sat like that for a long while, finding comfort in each other as the sun came up.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Daniel had a safety helmet on and the welder going, so he didn’t hear Okesene call his name from across the workshop. Not until he was directly in front of him. Then he stilled the blue flame and raised the visor. “What is it?”

  Okesene jerked his head towards the small office attached to the shop. “There’s a man here to see you.”

  Through the open door, Daniel caught a glimpse of a familiar face from the day before. “Tell him I’m busy.” He closed the visor and turned away, stern faced.

  “Says he’s happy to wait. Told him he could sit in your office.” With that Okesene ambled back to his task over by the steel press machine.

  Daniel swore under his breath but couldn’t do much else than that. Okesene was his welder right-hand man – not his secretary. He put down his equipment and stalked over to the office. “We can’t take on your repair job. You’ll have to try Scott’s Steel on the other side of town.”

  Ronan was studying the assortment of framed photographs on Daniel’s desk and he looked up with an almost guilty expression on his face. “I’m not here about the boat.”

  “Then we have nothing to talk about,” said Daniel. He turned to go.

  “Wait,” said Ronan. “You’ve had twenty years to know you had a father who wasn’t there for you, while I’ve only had twenty-four hours to know I fathered a son. I don’t know if it’s possible to bridge that gap, but I’d like to try.”

  Daniel stepped inside the office and shut the door. Quiet and intense. “You’re not my father. You’re just a sperm donor. I had a father who gave me his name and taught me everything he knew. I don’t need another one. My wife, Leila, was trying to be helpful by telling you about me, but I’m not interested in us hanging out…getting to know each other…we’re not going to do the whole ‘father-son’ thing. So maybe you should get back on your boat and move on.”

  Ronan’s face betrayed no emotion. “I thought you might say that. I’d be the same if the situation were reversed.”

  “So why did you bother coming here for?”

  “To give you these,” said Ronan. He placed a small wooden box on the desk.

  “What is it?”

  “Memories. Of Moanasina.” He walked past Daniel and opened the door, paused. “I get that you don’t want a father.” A harsh laugh. “I wouldn’t know the first thing about being a Dad, but I figured you’d want to know your mother better. She was a woman who should be remembered and loved by her only child. From what I gather from your wife, Moanasina gave her life for you. If you want to talk – about her? You know where to find me.” And with those enigmatic words, Ronan left.

  Daniel was left alone in the office, with the buzzing hum of the air conditioning for company. He stared at the box for a long while. Every fiber of his being wanted to get a crowbar and smash it. Or simply throw it in the trash. Because he wanted nothing from this man. But all his life, he had hungered for every wisp of memory and evidence of his mother.

  Without thinking, he reached for the wedding band that hung from a braided rope at his neck as if that small association with Leila could give him the strength he needed to make a decision.

  “Screw it, just do it,” he muttered to himself. He grabbed the box and left the workshop with a curt order to Okesene to look after the boys while he was out. Then got in his truck and drove to his beach, that isolated cove where he had first unleashed the ocean’s might and Tavake had saved him. It was deserted. Just what he needed. He went to sit on an outcropping of rock beside the lilting waves and then opened the box.

  There was a sheaf of photos at the top, loosely tied with a frayed ribbon. Daniel had only ever seen one photograph of his mother. Taken not long after he was born, it was a black and white image of a woman cradling a baby in her arms. Her face was averted from the camera as she smiled down at the baby, a fall of her long hair half-covered one side of her face. Daniel had memorized every detail of this picture, hungry to learn everything he could about the mother he’d never met. At least not in the flesh anyway. And always he wished for her to raise her head, brush the hair from her face, and face the camera, so he could truly know her face.

  It is a hard thing to mourn a mother you never knew. How do you miss someone’s smile, their laugh, the sound of their voice?

  But he was still holding fast to the possibility that this man Ronan, this stranger was mistaken. That the woman he claimed to have loved so long ago, was not Daniel’s mother. But some other random girl in Tonga. It couldn’t be the same woman. It couldn’t be his mother. This man couldn’t possibly be his father. Could he?

  One look at the first photograph though and all his doubts fled in a sickening rush. Because the woman who stared up at him, directly facing the camera…he had seen her before. He had met her. Or some version of her.

  On a grief-stricken shore far away, as the hiss of water burning sparked up the night and he wept over the body of his beloved. Daniel had only told Simone that the ocean spirit woman who healed Leila, had said she was his mother. Or a remnant of her. It had made little sense to him back then and so it was something he had buried in the recesses of his mind and heart. A hope, a memory he brought out only rarely, during dark quiet moments. When he walked a lonely beach, or listened to the ocean breeze.

  Daniel stared at Moanasina and knew her to be a version of the strange ocean woman he had encountered on that battered shore. That woman had silver skin patterned with swirls of iridescent color, hair like draped seaweed, but her eyes, her face – it was the same person in Ronan’s photographs.

