by Edie Claire
Yet still, he made no move.
The sun began to set, and although Ri wished they could catch the spectacle from up on the mountain, she could hardly regret being where she was. The colors in the sky were still surreal — a little too purple to be normal, thanks to the vog — and she was thoroughly enjoying their long, lazy walk in the balmy air. As they fell back into another comfortable silence, she found herself glancing at him surreptitiously, wondering what he was thinking.
He was attracted to her, yet he was clearly restraining himself. Why? Ri assumed the most likely stumbling block for him would be concern over dating a co-worker, or any woman who lived at the Hilton. Technically, she was both, but neither reason was good enough. Ri could take care of that.
The second possibility was trickier. What if he was looking at the amount of time available to them and thinking, “what’s the point?” Most men would be fine with a short-term fling, of course, but she was betting Wolf wasn’t like that. Everything about him implied a man who was steady and solid. A man who appreciated things that lasted.
Obviously, he didn’t know her well. If he did, he would know that when Sriha Mirini Sullivan pursued a dream, she did not let mere circumstances get in her way. The perfect internship, the perfect grad school, the perfect career. All in good order, with patience and time. If she had to leave her family and fly thousands of miles and eat ramen noodles for four months to get the internship her heart desired, then that’s what she would do. Wherever she had to work to save money for grad school — to get the degree that would make her ultimate dream job possible down the road — she would do that, too.
She felt the same way about the perfect relationship. There were no perfect people and there was no perfect guy; she was certainly not perfect herself. But if she ever found a man with whom she was convinced she could share her life — a life that would be filled with as much love and laughter as her parents enjoyed… Well, there would be no stopping her. She would move heaven and earth to make that happen.
Whether Wolf was perfect for her remained to be seen. But until she ruled that out, the door between them would stay open. And no little thing like the Pacific Ocean was going to close it. Not on her end, anyway.
“Is there anywhere else you want to drive tonight?” Wolf asked lightly.
Ri considered. Could she counter the man’s stumbling blocks — or at least her best guesses at them — without flipping him out? She had to try. Time was slipping away, and he looked entirely too delicious in that athletic-fitting tee.
They reached the truck. “Let’s head back up the mountain before it gets any darker,” Ri suggested. “I’d like to catch as much of the sunset as we can. Then maybe you can show me wherever it is you like to go camping up there.”
His eyebrows lifted in surprise. “Hosmer Grove? It’ll be dark by then.”
They got in and buckled up. Ri looked out the window in the direction of Haleakala. “Is it spooky in the dark and the fog?” she asked.
Wolf grinned at her. “It’s… atmospheric.”
Ri started up the truck with a smirk. “Perfect.”
Brilliant purples, oranges, and reds mixed, shifted, and lingered over the horizon as Ri drove the truck uphill. They fell quiet again, enjoying the view, as the sky slowly darkened. All the while, Ri planned how she might explain herself, deciding to impart the necessary information in reverse order. If Wolf didn’t connect the dots immediately, he’d be better off. She was a big believer in honesty, but when you were as prone to elaborate fantasy as she was, there were parts of your brain fruit you really should keep to yourself.
“I’ve heard people from home say they wouldn’t like living in Hawaii because they’d miss the changing of the seasons too much,” she mused. “I can see that. Spring and fall in Maine are truly amazing. They’re explosions of color, and the change in weather is refreshing. But people don’t realize you can go from summer to fall just by driving an hour up Haleakala, either!”
Wolf chuckled. “True enough. I liked working closer to sea level in the winter when it was in the seventies, but now that it’s in the eighties every day, it gets to me. If I were going to stay here, I’d rather live higher up on the mountain.”
“I’d live anywhere on the islands if I could afford it,” Ri slipped in smoothly. “I was hoping to find some kind of job here after the summer ended. But now, that’s not looking too realistic. I need to save enough in the next year to cap off the grad school fund.”
She could feel Wolf’s eyes on her. “You’re not going back to Maine?” he asked.
