Midnight Sea (Aloha Reef Series)

by Colleen Coble

  “Which cousin?” Ben asked. Yoshi had three.

  “Leilani.”

  Ben started shaking his head. The woman was a barracuda. “Look, I know she’s your cousin, but she had her hooks in my brother once. And he’s married, I might add. Then she moved on to Tyrone. Find someone else.”

  Yoshi’s lips pressed into a thin line. “She’s been through a lot, but she’s trying to get her life in order. She’s changed, Ben. You’ll see it when you meet her. And as much as she could use your help with learning to navigate blind, it also makes a perfect cover.”

  “Cover? Why can’t you just tell her who I am?”

  Yoshi was shaking his head while Ben asked the question. “She says she doesn’t remember anything, but I think she’s blocking it out, or else she just doesn’t want to tell me. Maybe she’s protecting someone that she thinks might be guilty. You could get a lot further than I would. She’ll trust the blind trainer who comes in.”

  Ben had no use for the woman, but he was a sucker for someone facing blindness. “What’s the doctor say about her eyes?”

  “When the swelling in the brain goes down, he’s hopeful her vision will come back. But that will just make whoever did this more desperate. When her sight returns, she’ll be able to identify the killer.”

  “I don’t want to have anything to do with her,” Ben said.

  Yoshi poked his finger into Ben’s chest. “Everyone makes mistakes.”

  Ben’s gut clenched. His own mistakes dogged him. He relived the worst one most nights in his nightmares. The slick road, the headlights looming out of the rainy night, the sound of the tires shrieking on wet pavement. If only he hadn’t been fiddling with the radio. Stupid, stupid. Ben’s inattention had cost his best friend his eyesight.

  He stepped away from Yoshi’s prodding finger. “She almost runied my brother’s marriage.”

  “Your brother wasn’t innocent either,” Yoshi pointed out. “Lani is a Christian now. She’s different. You’ll see.”

  Ben doubted it. While he knew God could change anyone, some things were too innate to overcome easily. The Lani Tagama he’d met was only interested in a good time.

  “She’s going to need to learn how to deal with being blind,” Yoshi said. “You’re the best teacher out there. Take her a service dog and work with her. Get her to confide in you.”

  The deception of it deterred him. He shook his head. “Get someone else. There’s a woman in Hilo who might help you.”

  “I need you, Ben.”

  “Sorry. There’s a waiting list for service dogs. If her blindness is temporary, it’s hardly worth the work of teaching her to work with one.”

  Yoshi’s gaze went to Fisher. “What about him? You could finish training him with Lani.”

  “Give it up, Tagama. I’m not going to do it.”

  Yoshi’s partner called from the police car. “Hey, we’ve got a 10–19, Tagama.”

  Yoshi muttered under his breath. “I need you, Ben. I’ll call you later.” He ran to the car.

  “Great, just great,” Ben muttered. His cell phone rang, and he dug it out. His brother’s number flashed on the caller ID. “Hey, Ethan, what’s up?”

  “Ben, it’s Natalie.” His sister-in-law’s low, slurred voice came over the line. “Can you come over? Ethan is passed out, and I can’t get him up.”

  She sounded about ready to pass out herself. In the background he could hear Meg crying. The toddler would be two next month, and she’d seen way too much strife already. “I’ll be right there,” he said. He clicked off his phone, then he and Fisher jogged back to the Harley.

  He got the dog in the sidecar and kick-started the engine. The big motorcycle roared to life, and he drove to his brother’s house. Fisher wore a doggy smile. He loved riding in the sidecar. Ben wished he could drop the dog at home first, but he didn’t dare delay that long. The sound of Meg’s cries still rang in his ears. He accelerated around the final curve.

  Ethan lived in a small hillside house above the road that led to Kealakekua Bay, though the ocean couldn’t be seen from there. Ben parked and stepped out into calfhigh grass. Though grass grew fast in the Hawaiian sun, it had to have been a month since Ethan had mown.

  He approached the house. “Stay, Fisher.” The dog lay down in the grass, and Ben stepped to the porch. Through the open screen door, he could hear Meg still crying.

