Heat Wave

by Jill Marie Landis

  Jake’s plan to have her stop and take a look at her life had given her a glimpse of what she was missing, what she would always be missing. Now her days and nights were filled with thoughts of Ty and his life in Twilight Cove.

  On Kauai she jogged along familiar beaches and trails, well-known and unchanged. Everything was so much the same that it was unsettling to realize only she had changed.

  But it was easy to delight in the moist air and liquid sunshine, the trade winds, the beauty of the clouds hugging the mountaintops, the misty rainbows of morning that brought tears to her eyes.

  She shopped for Christmas presents for everyone, laughed aloud one afternoon in the middle of Wal-Mart as “White Christmas” played over the loudspeaker while tourists in tank tops and thongs chose souvenir trinkets to take home. It was mid-December, eighty-three degrees, and sunny. Plastic snowflakes dangling from the fluorescent overhead lights were the only signs of a white Christmas Kauai was ever going to see.

  When the crowded cab of her dad’s rusting Nissan pickup was so stuffed full of packages she could barely wedge herself in, she drove over to Sonya’s house near Kukui Grove Center. Of all her sisters, she was still closest to Sonya.

  Her sister ushered her in, handed her a can of diet Pepsi without asking if she wanted one, and they walked out onto the lanai that looked over the ridge behind the house.

  The outdoor room was full of comfortable furniture upholstered in a hodgepodge of island floral patterns, rattan love seats, ottomans, tables. Sonya’s family spent most of their time out here, all but her oldest boy, Kyle Kailani, who was always surfing the Net.

  “So how’s it, Kat? You getting used to being home?”

  Kat took a long sip of soda and thought before she answered. “In some ways it’s like I never left, you know?”

  “How would I know? I’ve never been any farther than the big island.”

  “You can come to California to visit me anytime.”

  Sonya nodded. “I know, but with all the kids’ activities and the running around I do, one day slides into the next, and pretty soon another year is gone.”

  Sonya kicked back, put her feet up on a rattan footstool. Sonya never hurried. She had time for everyone and everything.

  “So, how’s your love life?” she asked.

  Kat set the can down on the end table beside the love seat.

  “Did mom tell you to ask?”

  “No.”

  “I can almost hear her thinking sometimes. I know she wonders, but she won’t ask me herself.”

  “Hey, we’re not trying to butt in. We just want to see you happy.”

  “So she did ask you to find out.”

  “Maybe, but I’m really asking for me. We all still feel real bad, you know, about what happened.”

  “You weren’t the one driving.”

  They fell silent. Sonya’s husband, Reggie, was into birds, and just now noisy java sparrows and crimson-feathered cardinals were vying for space on a feeder hanging from a guava tree near the lanai.

  Kat let go a sigh. “Would you have married Reggie if he was sterile?” She could see the blunt question took Sonya by surprise.

  “I love all my kids, you know,” Sonya said softly.

  “I know. It was a dumb question.”

  “Believe me, there are days I’d like to send you a couple of them, though. I guess I never thought about it.”

  “So?”

  Her sister rolled her eyes. “Hmm. Would I marry Reggie if he couldn’t give me kids?” Absently, she started to twist her wedding ring around her finger. “Of course. We’d work it out.”

  “What do you mean, work it out?”

  “We could always hanai some kids.”

  Hanai didn’t have anything to do with a formal adoption, but it was an old Hawaiian system that worked. Children were raised by those who loved them best, those who cared for and nurtured them when their own families could not.

  Sonya suddenly straightened in her chair. “So who’s the guy? And don’t look at me like I’m crazy. Why else would you be asking?”

  Kat gave in. “I met him last summer when I was house-sitting for Jake and Carly.”

  “Ah. The he friend. Does he love you?”

  “He wants to.”

  “What’s the problem?”

  “He loves kids. He’s got a daughter who’s twenty and a granddaughter. But he’s still young enough to have more children of his own.”

  “What does he say about you not being able to have kids?”

  “That he doesn’t care.”

  Sonya leaned toward Kat, studying her. Her sister reminded her of their mom in the way she weighed Kat’s expression and mood before she sat back again.

  “So then . . . what’s the problem?”

  “What if he wakes up one day and realizes what he’s missed? What if he’s sorry?”

  “What if you wake up one day and your life is over and you never gave this a chance. Would you regret it?”

  “I already do.”

  “Then, sis, why not let him love you?” She slapped her knee and laughed as if Kat were crazy for thinking twice. “Why you make everyt’ing so hard?”

  “WHY YOU MAKE everyt’ing so hard?”

  An hour later Kat was running along the cane haul road toward Kealia Beach. Sonya had made it sound so incredibly easy.

  “Let him love you.”

  She hadn’t talked to Ty since that day at the hospital. At first she thought he’d try to call and she was determined to be polite but firm.

  But he never called once. He hadn’t tried to communicate with her at all.

  She’d spoken to Sunny a few times, asked after Alice. Learned Ty was doing fine and that he’d been back and forth to Alaska a few times. The new owner of Kamp Kodiak wanted him to sign another, more lucrative contract and hold his hand long-distance.

