I explained that she’d had run-ins with what seemed to be a malevolent ghost and maybe he charged more for ghostbuster services. I went on to say when the kahu didn’t show, she sent me to tell Ono things had gone great. She didn’t want him to know they’d been scammed.
“So, what did you say?”
“I said everything went fine.”
“You couldn’t come up with anything better than that?”
“Like?”
“Like, ‘I got a call from work right about the time he was supposed to show. I suppose it went okay, but I’m not sure’.”
“You know I’m no good at lying.”
“You’re no good at creative lying. Telling him the guy showed up was a total lie, and worse yet, it was completely unimaginative.”
“Okay. Point taken. But now Ono’s labeled me a liar and it’s damaged our relationship. He’s even threatened to tell Finn about it.”
“Where do I fit in here? I thought you wanted my advice.”
“I do. How do you think I should handle this with Farrah? I mean, I’m really ticked she threw me under the bus with Ono, but I completely understand why she did it.”
“I still don’t see what you want from me.”
“I want your opinion. Should I be mad at her or not?”
In the gathering dark he leaned over and squinted at me. “I’m not even going to honor that with a comment. But just so we’re clear, when you’re ready to tell me what’s really eating you, I’m ready to listen.”
CHAPTER 24
In the dead of night between Sunday and Monday my phone beeped to let me know I’d gotten a text. I tried to pull myself awake to get it, but as soon as I rolled over I fell back to sleep. When I finally woke up for good at five, I lunged for the phone first thing.
It was Finn. “Arr Maui @ 8.”
I blew out a breath. Only three hours before I’d have to face reality. For the past couple of days, I’d talked myself down from a ledge by acknowledging our marriage had been impulsive. Some might call it reckless. Only a few months had transpired between the “meet/cute” and the “I do.” Given I’d met Finn only a few weeks after my break-up from a long-term relationship, and given he’d just arrived in Hawaii after years overseas, we should’ve taken it slow. Allowed ourselves a leisurely engagement.
But now he wanted a divorce? Lots of couples experience rough patches. And more than a few have fertility issues. Why does adversity make some marriages stronger while others fail?
I got up and showered, dabbing on a bit of plumeria cologne. I’m not normally a person who goes for anything more than the scent of shampoo and soap, but one day when Finn and I were idly browsing an ABC Store in Lahaina, he’d spied a tester bottle festooned with a plumeria flower and he’d spritzed some on his wrist.
“This stuff smells like you,” he said.
“What?”
“Yeah, it’s you. See?” He’d thrust a sinewy wrist under my nose.
I sniffed the cloying scent; sure that he’d eaten or drunk something that’d messed with his olfactory nerve.
“This is pretty sweet.”
“So are you.”
I flushed at the compliment. I’d steered clear of girly-girl stuff since middle school, when I first recognized there were two ways for women to go. Demand to be treated as an equal, and don’t expect to be cut any slack. Or, use feminine wiles to cajole and manipulate your way to success. I went with the former. Not only was my personality more suited to straight-up competition, my face and body would’ve had to undergo a radical transformation for me to garner significant male attention.
The memory of Finn’s comment made me sigh. It was still a mystery why my radically handsome husband had singled me out. Maybe he’d finally asked himself the same question.
I went to the kitchen and was pleased to see Steve had already made coffee. I poured myself a cup.
“Big day, huh?” Steve popped out of the walk-in pantry and I jumped.
“I thought you’d left already.”
“Nah, sorry to rain on your parade, but the guy who offered his couch said I couldn’t come over until this morning. I guess he fared better at the B and C than I did last night.”
The Ball and Chain was Steve’s bar of choice down in Kihei. It’s a place that swings both ways: family-friendly deli during the day and pretty much only rainbow coalition folks after dark.
“When are you picking up Finn?”
“Eight o’clock. I guess I’ll go down to the shop for a bit before heading out to the airport.”
“I thought you said you were taking the day off.”