  After rapping on the door for several seconds without getting an answer, he opened it and stepped inside. “Nat? It’s Ben.” He went down the hall toward the little girl’s wailing. “Meggie, it’s okay.” He found the toddler sobbing in her crib and lifted her out. Her soggy diaper made him grimace. Carrying her out from his chest a bit, he went down the hall to his brother’s bedroom. He stepped into the room and found his sister-in-law curled in the corner, asleep on the floor. He saw no sign of his brother.

  Meg continued to cry. Her diaper needed to be changed, and it would be up to him to do it. And had she even been fed yet? His watch read ten o’clock; she had to be hungry. He went back to her room and laid her on the changing table. Though he’d never done it, surely it couldn’t be that hard. He found a disposable diaper and went to work. The stench of urine nearly made him gag, but it wasn’t Meggie’s fault.

  “It’s okay,” he soothed.

  “Toast,” she said, her blue eyes huge with tears.

  “We’ll get some toast in just a minute, baby girl.” He slid the clean diaper on, then realized he had the tabs on backward and the bulk of the diaper bunched in front. Sighing, he corrected his mistake.

  He left her pajama top on and her legs bare. She needed a bath, but first she needed food. She stopped wailing as he carried her to the kitchen. Crusty Cheerios and dried milk covered her high chair and the floor around it. Dirty dishes overflowed the sink. His brother lay sprawled on the tile by the back door. Even from here, Ben could smell the liquor oozing from his pores.

  Still carrying Meg, he prodded none too gently with his foot. “Wake up, Ethan.” His brother groaned but didn’t move. Ben went to the cupboard. Toast was out of the question, since the only bread he found had green mold on it, so he got down the cereal. He’d feed Meg, then worry about Ethan.

  Meg began to smile when she saw the Cheerios. “Eat,” she said, reaching toward the cereal.

  How could his brother be such an idiot? Natalie too. They were neglecting Meg. No child should have to endure this kind of treatment. She opened her mouth for him to slip in the first mouthful and kept asking for more. Poor baby. He had to do something about this, but what? His glance went to his brother. While he loved Ethan, the guy was an adult and could make his own decisions. Meggie had no choice in the circumstances.

  Ben didn’t want Meg to see her father in his disgusting state, so he carried her into the living room and sat on the couch with her on his lap, where he continued to spoon cereal into her eager mouth. Glancing around the room, he saw burlap bags of coffee heaped in the corner. They were stamped with the imprint of the Kona Kai Coffee Company. What would Ethan and Natalie be doing with so much coffee?

  The new big-screen TV caught Ben’s attention. High definition. There were other new items in the room: the couch, an iPod on the coffee table, and a Sony laptop. Where had Ethan found the money for these things? He’d been without a job for four months, and Ben had been helping out.

  Meg finished her cereal. “Down,” she said, wiggling out of his lap.

  He let her go play and went to look at the bags of coffee. Opening one, he dug his fingers into the dark beans and grimaced at the smell. He hated coffee. His fingers dug down farther, but there seemed to be nothing in the bag but coffee. Ben closed the bag and stood. Ethan was going to tell him what was going on if he had to beat it out of him.

  The baby was crying. Lani struggled to get to the child, but the blackness pressed in on her. Her hands reached for the baby but found only empty air. She bolted upright, her breathing erratic. She was in the hospital bed, but the darkness seemed so
alien, so threatening. Outside her door, she heard the noises of normal life: the rustle of people moving past her door, the muted sound of a TV in another room down the hall, the rattle of a cart being wheeled along the linoleum. She lay like an island—alone and isolated, as distant from everything around her as she felt from God. Why, why? She wanted to scream at God. If he were here in front of her, she might even beat on his chest. If God had a chest. The unfairness of it pummeled her.

  Wasn’t her life supposed to be better now that she was a Christian? She’d been trying so hard to leave her past behind, to be a different person. The success she’d had this year had been heady. How could God do this to her? It had to be a mistake.

  Maybe he meant to test her faith, and her condition would be temporary.