  Fred Westberg had let her know when Jamie Hatcher’s trial would start. Street racing was all over the news and the case had a high profile. The courtroom was so packed she was able to slip in late and leave early without Ty seeing her. Sunny had been too nervous to notice her at all. Kat had been proud of her for showing so much courage. She hadn’t broken down once on the stand, and she’d made a credible witness.

  Kat waited for a break in the traffic before she jogged across the highway, then she walked down to the cemetery spread out on the hillside overlooking the ocean. In the winter, whales migrated along the coast on this side of the island. They hadn’t yet arrived.

  She entered St. Catherine’s Cemetery, and though she hadn’t been to her daughter’s tiny grave since the burial, she walked unerringly to the site. Someone had trimmed away the weeds. There was a small, wilted bouquet of ginger in a jar beside the headstone. Her mom’s doing, no doubt.

  Kat stood there buffeted by the heavy trade winds, tasting the mist off the water. The grass was sparse, struggling to grow though beaten down by the wind and the sun. Where ground around the graves was bare, the dirt was the color of rust.

  The small headstone was engraved with only two words. Baby Vargas.

  Sitting by the grave, she thought back to the days shortly after the accident.

  Justin moved to L.A. and never called, though when she came home from the hospital, his parents dropped by the apartment with flowers. They told her how sorry they were that things ended so badly. She almost felt sorry for them, but then, they seemed to do it so well that they were probably used to apologizing for him.

  After the burial, the family gathered around and did what all families do where there is really nothing they can do—they tried to feed her.

  The backyard was full of people. Two barbeques were smoking, covered with chicken, ribs, and fish; a table was laden with food—as if trying to drown the hur
t in calories, as if enough potato macaroni salad and lomilomi salmon could ease the pain.

  As if anything could help.

  She was lucky, they all said. One of the kids in the pickup had died. She was lucky she came out of it alive.

  Virtually unharmed . . .

  All she’d seen after the accident was the pity in her family’s eyes. Not their sympathy or love. Only the pity.

  She felt it whenever Mom touched her.

  Heard it in all that her sisters didn’t say. In the way they stopped bragging about their kids around her.

  More than anything, she hated the outpouring of pity, knowing that whenever they looked at her now they weren’t really seeing Katrina No’ilani Vargas. They were seeing a daughter, a sister, a woman who would never again know the sweet, special joy of carrying a baby beneath her heart or watching her children grow.

  She thought it would be harder, standing here at her baby’s grave again, but instead of the sorrow she expected to feel, the quiet solitude gave her a sense of peace.

  She sat down on a patch of grass near the headstone and watched the waves roll in along Kealia Beach. It might have been minutes; it may even have been hours. She had no idea how long she sat, but when she finally leaned over and touched the headstone warmed by the sun, when she finally whispered good-bye, she was able to smile through her tears.

  JOGGING ALONG, carefully avoiding potholes and rocks in the red dirt, Kat came to the end of the cane haul road and started walking through the deep, soft sand along the beach. The surf was rough, agitated as water in a washing machine, blown out of shape by the wind. The surfers weren’t interested.

  The parking lot along the highway was nearly empty. A few tourists were sprinkled here and there on the beach, braving the stiff onshore breeze for the sake of a tan to show off back home in snow country after the holidays.

  She kept thinking of what Sonya had said, but she needed convincing. She needed a sign—something to help her decide what to do.

  Pausing to catch her breath, she planted her hands on her hips, watched the waves batter the shore, and finally, out of frustration, yelled, “Come on, already! Somebody up there help me out!”

  The sea and the trade winds off the water swallowed the sound of her voice.

  If the god Maui could pull the sun across the heavens, if Laka, goddess of hula, could pass on the hula and sacred dances and chants to the ancient ones, then surely somebody up there could take pity on her and show her the way.

  The waves rolled in. The sun warmed the land and fried the tourists, but there was no sign, no answer. No sudden clap of thunder, no cloudburst. Not even a misty rainbow.

  Stretching, Kat bent over and touched her fingers to her toes, and noticed something glinting in the hot sand. Kneeling down, she brushed the sand away to reveal a piece of white beach glass. Once clear, it was heavily frosted, its jagged edges worn smooth from tumbling and tossing in the surf.

  It was the biggest, most perfect piece of beach glass she’d ever seen. As she held it in her palm, she thought back to the day she’d given Ty the pieces she’d found on the beach near his home. Later, they’d made love in his outdoor shower and then Sunny had shown up at his door with Alice.

  “This means you thought of me at least seven times.”

  Clear as a bell, she heard Ty’s voice. She heard it over the sound of the wind and the waves. She closed her hand around the beach glass and started running back up the beach, back toward Kapa’a.

  Chapter 41

  Twilight cove

  Christmas day . . .

  CHRISTMAS CAROLS were playing on the CD player at the old Chandler house high on the point. Ty enjoyed carols right after Thanksgiving, but he was glad the big day was finally here and he wouldn’t have to listen to one more rum-pa-pum-pum until next year.