“I am. It’s just that I’ve got a couple of hours to kill so I might as well make the most of it.”
He eyed me like a wife who knows her husband is feeding her a line but she’s not quite ready to call his bluff.
“Okay. Well, the lovefest rations are in the fridge and the champagne’s in there, too. Call me if you run out of caviar. I’m just down the road a ways.”
Steve was notorious for demanding specifics from everyone else while remaining casually vague about his own circumstances. I attribute it to his decades of being in the closet with a hand on the trap door at all times.
I tidied up the kitchen and then went in to change the sheets on my bed. Something about going through the motions of my normal welcome home ritual comforted me. It was a good thing I never bought the home blood pressure cuff my doctor recommended just before I got put in witness protection because that morning I’d have been tempted to check it out. I didn’t need a cuff to know my BP was off the chart.
My pulse thudded in my ears as I made my way out to the car. I sent up a quick prayer to clear all pets and children from the street as I drove out of my neighborhood. I was running on fear and adrenaline. Even when I’d faced off with formidable tournament opponents I had no chance with, I always kept my cool. But on the ride to my shop I had to tighten my grip on the wheel to still my hands.
Why was Finn’s rejection so fear-inducing? I’d been tossed aside before. Maybe that was it. Maybe it was like being allergic to bee stings. The first time or two you swell up around the sting. It hurts, sure, but nothing earth-shaking. But after a few more stings things get serious. The body says, “I’m gonna throw everything I’ve got at this,” and the next thing you know your throat is swelling shut and you’re in full anaphylactic shock. Only a spendy Epi-Pen or a quick response by paramedics is going keep you from paddling your last race.
I got to the shop and went inside. Finn had left a voicemail on my shop phone.
“Hey, hope you’re planning to pick me up Monday morning, but no worries. If you’re not there I’ll grab an Uber.” His voice was casual, like calling a work buddy who owes you a favor.
I fidgeted, arranging and re-arranging the stuff on my desk before giving up and going over to the Gadda. I wasn’t really looking forward to dealing with more of Ono’s liar, liar, pants on fire accusations, but I did want to check out how Farrah was doing now that her house had been properly blessed.
“Hey,” she called. She was in the back, fiddling with the mister hose in the produce section. “You mind pulling that other end? I think there’s a kink in here somewhere.”
I picked up the hose where it was attached to the wall. Sure enough, after Farrah gave it a good tug the spray went from puny to full-out blast. Tiny droplets blew back in her face, clinging to her mass of espresso-brown curls and giving her a sparkling angelic halo.
“I’m getting all wet here,” she said, releasing the lever. The water shut off.
She dropped the nozzle and came over to me. Without a word, she encircled me in a tight hug. “My bad for making you drink the green Kool-Aid with Ono about the kahu. Are you mad at me?”
My mind flashed back to the dozens of times she’d drunk the Kool-Aid to protect me. One time she’d even endured a brutal beating rather than let the bad guys get me. Ono being perturbed at me was nothing. Besides, with Finn giving me the heave-ho, I
’d need Farrah’s love and support more than ever.
“No worries. We’ll get past this. We always do.”
“Ya know, Ono’s not really mad at you. He’s just totally gonged about how deep a hole we’re in, debt-wise. He even asked if I’d be willing to sell the Gadda.”
“You can’t do that. Besides, who’d buy it?”
She held out her hands, palms up. “Crazy thing is, I get offers all the time. Go figure.”
I couldn’t deal with the thought. “I’m on my way to pick up Finn.”
“You gonna be okay? You want me or Ono to trip down there with you?”
Oh yeah, that’s all I needed. A witness to the blood-letting. “Mahalo, but I’m fine. I think we need to some alone time.”
“Not a good word, ‘alone.’ Seems you and your man been spending way too much time alone lately. That’s what’s brought this on.”
I hugged her good-bye and headed to the airport. Farrah was right. Since we’d come back from our honeymoon it seemed Finn and I had been apart more than we’d been together. Would it really be that much different if we split for good?