She shook her head. “My plan is to start grad school a year from this fall. But until then, I’m a free agent. I’ll go wherever the winds take me. Assuming the winds take me someplace I can work in the field and still save enough money without starving to death.”
“Want it all, do you?” he asked facetiously.
Ri grinned. “I strive for perfection.”
“Well, best of luck to you,” he said. “I admire your chutzpah.”
Ri fought back a queer sense of disappointment. If he hadn’t said that in his alluring husky whisper, it would almost have seemed dismissive. Perhaps she was imagining it.
“What about you?” she asked. “Do you picture yourself living in Alaska for the rest of your life?”
He was quiet for a moment. “Not necessarily,” he answered, his tone somewhat wistful. “I’m happy there. But I’d like to travel. I’d like to work on different volcanoes around the world.”
He went silent again, and Ri asked nothing more. So far, so good. She had parried potential stumbling block number two, and it was the hardest. Getting rid of number one was child’s play; she just had to wait a while.
She slowed the truck down as they entered a thick patch of fog. They were up into the cloud zone now. The sky was totally dark, and cottony white wisps floated across the road before her headlights, alternately hiding and revealing close outcroppings of black rock mere feet from the truck’s bumpers.
A hole in the fog opened suddenly, and a tall tree sprang up from an otherwise barren knoll right before them — a scraggly evergreen shaped like a candelabra. “This is so eerie,” Ri enthused, having to restrain herself from slamming on the brake. She half expected the Phantom of the Opera to show up next, plunking away on an organ carved out of the black rock. “I love it.”
Wolf chuckled at her again. “Then you’re really going to love Hosmer Grove.”
Ri slid her eyes toward him with a smirk.
She would indeed.
Chapter 20
Acadia National Park, Maine, Labor Day, 1995
“They’re all playing so well together, aren’t they?” Julie Sullivan heard her older sister say. Julie replied by making a shushing sound and rapping her knuckles on the wooden bench seat.
Karen laughed and sat down beside her. “Oh, don’t give me that. As far as I’m concerned, you’re a miracle worker. I still can’t believe how far Ri’s come. And now, seeing the two of them… My God, Jules. We all thought you were crazy, adopting again. You know that, don’t you?”
Julie looked at the half-dozen young children, all related through her extended family, that were buzzing happily around the playground by the picnic pavilion. Her eyes focused, as always, on the two little girls who were her heart and soul. She smiled to herself. “Oh, I know,” she said wryly.
“Well, you were crazy,” Karen insisted. “We couldn’t imagine you putting yourself through everything you went through with Ri all over again. And even if a second one was easier, it seemed like bringing another child into the family was sure to upset the apple cart. Ri had gotten so clingy with you — we were all sure she’d go mad with jealousy.”
Julie kept smiling. Her big sister had never been one to reserve her opinions, but at least she admitted when she was wrong. In this case, Julie couldn’t fault Karen’s logic. Julie and Tom had taken an incredible risk in adopting Mei Lin, with the statistics weighted so heavily against smooth sai
ling. Yet here they were, six months later, and Julie had never been happier.
She felt she could take no credit for that. Sometimes, you just got lucky.
Ri picked something out of the rubber mulch and carried it hurriedly toward the bench. “Mommy,” she announced, laying the wrapper from a package of cheese crackers on Julie’s lap. “This is trash. You should throw it away so Taylor doesn’t choke on it.”
Julie fought back a laugh. “I will do that. Thank you, Ri.”
The child scuttled back to the others. “She speaks so well for her age,” Karen praised. “Mom and I were just talking about that. So clearly, and what a vocabulary! I know she’s four. But when she looks no more than two and a half…”
“I know,” Julie agreed with a chuckle. “It freaks people out.”
They watched as Ri returned to the play area, where a second little girl stood waiting for her. The two were almost the same height, but Mei Lin was rounder and chubbier. The younger sister’s dark, straight hair was pulled into a pony tail with a pink ribbon, and her face was bright with a smile of relief. The second Ri stepped back into the mulch, Mei Lin dove forward and enveloped her sister in a bear hug.
