Page 76 of Big Island Sunset
“Remember when we hiked past Waipeo?” Emma asked in a ragged voice. “We went and camped in the next valley.”
“I was only fourteen, but you two let me tag along.” Suddenly Lani was fighting tears too. “He always let me tag along.”
“He loved you like a little sister. More, maybe, since you never had to share a bathroom.” Emma tried to laugh, but she was still so raw that it sounded more like a sob. Lani knew that Emma’s relationship with her own brother had been strained lately.
“He carried my pack,” she recalled. “I couldn’t keep up, so he tied my pack to his and carried it for hours.”
“I remember,” Emma said quietly, resting her head on Lani’s shoulder.
“It kills me that I didn’t get more time with him, that I stayed stuck in Alaska for so long.”
“He liked to knit. Did you know that?”
“You’re kidding.”
Emma shook her head and smiled. “We took a class together a couple years ago. He had everyone at the station knitting before long.”
“Typical,” Lani let out a huff of breath that approached a laugh. “Did you know that he loved to quilt when we were kids?”
“Really?”
“Look.” Lani traced a clumsy line of stitches on the quilt that sheltered them. “He used to sit and help our grandma.”
More tears fell down Emma’s cheeks as her fingertips followed the same line. “I didn’t know that.”
“On rainy days, mostly. I didn’t have the patience for it, so I’d usually be playing with dolls on the floor or something. But he would sit there with her for hours, listening to her stories and helping her sew.”
“That’s why we’re here,” Emma said, still tracing the stitches that her husband had made decades before. “It’s like he’s stillwith us. The nails he put into this house, the trees he planted with his dad. His family, the stories you all have. It’s as close to him as we can get.”
“I’m glad you’re here.” Lani scooted closer and twined her arm with Emma’s.
“Me too,” she said in a broken voice.
They lay there for a long time, remembering.
24
Tara
Tara was up at first light, surveying the damage as her land faded from black to gray.
Despite the best efforts of Liam and his legal team, the towering albizias in the neighboring lot still stood. The owners had hemmed and hawed and made promises, but they hadn’t done a thing.
If she wanted to force them to fell the trees, Tara would have to take them to court — and she didn’t have the money or the time or even the inclination to start a fight. It had faded into the background with everything else that she had going on, but she should have seen it for what it was: a great big warning sign that she wasn’t as invested in this piece of land as she had once been.
She was tired.
Branches had fallen in the night, their crashing collisions with other branches on the way down audible even above the wailing of the storm, but a quick walk along her property linerevealed that none of them had fallen on her land or on her fence. Not this time.
The animals were spooked, so she took her time with morning chores, tending to her livestock before starting in on cleanup. She milked the goats while Piper fed the birds and Paige checked on the rabbits.
So many animals to move… a feeling of overwhelm began to pull at her, but she pushed it away.
There was no rush. They had plenty of time. She could find new homes for some of her animals and move others up to Liam’s property even before she emptied out her house… the home where she had raised all three of her babies.
Lord, but she was a mess of mixed emotions. She was ready to leave this place, ready to move on from the house she had owned with her ex-husband and start a new life with the man she loved. Even so, it was a huge transition, both logistically and emotionally.
Moving made sense, but that didn’t make it easy.