  It was true. This man was his father. And perhaps even more startling, his mother was alive. No longer human. But still an elemental force of some kind. Living, breathing, moving upon the waters.

  Slowly Daniel looked through the rest of the photographs. It was obvious that Ronan was something of a camera buff. And the love for his favorite subject burned clear in every shot.

  There was a shot of Moanasina standing on the prow of a boat. Ronan’s perhaps? With one hand she held lightly to a rope and the other she pointed out into the distant ocean. She had her back to the photographer but had turned to tell him about what she had seen out in the distance. Ronan had snapped the picture at that exact moment. The woman’s face was alight with joy. Her smile was a dance of delight. A hint of mischief. Her hair was a reckless tangle in the wind. The
sheer realness, the beauty of her, made Daniel’s breath catch in his chest. This is what he’d dreamed of as a child. When he imagined his mother. This laughing, carefree and joyous being.

  Another was a selfie with a young man, sitting on a beach. The two of them laughing at the camera, his arm flung loosely across her shoulders. Now, in this one, Daniel could see the likeness with Ronan. Not in the brilliant green eyes or the tousled hair that caught with burnished deep red highlights in the sun, no. He could see himself in the happiness, the love that was written all over a young Ronan Matiu. He recognized that which he felt in himself for Leila.

  Daniel had always imagined that if his mother had lived, they would be a mother-son duo ready to take on the world together. His mother would fight for him and he would grow up and take care of her in return. His mother’s lover had proved unfaithful and unworthy, but that was okay. Because a sperm donation doesn’t make a man a father after all.

  To have Ronan show up with a different version of history, was a huge shake up for Daniel. If it’s true that this man hadn’t abandoned the woman he was meant to love, then where did that leave them now? And who had lied to him? Salamasina? Perhaps Moanasina wasn’t the mother he had always believed her to be?

  Underneath all the photographs was a thick bound notebook, filled with scrawling writing. Daniel opened it and a note fell out.

  Daniel, I kept a journal when I was in Tonga. A researcher habit. It was mostly notes of my work there but when I met Moanasina, she sort of took over my journal. I just want you to know your mother.

  Daniel looked out at the white surf crashing on the distant reef. Was she out there somewhere? Did she still watch over him? Did she still sense him – now that he had no more of the Ocean within him? Could he still be Moanasina’s son when he had sacrificed Vasa Loloa and allowed Fanua Afi to scorch it from him?

  CHAPTER SIX

  Twenty years before

  When Ronan first met Moanasina, she tried to kill him.

  He was on a small boat deploying satellite tags on whales. Standing on the prow as the boat buffeted in the swell, sights trained on a humpback whale breaching alongside them, ready with the tag gun, waiting for the perfect moment to score the perfect hit. You had to get it just right so the tag implanted on the right spot on the dorsal fin.

  Without a tag attached, the gun worked as a regular harpoon and came in handy as an emergency weapon, should something go wrong.

  Yes, it was foolhardy of him to be out alone, but there were only three of them on the team, battling within the confines of a tight budget. Thomas and Gene were both sick back at the main boat, a nasty stomach bug keeping them virtually chained to the toilet. It had been a week since they arrived and both men were still out of commission. Money was drying up and every day wasted on shore while the two men retched and raced to make it to the toilets, was precious time taken away from what they were really here for. Tagging whales.

  So Ronan had come out alone.

  Steering the small boat and tracking the whale, AND trying to tag it all at the same time though? He was quickly realizing that it was next to impossible. He swore under his breath as a rogue wave buffeted the small craft, forcing him to take his eyes off the magnificent creature alongside the boat.

  That’s when he saw her. It was a sight that would forever be seared into his memory. There was a girl – no a young woman – in the water. Swimming alongside the whale. And as Ronan stared in wide-eyed amazement, she wasn’t alongside the whale. She was on top of it. Braced against it’s broad expanse of back. But that couldn’t be right, could it? It was impossible. Wasn’t it?

  She had long hair and dark eyes that locked with his. There was so much weighted into that gaze. Hate, loathing, anger. So much anger that it seemed a palpable thing, a force that had him taking a step back. This woman was very angry at him and a cold dread pooled in his stomach, in spite of the noonday sun high overhead.

  She shouted something at him, but he couldn’t hear the words over the roar of the engine. Not from this distance. She pointed. Then a massive surge hit the boat, the impact knocking him to his feet. Was it a whale? He scrambled to stand, grabbed on to a rope for balance.

  The current was unforgiving, seeming to have appeared out of the depths. The woman was nowhere to be seen. Ronan scanned the surface for a sign, for a shadow of her dark hair. Just as Ronan steadied himself along the railings, another wave greater than the last, rolled out, sending gear flying across the deck. Only moments before, the ocean had been an azure calm. But now, it was whipped to a frenzy, with wave upon wave crashing against the boat, forcing it towards the beckoning rocks.