I parked in the short-term lot and took my time getting across the street to the meeting area at the bottom of the escalators. I watched the people coming down, most everyone grinning and chattering, excited to start their long-awaited vacation. By contrast, the people lining up at TSA to go up the escalator and back to the mainland looked positively morose. Lots of tanned faces but not many smiles.
At last Finn came into sight. My breath always hitched when I saw him. The man was flat-out handsome and I’m not the only one who thinks so. The moving stairs slowly inched down to street level and I sniffed my wrists to see if I could still catch a hint of plumeria. On the stair right below Finn a flight attendant turned and said something to him, her face lighting up when he responded.
They got to the bottom and Finn raised a hand when he glimpsed me in the crowd. He made a last remark to the flight attendant and she looked over at me. For a brief moment I panicked that he’d spent the last few hours regaling her with his plans to end his short marriage. I felt a pinprick of anger at his betrayal but forced my face to stay passive.
“Hey,” he said as he threw an arm around my shoulders. “Glad you could make it.”
I looked up at him. Was he being sarcastic?
“Where else would I be?”
“No idea. You haven’t been answering my calls so I wasn’t sure if you’d show.”
“It’s not like I could call you back.”
“Right. But still. No way for me to know what was going on with you.”
This wasn’t going well. “Hey, but you’re here now and I’m glad to see you.”
“You as well. Where are you parked?”
His offhand attitude made me feel like a limo driver with a sign. Like I was picking up a total stranger for a hotel drop-off.
“What’s going on? You don’t seem very happy to be home.”
“Oh, I’m happy. If you’d been where I’ve been and done what I’ve been doing for the past week you’d be happy, too. I’m just totally trashed with jet-lag.”
“Can you tell me anything now that you’re back?”
“Not much. But even if I could, it probably wouldn’t make much sense until I get a few hours’ sleep.”
We trudged out to the car and Finn threw his small duffle into the back hatch. He waited at the passenger door, his eyes searching the parking lot as if looking for snipers, while I unlocked the car.
The ride to Hali’imaile was eerily reminiscent of the ride home from the fertility clinic a few weeks earlier. Each of us lost in our private reverie. I assume Finn’s jet lag didn’t help the situation, but I was eager to get on with it. I hadn’t counted on him being tired. Most times he came back raring to go. One more chink in the wall of what a few weeks ago had felt like a solid relationship.
We got home and Finn dragged himself into the bedroom and shut the door. I sat out on the porch for a while but when neighbors began trickling out to meet the kindergarten bus at eleven-thirty I went inside. I didn’t want to dodge questions about where Finn had been the past week, and I wasn’t in the mood to smile and talk story about their kid’s latest cute antic or commiserate with gripes about the county not filling the Upcountry potholes.
At noon Finn got up and rambled into the kitchen. I was sitting alone at the table, trying to decide whether to slap together sandwiches for lunch or make do with the “party food” Steve had left.
Finn went to the sink. “I need some water. Flying all night takes the piss and vinegar right outta you.”
I couldn’t speak to the piss, but from where I was sitting it seemed he’d displayed plenty of vinegar from the moment I’d picked him up.
I leaned back in my chair. “Are you ready to talk?”
He scowled. “Look. I haven’t eaten anything since take-off.”
I had no idea where or when take-off had occurred, but chose not to point that out.
He peered into the refrigerator. “Looks like you’re stocked up for a party. Wine, beer, fancy olives. Hope I didn’t spoil your plans.”
That was it. Hungry or not, I wasn’t willing to drag the inevitable out any longer.
“Look, Finn. I know why you didn’t call. And why you’re being like this.”
“Like what?”
I threw up a palm. “Like this. Crabby, pissy, even. You want me to pick a fight so you can blow up and stomp out of here. Then you can feel justified in ending our marriage.”
He shot me a sour smile. “Look, I don’t need to justify anything. I’m way past that.”