“Oh my,” Karen gushed, her hands flying to her mouth. “I can’t believe Ri lets her do that!”
They watched as Ri clasped Mei Lin back, briefly, then set her aside in order to return to the important business of rearranging X’s and O’s on the giant flip board.
“We can’t believe it, either,” Julie admitted. “It took so long to get her to accept any kind of affectionate touch. But now she laps it up, as long as she trusts whoever it’s coming from. And with Mei Lin… Well, it’s funny, Karen. There was something between those two girls from the very beginning. Mei Lin is such a loving soul, you can feel warmth just radiating from her. I believe it’s simply who she is. And somehow, Ri sensed that. She’s never seemed to feel threatened by Mei Lin. The jealousy we expected just isn’t there. They do squabble sometimes, but with Ri it’s more a matter of control, and Mei Lin always gives in eventually, so that takes care of itself.”
“Interesting,” Karen remarked. “I wonder what will happen when Mei Lin realizes that even though she’s a year younger, she’ll probably always be bigger than Ri?”
Julie laughed and pointed at the playset. “You seriously think that will make a difference?”
Ri and her cousin Daniel, who was six years old, were having a disagreement over the placement of the X’s. Ri was standing with her hands on her little hips, scolding him. Daniel jumped off the platform and walked away.
Karen lifted an eyebrow. “Better keep an eye on that one, sis.”
“Oh, don’t worry,” Julie laughed. “At least we’ve got the hitting stopped, thank God. She hasn’t socked any kid in the face for almost a year. Now that was scary. What child does that? I mean, with preschoolers, I can see kicking or biting or even punching in the stomach or something, but seriously… what drives such an otherwise sweet little slip of a girl to ball up her fist and swing like Muhammed Ali?”
Karen cracked up. “It is pretty funny.”
“Not when you’re living it, it’s not!” Julie retorted. “I used to have nightmares of her being arrested for assault as an elementary schooler. Anyway, she’s over it now. She can be moody, and she still has occasional ‘rages,’ so to speak, but they’re much less frequent, and she’s learned how to channel her anger better. And her bad dreams are much less frequent, too. I’m really starting to believe that by the time she’s an adult, those awful memories of her first months of life will stop haunting her. They’ll always be in her subconscious, of course. She may always be ‘hypervigilant,’ when it comes to protecting herself. But she’s showing real empathy, now. And she knows how to love, and to be loved.”
“Like I said,” Karen repeated, smiling indulgently. “You’re a miracle worker.”
“No,” Julie insisted, shaking her head. “It wasn’t us, much less just me. We adopted her at a young enough age, and we knew what we were dealing with and were able to get help quickly. Children adopted at older ages can have much more serious problems. And so many parents aren’t told what to expect and then either don’t know how to get the right help or can’t afford it. Plus, some children are just naturally more resilient than others, for reasons no one understands. Every child is different. Tom and I were blessed, plain and simple. Twice.”
They watched as Ri tired of the tic-tac-toe board and came down to join Mei Lin and their younger cousin Taylor, who were making roads in the rubber mulch and driving large plastic trucks along the trails.
“Ri does still have some social problems,” Julie continued. “She tends to isolate herself. She doesn’t like meeting new people, and her preschool teacher says it seems hard for her to make friends.”
“I’m sure that’s just a matter of time, like everything else,” Karen assured. “Remember how long it took for her to bond with you, and now look at her! It shouldn’t be any surprise if she’s slow to make other friends; sometimes the kids who are closest to their parents are like that. She’s probably just an introvert by nature. Good Lord, my Katie hung on my legs and wouldn’t say ‘boo!’ to a goose until kindergarten!”
Mei Lin came running up. She barreled straight into Julie’s knees and fell forward into her mother’s lap, giggling. “What’s up, love?” Julie asked, hugging her.
Mei Lin said nothing; she merely kept on giggling. She rolled around in Julie’s lap a moment, smiled at her aunt, then bounded off again.
“She’s such a dear,” Karen gushed. “She certainly doesn’t seem to have any bonding problems.”