  Ronan was confused. There had been no mention in the daily weather report about any storms or ocean swells? And now this? What’s going on? Where did this all come from?

  Then the engine died. Just great. The once crystal-clear water was now an angry grey, hissing as it crashed upon the deck. Ronan made his way to the motor, struggling to stand upright as a giant wave swamped the boat. He clung to the railing for support as the ocean pummeled the vessel like an empty tin can.

  Just as Ronan lost grip, the ocean gave her final push, like some vast unseen being literally reached out and shoved the boat on the rocks. There was a juddering crash that rattled Ronan’s bones and then water poured in from everywhere. The white foam fizzed as the ocean dragged him under. There was barely any time for him to think, or cry out for help. He was tossed like a ragdoll, bashed against hard objects. His lungs burned for air, as he tried to swim, to kick, to get to the surface. Just one breath.

  Somehow, Ronan ended up on the shore. Choking, spluttering and coughing up what felt like half the ocean. What had just happened?! All around him on the beach were the scattered remnants of what used to be a boat. Mangled steel, pieces of wood and tangled ropes.

  “You tried to hurt them!” Ronan spun to the sound of her voice. It was her. The woman he had seen on the back of the whale.

  He half-sat up. She strode towards him, with grim determination, sunlight glistening on her wet hair and skin. She was barefoot and her shirt and scrap of lavalava were ragged, but she was power, rage and beauty all in one. For a fleeting moment Ronan was in awe and then admiration was replaced with fear. She held the tracker gun in her hand and it was pointed right at him.

  “Only the worst kind of man would want to kill a whale.” She stopped a few feet away and raised the gun, held him in her sights. Sneering disdain as she looked down at him in his half-drowned state. “Didn’t you see she’s a mother? She carries a child within her belly. But that means nothing to you.”

  Ronan coughed up another lungful of ocean and drew in an agonized rasping breath before he tried to respond. He could only get a single word out. “No.”

  She was unimpressed. “The ocean says for that – you must die.”

  And then she shot him.

  The bolt him in the right shoulder, the impact pushing him on to his back. Fire. Pain. So much pain. Ronan lay on the sand, gasping for air, for some measure of relief, for something, anything – and coming up short. Tears clouded his vision and a hovering darkness threatened to descend on him.

  Then there she was. Standing over him. Frowning as she examined the gun closer. A look of confusion

  Ronan tried, the words a tortured whisper. “Not. A. Gun. Tracker dart.” Each word made the pressure in his shoulder draw tighter and hurt more. “Marine biologist. Help whales. Help meeeeee….”

  And then there was only darkness.

  When he woke up, Ronan was in the hospital. Shoulder bandaged, and the crew at his bedside, concerned and curious.

  “What happened?” asked Gene.

  “Yeah man. The boat is smashed on the rocks. And you shoot yourself in the shoulder?” said Thomas in disbelief. “What were you doing out there?”

  Underlying the concern of course, was the unspoken condemnation of – you shouldn’t have been out there by yourself. You broke all kinds of rules.

  Ronan tried
to sit up and winced. Not a good idea. Not yet anyway. “How long I been out?”

  “A day,” said Gene. “We were getting worried about you.”

  They had questions. But Ronan took grateful refuge in being wounded. “Sorry guys. I’m so tired. Need to sleep…”

  Much later after the men had left, when moonlight pooled in the shadows of the hospital wing, Ronan dragged himself up out of bed, searched for his clothes, and then snuck out the quiet building. Nobody saw him go. Not even the snoozing security guard at the door. He walked back to the boat. It wasn’t far, but he was exhausted by the time he got there. Maybe getting shot in the chest with a tracker gun, was not such a great thing after all. It took all his remaining energy to drag himself onto the boat and quietly collapse into his own bed below deck.

  The next day he surprised the team by joining them at breakfast.

  “Are you nuts?” demanded Thomas. “Checking yourself out of the hospital? When was that ever a good idea?”

  “Yeah,” added Gene. “What if that gets infected? You know there’s super bugs out here in the islands.”

  Ronan waved aside their concerns. Much the same way he deflected their questions about what exactly had happened to him out on the water that day?

  “I can’t remember. It’s all a daze.” He deflected their questions, instead promising to take out a loan to buy a new tracker boat. Within a few days, it was back to business as usual, and the men had stopped bugging him about the accident. Which is what Ronan wanted. He told no-one about the woman who had shot him. But every day when the day’s duties were done, he went looking for her. It was a small island after all. How hard could it be to find one unforgettable woman?

  Very hard apparently. After a week of looking for her – without announcing that he was looking – Ronan still had no clues as to his attacker’s identity. So he decided to take more serious measures…