CHAPTER 26

We are seated in a dark corner of Chip’s Steakhouse, an elegant open-air restaurant abutting the Kupulupulu Beach Resort. From here, Kerry Naikelekele and I are in full view of the quiet lagoon and ocean beyond. A full moon illuminates the goings-on at a private party by the pool, and I think briefly of Erin’s wedding reception, of how she must have felt, watching Trevor from the corner of her eye, wondering how she could be subject to such a vicious betrayal.

“You’ve hardly touched your filet,” Kerry says quietly as I brood. “Isn’t it cooked right?”

It’s cooked perfectly—charred on either side with a warm pink center—and I tell her that. I tell her, too, that I have the Simms case on my mind. That’s not entirely true. I’m distant, but not because I’m pondering the evidence, the possible witnesses, my opening statement. My appetite is buried fully under thoughts of Erin Simms herself.

“How is the case going?” she asks.

I push aside the plate and lift my Glenlivet, postponing an answer. Dragonflies skip across the surface of the koi pond like pebbles on a lake. It’s the stuff of dreams, yet I’m unable to escape the maze of land mines I’ve set for myself. All in a mere two weeks.

“Let’s not discuss the case,” I tell Kerry.

“All right. Then let’s finish the conversation we started the other night.”

This is our second date, not counting the evening I got my ass kicked in the Kanaloa’s men’s room. The conversation we began—well, she began—on our first date involves yet another territory of the psyche I have no desire to explore. My law partner Jake Harper has been asking me such questions for the better part of a year, and he’s still no closer to learning about the pre-lawyer Kevin Corvelli than Kerry is.

“Which conversation?” I ask, attempting to steer the ship into another harbor. “Our talk about the humpback whales?”

“Your parents,” she says. “Come on, Kevin. I told you all about mine the very first night we met.”

True enough. “I don’t mean to sound aloof, Kerry, but—”

My eyes inadvertently fall upon a woman sitting three tables to my left. She looks back at me with a mischievious grin across her face. Then a bulbous bald head abruptly eclipses my view.

Sherry the cougar. And her husband Bruce Beagan.

Sometimes an island can feel so small.

“But what?” Kerry asks.

Truth is, I’m not even comfortable saying that I’m uncomfortable speaking about my childhood because I worry it places too much weight on the topic. Neither can I lie, because then I must admit to myself that there are things I want to hide. But the past, for me, doesn’t need to be hidden; the past, for me, must simply step aside.

“I’m sorry,” I tell her. “I just have something else on my mind.”

We finish our drinks in silence and pass on dessert. Kerry’s beauty is beyond words, but just like the scenery that surrounds us, it cannot pull me back to earth. A few weeks ago I’d be inviting Miss Hawaii back to my villa to meet Grey Skies, but tonight all I can do is tell her I had a great time and ask her to forgive my remoteness.

My decision to cut the date short has nothing to do with Sherry or Bruce Beagan. Nothing to do with Kerry or her persistence in asking questions about my parents. Nothing even to do with the fact that I have a brand-new jet-black Maserati sitting in the resort’s garage and I’m dying to ride it into the night.

No, my decision to cut the date short rests on a desire much more sinister.

I suddenly need like nothing else in the world to be on the other side of paradise, to unclothe myself in candlelight, to meld my body with that of my client’s.

To burn away this long, hot summer night with Erin Simms.