Julie shook her head. “Not really, no. But she was never in an orphanage. We’re watching her for PTSD because she’s suffered so much loss and so many abrupt changes, but so far she seems amazingly resilient. Being with her biological family the first two years of her life made all the difference, I think. Her birth family must have been very loving. Her foster family, too.”
Julie’s voice cracked a little. She didn’t like to think of what Mei Lin had gone through. The agency had explained that Mei Lin’s parents, who lived in a remote, rural region of China, had been essentially destitute when they had been killed together in a bus accident. An older brother had been taken in by extended family. Two-year-old Mei Lin had been surrendered to the state.
Mei Lin scampered over to pick up a truck and started moving it along a road next to her cousin Taylor. Ri pointed to a different road, and Mei Lin obediently moved her truck to that one.
“Uh-oh,” Karen said ominously, making Julie look up. “Here comes trouble.”
Their younger brother’s two hellion sons, Tad and Kade, were running over from the pavilion. Julie sighed. Her brother had been divorced for years and hadn’t disciplined his kids when he was married. Now their time with Dad was a free-for-all.
The women tensed. At seven and nine years old the boys weren’t evil, but they delighted in pushing hot buttons — like dropping F-bombs around “uptight” people and making fart sounds during large group prayers. Aside from irritating adults, they easily made themselves unpopular with their cousins, too.
“Tad and Kade!” called out Taylor’s mother, who was sitting on a bench on the opposite side of the playground, nursing a newborn. “You behave yourselves over here!”
The boys looked over at their aunt briefly, dismissively, as if they had no idea who she was. Then they strolled up to the children playing with the trucks.
Julie watched, unsurprised, as Ri immediately withdrew from the boys’ vicinity. Ri took a long time to warm up to other children. She rarely saw these two cousins and hence took no interest in them. Kade, the nine year old, watched the trucks moving along the roads for all of about five seconds. Then he reached down and snatched Mei Lin’s truck from her hands.
“Oh, no,” Julie sighed, preparing to intercede.
Mei Lin jumped up and held out her arms to the boy. She wanted her truck back. The boy moved
it out of her reach, and Mei Lin made a jump for it.
“Kade!” Julie called evenly. “Mei Lin was playing with that truck first.”
The boy completely ignored Julie. Seeing that Mei Lin was far too short to reach the truck when he held it high, he lowered it just enough to give her a sporting chance. Mei Lin made another jump, this time grabbing onto it fast and managing to hook her elbow around it. Unprepared for such an effective attack, Kade responded by pressing his palm square in the middle of Mei Lin’s face and shoving her off the truck and onto the ground.
Mei Lin fell flat on her back and burst into tears, and Julie started running. But Julie didn’t get there first. She was still a good ten feet away when a miniature whirlwind of frizzy dark curls and red polka dots suddenly appeared between the figure lying on the ground and the boy looming above. Before Julie even had time to shout, a tiny tan fist smashed into the third grader’s slack-hanging jaw.
Chapter 21
Maui, Hawaii, 2016
“Welcome to Hosmer Grove,” Wolf announced with amusement. “What do you think?”
Ri looked through the windshield of the parked truck. Beyond the end of the bumper she could see maybe six feet of soggy grass at the edge of the parking lot. Everything else was completely obscured by fog. “It exceeds my wildest expectations,” she answered, reaching for the door handle. “Let’s go.”
Wolf laughed. “Go where, exactly?”
Ri popped open the door. “Well, how should I know? You’re the tour guide, aren’t you?”
He stared at her a moment. Then he opened the glove compartment, pulled out a flashlight, and got out of the truck.
Ri reached back into the cab and turned out the headlights. Blackness surrounded her so suddenly she froze in surprise. “Wow,” she said, feeling foolish. “I’m not used to this much darkness.”
“Most people aren’t,” Wolf said, his voice startling her as it moved quickly to her side of the truck. “Most places, there’s always light coming from somewhere. But Haleakala’s known for its dark skies. That’s why the summit’s so good for stargazing. Not this particular campground, so much. Most of the time, it looks exactly like it does right now.”