THE GUESTS
Isabel was up early checking on Mele, her overly pregnant donkey. When she’d bought the farm fifteen years ago, a bunch of donkeys had come along with the place. Descendants of a line of hardworking animals who ferried bags of coffee beans to the coast, her current ones were fat and lazy. They also had a talent for multiplying. Each had its own personality, and Mele was a lilikoi-loving princess who hated to be alone. She followed Isabel everywhere.
After assuring herself that Mele was okay in a small paddock behind the garage, she brewed a pot of coffee and sat on the lānai with Kolohe, her mutt, taking it all in. Mornings here never got old. When she’d first come over from O‘ahu to look at land to buy, and stumbled upon this ramshackle house and struggling coffee farm, she saw right through the years of neglect and tangled vines creeping all over the railings. In her eyes, it was perfect. She could almost picture Walt standing between the trees, picking coffee beans and humming Amazing Grace, his favorite song.
She put in her notice at the university—she’d done her time—and they moved in on the twentieth of July. Cliff was more excited to fish on the weekends than anything, but he was enthusiastic about a fresh start. Isabel was hopeful that the farm would give him a sense of purpose and keep him busy, but the nightmares still plagued him. Isabel ended up doing most of the work herself, getting well acquainted with a hammer and a paintbrush.
It felt like forever ago when they’d met at a victory celebration on Hibiscus Drive. The whole island was in a frenzy, with huge parades and fireworks and men and women kissing in the streets. Izzy had given up waiting for Matteo. She’d already been through hell and back, thinking he was lost in action for six weeks, and then learning from Hudson of all people that he had shown up at a naval base in Southern China, carried in on a bamboo throne. She kept expecting a letter or an apology or a knock on the door that never came. So, when Cliff asked her to dance, she held out her hand and accepted.
Twenty years ago, next month.
A family of pheasants ducked in and out of the tall grass on the other side of an old rock wall, and she watched them, allowing herself a brief walk down memory lane. Back to the war, to the Dungeon and codes, and to the months she’d spent with Matteo Russi. She’d never told a soul about those years. There was too much heartache involved. When she’d finished her coffee, Isabel brewed more for Lu and mixed up a double batch of mango bread, a few loaves for her workers and two for Lu.
She was checking on the donkey again, who was posted up behind the garage studio, when she heard an engine. Kolohe started barking as a truck pulled up. It had been almost two years since she’d seen Lu and she could barely contain her excitement. Lu hopped out and ran over to greet her. Isabel hugged her and didn’t want to let go, inhaling her beachy smells and feeling her soft, curly hair. There was no one alive who she loved more than Lu. Whoever said a daughter had to be blood related?
Kolohe loved Lu, too, and greeted her with spins and twirls and whines. Lu laughed and bent down to kiss his head. Isabel noticed someone else in the car. A man stood up. A dark-haired man, backlit by the sun. For a second, she thought it was Matteo Russi. Probably because she’d just been thinking about him. One of those strange tendencies of the universe. Isabel squinted. He was holding fresh-cut yellow ginger and looking directly at her. Dark hair, dark eyes.
“You brought someone with you?”
“I was going to tell you on the phone,” Lu said, turning to look at the man. “But we thought it would be better in person.”
We? The man came around from the car and was walking toward her. She had a clear view of his face. He smiled. A whoosh ran through her whole body. Oh my God, it really was Matteo Russi. Same gap between the teeth, same swagger, same everything.
“Hello, Izzy, it’s good to see you,” he said.
Isabel found that she couldn’t speak. A vibration started up in her legs and moved its way up her torso and down her arms. Out through her fingertips. She reached out to Lu to steady herself. “Matteo? What are you doing here?” she said, half whispering.
“Lu and I are on assignment at the Mauna Kea hotel and we just made the connection. About you, I mean. I asked her to bring me,” he said, still holding the flowers.
“What a surprise this is.”
The math was not adding up.
“I know it’s a shock. We can leave if you like, come back another time.”
“No, no, you just drove all the way down here. It’s just the last thing I would have ever expected. To see you standing here in the flesh.”
He shoved the flowers at her, as though just realizing he still held them. In the exchange their hands brushed, and they both froze. Then the moment passed. He stood there awkwardly, bouncing on one leg. “Looks like you found yourself a real slice of heaven up here. I’m happy for you.”