I couldn’t respond. My arms tingled as if I’d narrowly escaped a physical peril. Like when a car coming the other direction swerves at the last minute, avoiding a head-on. My pulse thudded, drowning out Finn’s next few words.
“—so what’s the point?”
I scrambled to pretend I hadn’t spaced out. “The point of what?”
“The point of messing around like this.” He sat down across from me. “Look, Pali. I had no idea, okay? I’d never have put us through this if I’d known. I think we should just go our separate ways. Fair dinkum. No harm, no foul.”
His handsome face turned ashen, as if he’d opened a vein. He appeared about to collapse.
My brain scrambled to catch up to what was going on. I ticked through a laundry list of possibilities. Maybe Ono had convinced him he could do better than a lying conniving wedding planner, or perhaps during his hush-hush deployment Finn had realized we’d rushed into marriage and he wanted an annulment. What’s that old saying, “Marry in haste, repent at leisure”?
He could be rethinking his entire life. Perhaps living in Hawaii didn’t agree with him, after all. Finn wasn’t built for same ol’, same ol’. He craved novelty and adventure as much as, or maybe more than, his older brother. Traveling the world, working a clandestine and seemingly dangerous job didn’t jibe with setting up housekeeping on a sleepy backwater island with a woman whose day-to-day chores included sobering up pimply-faced grooms and refereeing cat fights between mothers-of-the-bride and their ex-husband’s latest fling.
The clock on the kitchen wall ticked menacingly in the ensuing silence.
He took my hand in both of his and leaned in. “Remember in high school civics when the founding fathers claimed a slave only counted as three-fives of a man?”
What? The abrupt change of subject rattled me as if he’d left and slammed the door behind him.
“I don’t remember that.”
“Maybe they didn’t dwell on it in Hawaii schools. But I was raised in the South where it was a big deal.”
I shook my head. I had no idea where he was going with this and wasn’t eager to get into a civil rights discussion while the love of my life was about to kick me to the curb.
“Well, that’s how I feel, Pali.”
I snapped to attention. Had I heard correctly? Was this actually about us?
“Wh
at’re you saying?”
“I’m saying my failure to give you children is a burden you shouldn’t have to bear. It makes me less than a man. And you deserve a whole man. So, I’m prepared to give you a divorce. I considered annulment but the lawyer I talked to said divorce is actually easier.”
“You want a divorce?”
“Not really. But I don’t want you resenting me, either. Face it. I’ve seen how you look at Farrah’s kids. In the long run, it’s best we part ways before it’s too late.”
“Best for who?”
His mouth twitched into a boyish grin. “I believe the correct word is ‘whom.’”
“Seriously? You’re correcting my grammar while you break my heart?”
“That’s not my intention. But we can’t go on like this. Believe me, you’ll thank me down the road.”
I swiped a hand across my cheek and was startled it came away wet.
He stood and came around the table, placing his hands on my shoulders. “I’ve got a meeting in Lahaina at two. You don’t need to hire a lawyer unless you feel you need to. I’m proposing we just go back to the way things were.”
I snuffed up a trickle that had nearly made it from nose to lip. “Sit down, Finn.”
“What for?”
“I heard you out. The least you can do is provide me the same courtesy.”
He shambled back to the other side of the table and pulled out the chair, angling it so he wouldn’t have to look me in the eye.
Again, I swiped at my face, but it was like trying to hold back the tide. “I appreciate how you feel. But I’m stunned by your cave man solution.”
“I just think—”
“No, your turn’s over. Now you listen.”
He slumped lower in the chair, but kept quiet.
“We took vows, remember? In sickness and health, right? We haven’t even talked about this. You’ve spent the past few years in Australia, a place where men sweat and women ‘glow,’ but give me a break. I’m not sure I even want kids. I thought you did. That’s why I went to the clinic with you. But if that’s not going to happen, are you telling me the only reason you married me was to have kids?”
Isle Be Seeing You (Islands of Aloha Mystery Book 9) Page 17