  But what if the blindness was permanent—a punishment for her sins? “No!” she said to the darkness. The covers wrapped her legs like a shroud, and she kicked them off and sat on the edge of the bed. Opening her eyes as wide as she could, she willed herself to see. She stood and shuffled forward, believing her vision would come back if she just had faith. Her bare feet whispered across the cold floor.

  Bam! She racked her knee on the rolling stand beside the bed. It rattled away from her. She heard something fall, then a wave of icy water hit her feet. Completely disoriented, she stood with the wetness spreading under her soles and tried to figure out which way she needed to go to get back to the bed. “Please, God,” she choked in a low voice.

  Water and ice slicked the floor as she tried to inch backward. Then her leg touched the bed, and she fell into it with a sob of thankfulness. The blankets warmed her cold, wet feet, and she wrapped her arms around her pillow just to have something to hang on to. Faith was a wasted exercise.

  “My head hurts.” Ethan put his head in his hands, turning his face away from the steaming cup of coffee Ben placed in front of him on the coffee table.

  “Good.” Ben didn’t care if his brother had a hangover the size of a humpback whale. Something had to be done to wake him up to what he was doing to his daughter. Ben had tried to rouse Natalie too, but she hadn’t stirred even when he poured cold water on her head.

  Meg climbed back into his lap, and he jiggled her on his knee. She put her thumb in her mouth and leaned back against him. The urine odor hung strong around her. A bath was next on the agenda.

  Ethan darted a glance at him. “You’re real sympathetic.”

  “Who took care of Meg while you were out last night?”

  Ethan made an obvious effort to think. “A girl down the street.”

  “Did she stay all night?”

  Ethan shook his head, then winced. “Just until we got home.”

  “At five.”

  “I don’t know what time it was.”

  “You’re turning out just like Mom.” Ben’s lip curled. “You have a daughter to care for. I want you to go into rehab.”

  “I’m not an alcoholic!” Ethan’s bloodshot eyes narrowed.

  “What else would you call it when alcohol is more important than taking care of your baby girl?”

  “I take care of her.”

  “Ethan, I got here at ten. Meg hadn’t been changed and her diaper literally dripped. She hadn’t been fed and I could hear her screaming as soon as I came in the front door. She stood crying in her crib when I got to her room.”

  “She’s Nat’s responsibility in the mornings.”

  “She’s your responsibility all the time! Be a man, for once in your life.”

  “Get off my back.” Ethan grabbed his coffee, sloshing it on his vomit speckled T-shirt as he gulped it down.

  “If you don’t agree to go for help, I’m going to take Meg.” What he’d do with a toddler, Ben had no idea, but he couldn’t leave the little girl in an unsafe environment.

  “You can’t do that.”

  “Watch me. You either pick up the phone and call for an appointment, or I’m packing her things and taking her with me. If I hadn’t shown up when I did, she’d still be sobbing for food in her bed.”

  Ethan eyed him and evidently saw Ben’s determination. “Fine, give me the number,” he muttered. “But I’m not an alcoholic.”

  “I’m not the one you have to convince,” Ben said, dialing the phone and handing it to him.

  He listened while Ethan stumbled through a request for an appointment, then carried Meg to the bathroom. He ran some water in the tub, then bathed and dressed her in a stained shirt and jeans that seemed at least partially clean. Her drawers held no clean clothes that fit her, only baby things she had outgrown.

  The kitchen clock chimed two when Natalie stumbled into the living room. After lecturing her too, he waited until they were both bathed and coherent. Sweeping his hand around the room, he fixed them with a stern stare. “Explain all this.”

  “All what?” Ethan’s eyes shifted away.

  “The new stuff. The bags of coffee.”

  “I got a job.” Ethan thrust out his chin.

  “Doing what?”

  “Delivering coffee by boat to the other islands.”

  “And it pays enough to buy five thousand dollars’ worth of new stuff?” Ben didn’t bother trying to hide his skepticism.

  “Yeah.” Ethan gazed over Ben’s shoulder and wouldn’t look him in the eye.

  Ben smelled a rat. “Uh-huh. And what’s the coffee doing here? Shouldn’t it be in a warehouse or something?”

  “I wanted to look at it,” Ethan muttered.