If anyone, he knew her motivation for owning a coffee farm. “Being here was inevitable. Plus, I got Lu in the bargain, so that made it all the sweeter,” she said.
Matteo Russi had just waltzed up and shoved a ginger bush in her face. As if that could make up for twenty years of silence. Twenty years of wondering what might have been. Even when she’d been happily in love with Cliff, thoughts of Matteo would rise up when she least expected. She could still see herself throwing that pillow, heart cracked in two, as he’d walked out the door. He’d hurt her badly.
“Would you two like to come up? I have some fresh mango bread,” she offered, trying to appear calm and unfazed.
Lu squealed. “You didn’t!”
“You know how it is with the pigs. If I don’t pick them before they fall, every pig within a ten-mile radius beds up under the tree at this time of year.”
The old mango tree stood at least seventy feet tall. Every season, without fail, it delivered truckloads of mangos. She made mango bread, mango chutney, mango ice cream, mango mocha, and still had tons to spare. So much so, that by August she couldn’t even look at another mango.
“You sure it’s not an imposition?” Matteo asked.
He seemed so hesitant.
“Positive. Come on.”
She turned and walked toward the steps, Lu next to her, Matteo trailing behind. His presence was palpable, heating up her skin like it always had. He sat on the ohia log bench on the deck, while she and Lu went into the kitchen. Once there, with Matteo out of earshot, Isabel leaned back on the fridge and put her hands on her chest and let out a big, “Oh my God.”
“Are you okay?” Lu asked.
“I’m not sure.”
Really, she wasn’t. Her hand went to her watch, as it always did in hard times. She’d replaced the band a few years back. The smooth leather felt cool against her palm.
Lu was bubbling. “It’s been such a crazy week, and weirdly, we’ve become close. When we put two and two together, and I realized that the Izzy he’d been talking about was you, we both knew we had to come. He was freaking out on the way down. This is a big deal for him, too.”
“He burned me, Lu. Did he tell you that?”
Burn was a bit of an understatement, but over the years she’d come to understand that Matteo had never belonged to her in the first place. He had been devoted to Walt, and to the war. To doing the right thing and chasing a dream. But Matteo had been right about one thing: she wouldn’t have been able to handle losing him. As it was, she was still mourning what might have been.
“I should leave you two alone to talk. He has a lot to say to you,” Lu said, biting her lip. “But also, we came for another reason.”
“What other reason could there be?”
“Let’s talk outside, with Russi.”
Isabel faltered. “I’m not sure I’m ready for this.”
“No one is asking you to do anything. Just listen. Would you do that? For me.”
Isabel sighed and went over to slice the mango bread, while Lu poured coffee into three tall mugs. Neither spoke for a time, and Isabel finally said, “I just wish you had warned me.”
It was impossible to be mad at Lu.
“I suggested it, but he was adamant. I think he was afraid you wouldn’t see him.”
Out on the lānai, Kolohe had joined Matteo on the bench. Isabel set everything on the table, but Matteo couldn’t move because the dog’s head was resting on his lap. Years back, Isabel had found Kolohe way up on the mountain, bones showing and weak with hunger. Hunting dogs often got lost up there, and if they were lucky, found their way down the mountain. In the shape he was in, Kolohe would never have made it down. Isabel had saved his life, and in turn, he’d become her most devoted friend.
“I’m stuck,” Matteo said, running has hands through Kolohe’s short, brindle fur.
Lu looked surprised. “I’ve never seen him act like this. He usually shies away from strangers.”
It was true. Kolohe took a while to warm up to people, and was guarded around most men.
“Dogs always have a thing for me. Don’t ask me why,” Matteo said with the hint of a smile.
Strange how many of her memories from the war years had blurred, but those involving Matteo were still clear as motion pictures. Sometimes, when she closed her eyes, she could still smell the salt on his skin.
Lu handed him a plate and a mug and said, “I know you’ve already had your quota, but you need to try this coffee.”
Isabel sat on the far end of the bench, looking out into the trees so she didn’t have to look at Matteo. Close enough to touch Kolohe’s foot, but far enough to feel safe. There was so much simmering beneath the surface, so much to ask and say, but more than anything, she wanted to know what had brought them here. “Lu tells me that you two came down here for a reason other than just to pop in and say hi,” she said.