  True to form, the cold front they’d suffered for three weeks had moved on. The Santa Ana winds were blowing a heat wave through the canyons and passes; temperatures had been steadily on the rise all week long.

  It was ninety-five degrees in the shade and even hotter inside—prime weather for the Rose Parade next week, the kind of weather that brought all the “snowbirds” flocking to retire in California.

  The turkey was done to perfection, soaked in brine and barbequed the way his grandpa Chandler had taught him. Before he carved the bird, he opened the refrigerator, looking for the bottle of salad dressing Sunny had bought at the Twilight Farmer’s Market. The dressing was low fat, low salt, and he was sure low flavor, but he opened her contribution anyway and set it on the counter next to the salad.

  When she walked into the kitchen in a peach sundress and pretty, low-heeled sandals, he marveled again at how very beautiful she was.

  “You look great,” he told her. “Very beach.”

  With a smile, she pulled back her hair and he noticed that she was wearing his grandmother’s opal earrings. She’d never worn them before. Memories of the night she’d disappeared hit him hard.

  “What’s wrong, Dad? I thought you’d be pleased.”

  “I was thinking about the day you left. I looked around, saw that those earrings and Stinko were gone, and I was afraid you’d left for good. I thought maybe you sold them.”

  “How come you never asked?”

  “I gave them to you. What you do with them isn’t up to me.” They’d come a long way, he and his girl. He gave her a hug, let his arms communicate what he was afraid words could not. “I’m really glad you kept them.”

  “I would have only sold them if I’d had to. I took them to remember you by.”

  He was moved as much by her words as the tears he saw in her eyes. “Hey,” he warned, “don’t you dare. It’s Christmas.”

  Sunny sniffed. “Did you call Kat?”

  He wished she hadn’t asked. She’d been bugging him about it all day. It was one of the few Christmas gifts she’d asked for—that he call Kat so she could personally wish her a Merry Christmas. He knew that behind her request was the secret hope that he and Kat might get back together again. His daughter had turned out to be as stubborn as any Chandler before her.

  “She didn’t answer.” It still hurt too much to talk about Kat, so he handed her the salad dressing and abruptly changed the subject. “Shake this up, please. Is everybody doing all right outside?”

  “The last time I looked, R.J. was pushing Alice’s new kiddie lawn mower around the yard.”

  Nothing serious was going on between R.J. and Sunny—he had both their words on it—but he wouldn’t take bets about the future. Both Sunny and Alice worshipped the ground R.J. walked on. That was apparent whenever they looked at him.

  Ty was starting to think Kat had been right. Aside from their age difference, he really couldn’t think of a reason to object. Who better to trust his daughter to than his best friend?

  Sunny was tossing the salad and Ty had just pulled baked sweet potatoes out of the oven when the doorbell rang.

  Expecting another FedEx driver with a last-minute delivery, he wiped his hands on a dish towel as he walked through the house. He’d already signed for six packages of smoked salmon from friends in Alaska.

  He whipped the door open and felt like he’d been kicked in the gut as he found himself face to face with Kat.

  Her hair was styled in a short, artfully mussed cut that gave her an elfin look. Her skin glowed with a deep golden tan that brought out the freckles across the bridge of her nose.

  At first glance he thought she’d changed her makeup, but then realized she was simply radiant, glowing from within. The shadows that once lingered in her eyes were gone.

  He wanted to touch her, to prove to himself that he wasn’t dreaming, that she was really there. She’d come to him just the way he’d wished she would during the countless sleepless nights he’d lain awake, wishing things
had ended differently, regretting everything he’d said, everything he had done that last time they’d been together.

  Seeing her now, he thought he might be dreaming this impossible, miraculous moment. He wanted to take her in his arms, carry her upstairs, lock her away from the world, and keep her for himself forever.

  But now that she was here, he couldn’t move or speak, even though his mind was racing.

  Move, idiot. Take her in your arms and never let her go.

  Tell her how much you love her.

  When he didn’t immediately say anything, she started to blush. Her hand fluttered at the neckline of her knit top as she grew flustered.

  Suddenly, they both spoke at once.

  “I should have called—” she began.

  “I’m glad you’re here—” he said.

  Afraid she was going to turn tail and run, he reached out and took her hand.

  “You look great, Kat. Really, really great.”

  “I just flew in from Kauai,” she said softly, her eyes searching his face.

  “Come in.” He drew her into the room, prayed no one would interrupt. Not yet. He wanted her all to himself. He didn’t want anything to ruin the moment.

  “I came to give you something. Something from Kauai.” She took a deep breath and reached into the pocket of her khaki slacks, then held out her hand.

  He extended his, and she dropped a silver-dollar-sized piece of white beach glass into his palm. Speechless, he stared at it for a moment, realizing that the simple gift meant more than she could know, which made him smile.

  She’d been a couple of thousand miles away and she’d been thinking of him. He felt a surge of hope—more hope than he’d even dared to wish for. Even more than hope, it was a promise of things to come.

  “This is unbelievable.” He couldn’t stop staring at the beach glass in his palm. “You have no idea.”