  “Look at it?” Ben glanced at the sacks of coffee. “What’s to look at?”

  “Never mind. It’s none of your business.” Ethan folded his hands across his chest. Natalie hadn’t uttered a word. Her fingers played with the fringe on her blouse, and she gazed out the window.

  Ben wanted to dump out the coffee beans and see what he could find, but it might not tell him what he really needed to know. There was a better way. He rose. “I’ll see you later.” He kissed Meg good-bye and went outside. He called Fisher and loaded him in the side car. Before he started the bike, he dialed Yoshi’s cell phone.

  Yoshi answered on the first ring. “Tagama.”

  “It’s me. I’ll do it.”

  “Great! What changed your mind?”

  “I’ve got a thesis to do. I can see how long it takes Lani to progress through the stages of grief.”

  “Man, that’s cold, Mahoney.”

  Ben didn’t care. He kept his voice hard. “She doesn’t deserve much consideration. Where is this place?”

  “Off Napoopoo Road on the way down to the bay.” Yoshi gave him directions. “She gets out of the hospital in the morning. Thanks a lot, buddy.”

  Ben was in for it now. He’d find a way to get Ethan out of whatever mess he was in even if it meant dealing with a woman like Leilani Tagama.

  Chapter Three

  Lani felt as if she’d been gone an eternity. She wished she could see the ripening coffee cherries on the trees. “The trees are almost ready to harvest. I need to get well so I can help.” She tightened her grip on her aunt’s arm and walked along the path to the house. Her eyes stung from the vog. The blackness disconcerted her as it pressed in without a glimmer of light. With every step, she felt the ground might fall away.

  “It’s going to be a great harvest,” Rina said.

  Lani loved coffee harvest. She never tired of seeing the huge red cherries decorating the lush greenery of the coffee trees like ornaments on a Christmas tree. She stumbled when her foot struck the step to the porch.

  “Hang on a minute. Let me open the door.”

  When the reassuring touch of her aunt’s arm disappeared, Lani felt adrift in a sea of midnight. She reached out for some kind of support but found only air. The screen door creaked, then the scent of patchouli from inside the house preceded Rina’s touch on her arm.

  “Josie will have some green tea brewing. It will purge your liver of all the drugs that got pumped into you in the hospital.” Rina guided her into the house. “Careful. Yo
u don’t want to wipe out on the tile floors.”

  The strains of “American Pie” blared from a CD player somewhere in the room. Lani reached out with her other senses. She heard the click-click of the fan overhead and the whisper of feet on the floor.

  “Where’s that girl?” Josie’s boisterous voice echoed in the room. Her work roughened hands grabbed Lani’s arms, and the next minute she found herself enveloped in yards of cotton that smelled of coffee, yeast, and the outdoors. Josie must have on one of her voluminous muumuus.

  Josie clicked her tongue. “My, my, it’s a shame what happened to you, my sweet girl. But Josie will fix you up. First thing we have to do is flush your body of all the drugs they gave you. I’ve made up some special home opathics that help reduce swelling. We’ll get you seeing again.”

  Hope surged in Lani’s heart. Josie had studied every remedy known to man. A chemist by trade, she left the lab for the herbal garden, and Lani had seen her concoctions work wonders. “Thanks, Josie.” She pulled out of Josie’s hug.

  “Josie, give her a chance to catch her breath,” Rina said. “She hasn’t even been to her room yet.”

  Lani nodded. “I wouldn’t mind a nap,” she said.

  “Right this way.” Rina led her on down the hallway.

  The air turned cooler away from the big windows that let in the sunshine. Lani took small steps on the tile floor. Reaching out with her right hand, her fingers trailed along the wall for security.

  Rina stopped. “Here we are.”

  Lani heard the click of the latch, then the scent of clean linens mingled with coffee blossom rushed at her. Fatigue descended at the memory of her room. It looked out on the garden where Lani had planted a bed of orchids. Someday she would see them again. She had to.

  Rina led her onto the thick carpet. Lani’s knees bumped against the bed, and she practically fell onto the quilt. “Thanks for letting me come home, Aunt Rina.” She heard her aunt clear her throat. “I’ll try not to be a bother.”