Doubt that the sun doth move, doubt truth to be a liar, but never doubt I love.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Hamlet (Act 2, Scene 2)
CALEB
Grandfather summons me, and it irritates me that I’m answering his call. We’re meeting for dinner at the hotel restaurant where he’s staying in Vancouver, Washington, across the Columbia River from Portland.
The hostess directs me to his table. Grandfather looks up from taking a sip of his drink and sets it down as I arrive.
“Caleb, good to see you.” He stands and we embrace; he pounds me hard on the back.
“Grandfather.” I sit across from him, and I’m surprised to see that he really is getting old.
“Do you know what I drink?” he asks, touching the glass.
“You drink scotch.”
“Yes.” He seems pleased that I answer correctly. “When he and I were friends, Augustus Monrovi introduced me to the pleasures of scotch. Read up on the history of it sometime, it’s interesting.”
“Okay,” I say, wondering why we’re discussing this.
“I ordered for us already. This is a nice hotel, I’ve been happy with it.”
I glance around the restaurant. Candles flicker on the tablecloths and the windows open to the Columbia River.
“I considered staying at the Monrovi Inn . . . but maybe next time I’m in town.”
“I know what you’re trying to do.”
He leans back in his seat. “What is that?”
“You made an offer to buy the inn.”
He nods. “I did. And I was turned down. The first time. I think that Reed Monrovi might be a reasonable man. My second offer is very generous, especially at this time in our economy.”
“You really think he’ll sell it to you?” My stomach contracts and I think of Kate.
“Why not? He needs the money. His other properties are in trouble, deep trouble. It would save his company.”
“And you’d finally get what you want.”
“It does feel rather empty now that it’s on the table after all these years.”
I don’t know what to say. The Monrovi Inn wasn’t just a hotel to the Monrovi family—it was more their home than their house was. Their entire lives wrapped around that particular hotel—the first in their chain, and the only one that they loved. My father loved that land too. He loved it for the memories and the sacredness once bestowed on it. And Grandfather wanted it to win some old grudge that he wanted me to continue.
“What is happening between you and the Monrovi girl?”
I look at him directly. “I’m in love with her.”
Grandfather slams his hand down.
“End it.”
“I can’t. I tried.” I shrug my shoulders. “It’s not to spite you. I tried to stay away and expected to only feel contempt for her. I tried to end it before it began.”
“You are the future of Kalani Corporation. There’s no one else to take the lead.”
“I’m only seventeen years old.”
Grandfather leans back and folds his arms across his chest. “I was nineteen when I opened my first business.”
“Yes, I know. You had already fought in the war after lying about your age and joining up at sixteen. At seventeen, you’d killed more men then you could remember. At eighteen, the war ended and you went home to start a business. That was your life. But I’d like to graduate high school and college before taking over a multimillion-dollar company. I’m not starting it from the ground up, and I’m not prepared to take it over yet.”
“Yet. I am glad to hear you say that. You will take it over, and it’s time that you took a larger role in the company. Now.”
“Grandfather. I’m not leaving.”
He takes another drink of his scotch.
“Because you are in love with a white girl.”
“I am. And someday, if she will have me, I plan to marry her. It must be on the table now. You have always been clear about what you expect of me.”
The waitress arrives with our food. I lean back as she sets the matching plates of sea bass, grilled potatoes, and asparagus before us. Grandfather doesn’t remove his stare from me.
“Haven’t you listened to me all these years? Our blood must be preserved. The Hawaiian tradition has become a cartoon to the world. We are silly hula girls and men with flaming fire batons. We must bring back the pride of our people. Our ancestors demand it.”
“It’s not that, Grandfather. It’s specifically the Monrovi family. Why do you hate them so much?”
His crow-black eyes that once struck fear in me bore into my eyes. As a child, one look like this and I would cower. No more. I clench my jaw. If I am not willing to give up everything for Kate, then what are my words, anyway?—they are nothing. But it’s more than giving up my future, my family business, and being cut off, alone in the world. For all his faults, I do love my grandfather. He is a bitter, angry, spiteful old man. But he is my grandfather.
“Do you know the only thing that can tear apart a friendship between two men who fought a war together?”
I look at him curiously, not understanding what he means. “Augustus Monrovi and I loved the same woman.”
“Kate’s grandmother?”
Grandfather shakes his head, looking down at his food. “No.”
“Nene?” I try to recall the few memories of Grandma Nene. She had beautiful silky black hair and was the best storyteller in our entire family. She was of Hawaiian royalty— a direct descendent from King Kamehameha—and when I was a child, her stories brought the battles and lost loves to life for me.
“No, not your grandmother. This woman was my first wife.”
“You had a first wife?”