“Have you read the papers today?” Matteo asked.
“I don’t usually read the paper until the afternoon. There’s too much to do around here in the mornings.”
“One of Mr. Rockefeller’s guests went missing, is presumed to be drowned. You probably know of her—Joni Diaz.”
“The singer?”
He nodded. “A real tragedy and everyone is torn up about it. Anyway, they did a search and ended up finding her shoes on the rocks out near the point. But not before Lu and I went off on our own to help out and came across an old skeleton in a lava tube.”
He paused, rubbing Kolohe behind the ears in his favorite spot.
“Was it precontact?” Isabel asked, knowing that caves up and down the coast were full of old Hawaiian bones.
“These aren’t,” Lu said.
“We brought the sheriff back the next day. He examined them and thought it was a woman. Been there anywhere from ten to fifty years. And we found something else, Izzy.”
Isabel was trying to see the connection between a missing singer who she’d never met, an old skeleton and herself. Why had Matteo come all this way to tell her about it? There was no discernible pattern. Or was there?
“You said this was north of the hotel? Near Spencer Beach?” she said.
“It was a ring. I recognized it right away,” he said, voice low.
A lump formed in her throat. “What did it look like?”
“It was your ring. The one you got on the way to Goat Island. I lost my mind for a few hours there, when I was trying to figure out how that ring could have ended up in some cave in the flipping boonies, unless it was on your hand.” He turned toward her, and when she looked into his eyes, she found she couldn’t look away.
“I got two of them, remember? One for me and one for Gloria.”
He frowned. “No, I don’t remember.”
“It was such a fleeting moment in time. And think of what you’ve been through since then. But tell me, is the cave underwater?” she asked.
“High and dry,” Matteo said.
Isabel didn’t like where this was headed.
“You sure about that? What about in wintertime, when the surf gets big?”
“This was way above any high waterline,” Lu said. “We were well into the kiawe forest.”
That ring had been on Gloria’s hand the day she left for the Big Island. Isabel tried to make sense of this new information. “Where’s the ring now?”
“Sheriff Rapoza has it.”
“How sure are you that it’s the same ring?”
“I might not have remembered you getting two, but I know the ring.”
Isabel went inside and opened her little box from the windowsill, the one she put the ring in when she was out working in the yard. She brought the ring outside and held it out for them both to see. They both spoke at once.
“That’s it.”
Lu spoke up. “It’s the same. Only yours is shiny.”
Kolohe, who sensed that something big was going down, flipped around, and nuzzled his head into Isabel’s side. She pulled him close as that old sadness swooped in. Sweet Gloria.
“You think she could have been swept down the coast and somehow managed to climb out on the rocks? Was there anything else in there with her?” she asked.
“We don’t know. And yeah, there was that polka-dotted piece of material, maybe a swimsuit?”
An image arose. Gloria in front of the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, looking ravishing in a red polka-dot suit, leaning on a coconut tree, knee bent and in love with the world. Even though the world was at war. She was that kind of person.
Isabel stood up and went to the railing. “She loved that suit. I helped her pick it out, and she told me I could borrow it whenever I wanted.”
“You two coulda been twins. I remember that. Double trouble.”
“What did Rapoza say when you told him about the ring?”
Matteo, who had been leaning with his forearms on his thighs, sat up. “He doesn’t know yet. I needed to find you first.”
“You realize that this changes everything, don’t you? Way back when, I told the detective that I didn’t trust Gloria’s boyfriend, Dickie, but everyone seemed satisfied that she’d drowned. It was almost as though they couldn’t be bothered to even look into him. There was too much other stuff going on.”
“Why didn’t you trust him?” Lu asked.
Isabel explained how Gloria had come to her after finding the letter, and then the note that she’d tossed into the trash. I did find something curious, tell you when I get back.
She turned to face Matteo. “You know who he is, right?”
“I hardly remember the guy. My focus was elsewhere,” he said.
In the slanted sun, she could see that fine smile lines had formed on his face. If anything, they made him more distinguished. And now, he was staring into her with such force she was pinned to the post.
“At some point along the way he went back and took his birth father’s name. Dickie Thompson is Senator Richard Fuchs.”