“Your father doesn’t even know that,” Grandfather says with a huff of laughter. He waves the waitress over and orders another scotch and a Coke for me.
He doesn’t speak for a long time, and it’s the silence that tells me not to ask more about her right now. I study his face and glimpse a more vulnerable side.
“Grandfather, you’ve told me about the property and hotel and about being proud over our land back home. I’ve heard about it all my life. The land that was blessed. But for a land that was blessed, I can’t understand why it would be fought over with so much hatred.”
He stares at me with his glass midair.
“I need . . .” Grandfather pauses, puts down his glass, and looks at me directly. My grandfather has never used the word need in conjunction with himself in my entire lifetime.
“I have cancer,” Grandfather says, making minute adjustments to the cuff links on each sleeve.
“What?” I set my hands on the table. He appears unfazed.
“I have cancer, and I need you to come home.”
KATE
I’m sitting in a corner at Starbucks, working on the love poem. Ms. Landreth finally called my name, and while once I couldn’t find enough to write about love, now I have too much. I’ve written page after page in my notebook, trying different methods and directions. How can I possibly capture love in words? It is pain and bliss, discovery and death. But in words it reminds me of Elaine’s poem—dramatic and full of analogies.
Leaning back in my seat, I consider texting Caleb, but I tell myself that I can and should and will do something alone. Independent, strong woman that I’m trying to be, I must make myself sit at this Starbucks and work alone. Besides, I remind myself, he’s working and talking with his father, trying to decide what to do. What he chooses has a direct effect on the future of my heart, and perhaps this poem.
There is a couple sitting a few tables over who look like they must live on a farm. I imagine an apple farm. He’s wearing a plaid shirt and she sports something I guess she found at the thrift shop. Her hair is long and frizzy, formerly medium brown, but now so mixed with gray that it looks a shade of light red at first glance. I can see the man’s face better, as he turns it often toward the woman. No one would look much at this man, he’s so plain and unassuming. He drinks a hot mocha with a straw. What captures my attention is that this couple hasn’t let go of each other’s hands the entire time. They talk, sit in quiet contemplation, she sways to the Beatles playing over the speaker, they look at each other—I see admiration in his eyes. He rubs the light stubble on his wrinkled jaw, and there is no one else this man sees but her.
Love. What is it? Why do we need it? Where does it come from?
I want to know this, so I can figure out what to do.
Love is everywhere, in everything. Love is between a child and her mother. It’s there in the joined hands of the apple farmers a few seats away. It’s with the homeless man and his dog that I saw on my drive here.
Rich, poor, American, Middle Eastern—no one is immune to love. It wraps around each of us, changing who we are, shaping us. The lack of it warps us, destroys us, turns us to evil. Perhaps that’s what happened to Caleb’s grandfather?
And love is now between Caleb and me.
“Your love poem?”
It’s Elaine, glancing over my shoulder as she pauses on her way toward the counter.
Instinctively I cover the page. “Oh, hi,” I say and then nod. “Yes. It’s hard. Harder than I expected.”
“Tell me about it.” Usually Elaine expresses her disdain for me up front, but today, it feels like a truce has begun. We talk a minute longer about Ms. Landreth’s final project—a profile of a great woman in literature, then Elaine moves off to put in her order.
On her way out she says, “Good luck with it. I was probably wrong, what I said in mine, but it felt right at the time. But if love isn’t death, what is it? That could be your poem.”
She leaves and I realize, strange as she’s become, Elaine has given me some guidance. Returning to my notepad, I write my thoughts, crossing things out. If love isn’t death, what is it?
I write down words from childhood: God Is Love.
Since childhood Sunday school, I’ve been told that God is love. We colored it on our papers, banners hanging from the ceiling proclaimed it, we sang songs and used hand motions emphasizing the truth.
My pen stops moving. It finally comes home to me. I thought I understood, but now I find a new clarity. It isn’t a simple statement like, “The sky is blue,” and yet it’s exactly that simple—and even more complex. When I think of the intricate science that makes the sky blue, I see how easy it’s been to miss the truth.
God is love.
He was love and will always be love and is love. It’s simple and also the most profound statement on the planet.
Can love, then, survive without God? When people live without God or reject him, love remains. Love pulses through the world because God brought it into being and so the Creator and creation are both infused with love.
I stare at the couple holding hands, and a woman giving her little girl a sippy cup as she waits for her coffee, and a young guy and girl leaning close, laughing together. Love is here.
Perhaps this is the answer to my fears. True love means a true God.
I want to talk to Caleb about this. I pack up my notebook and hurry toward my car. If I really believe in God, as I do, then I can find some measure of peace in this love of ours. Because if God is with us, love is with us. Our love plus his love means forever.