Chapter One

November 1941, Honolulu

It was only a coincidence. A strange and curious coincidence.

That was my first reaction when the grandfather clock in the hallway stopped. Just like that. I’d been winding it regularly. Yet, the hands were pointing to exactly the time I had been born.

Later I turned the whole thing over in my mind. Gave it some more thought. But in the afternoon hush when the clock fell silent, when I fit a key into the cabinet to restart the pendulum, it honestly never occurred to me that events had been set in motion much earlier.

I pushed open the door and blinked in the dimness of the library where Robert Louis Stevenson and King Kalākaua had once come for tea. Or, so I’d been told.

A melody of six chimes floated through the doorway, and I checked my watch. The grandfather clock was right on time again. Lingering wasn’t the smartest idea, I suppose, seeing as the electricity hadn’t been turned on today as expected. But I spotted a copy of Pride and Prejudice on a shelf where I had put it…how long ago had it been?

Inside the cover I had written my name, Merrylei Wentworth, and below that, the year, 1931. Mother had given it to me ten years ago, after my twelfth birthday, when she must have guessed, as I did not, that it would be the last one we would spend together. Now, Daddy was gone, too.

I flipped through musty pages that flexed with a rustle, until a shudder of distant thunder pulled me out of my daydreams. Impatient to bring the shrouded room out of mourning, I’d reached for one of the furniture covers when a low groan made me pause. “Who’s there?”

The carpenters had gone for the day, leaving the smell of fresh paint trailing behind them to blot out a decade of vandalism and rotting timbers. For three generations the Victorian mansion had been in my family and I would not, could not, let my heritage slip away. Not when the house was the only possession I had left in the world.

A stray breeze caught an edge of the dust cover with an invisible hand. “Auntie, is that you?”

With rain threatening, Auntie May wasn’t likely to walk up the stone pathway from the remodeled carriage house where we’d been staying. All too often she reminded me that of the choices I had ahead in life, “the first one is marriage,” then she hid her worries about my plan to open a guesthouse by using any excuse to stay away. Like getting caught in a downpour.

It was probably the creaking of an old wooden shutter swaying in the wind. There were times, during fading daylight, when the house seemed to be stirring back to life on its own. I tilted my head back as though I might hear a soft chorus of laughter from my childhood. The memory rose without substance, then dissolved into what must have been the wind after all. I scolded myself for jitters and pulled the cover off the sofa, nearly hidden behind the immense mahogany desk.

At that moment, a sliver of lightning flashed across a dark form passing by the library doorway. I caught my breath and stayed motionless, knowing that a scream wouldn’t be heard all the way to the carriage house.

Granddad’s gun rack was on the wall behind me. Not daring to exhale, I slowly rose and lifted a .22 that I suspected hadn’t been fired—or even loaded—in years. It’d be enough to give a prowler a good scare. Then I set my jaw and edged into a shadowy corner that would give me the advantage of surprise.

Whoever was in the house was moving among the rooms with the stealth of a cat. It wasn’t easy to track the person’s location by sound alone. Only a creak here and there.

I shrank further into the darkness while my shoulders cramped into hardened knots. What on earth had possessed me to come up with such a ridiculous idea? The old gun wouldn’t be much defense against someone bent on more than idle mischief.

The form was back at the doorway now, and my heart began pumping so hard I was sure it could be heard across the room. Resisting an urge to run for the hills, I planted both feet and shouldered the gun to approximate a warning aim.

More noises rattled at the front door, adding the hopelessness of escape to my predicament. A set of footsteps ran down the hallway just as a dim orange glow flickered in pinpoints on the wall. The faintest wave of electricity had flitted into the filigree wall sconce to throw my corner into light.

Before I could react, the form crossed toward me and twisted the barrel aside. Shocked by the man’s strength, I completely lost the ability to breathe.

“May I help you with that?” The velvety calm voice wasn’t what I expected. “I didn’t mean to surprise you.”

I brushed against what I could now tell was a tailored suit in silky worsted. Brooks Brothers, I speculated wildly as he eased his hold on my arm. The kind of suit a plantation worker making ten dollars a week couldn’t save for in a lifetime. Even the man’s musky scent was powerful. Not the usual Old Spice patted on by every up-and-coming bank teller. This person might not be a vandal, but every cell in my body cried out that he could be dangerous in other ways.

“You found her!” My cousin Johnny burst in, still wearing high-tops and gym shorts from basketball practice. “And the electricity’s on. At last,” he announced. “The utility trucks just left.”

“Yes. Miss Wentworth—isn’t that right?—was showing me the library.” The man smoothly covered up for my fidgeting, while I forced a confident smile and propped the gun against a wall.

Johnny dragged his gaze away from the man long enough to give me a grin. “I knew you’d still be in the house somewhere when Mr. Sumida introduced himself at the front door.” He rocked back on his heels, pleased with himself. “He came to buy some of the antiques you’re selling.”

As if coping with embarrassment wasn’t enough, I now had to swallow my dismay at the idea of selling off yet another family heirloom to keep the renovations financed. The silver punchbowl had gone first. Then the Limoges tea set and…well, too much to dwell on.

Instead, I followed Johnny’s stare as he eyed the recent celebrity with a cross between curiosity and regard. So this was Jamison Sumida. His picture had been in the society pages attending an Oriental art exhibit—an architect with an esthetic for melding East and West, he’d been called. The timing of the feature story had been memorable, odd actually, I’d thought at the time, appearing in an evening edition of the Star Bulletin that headlined the threat of Japanese sabotage on Hawaiʻi’s military bases.

However nothing in the newspaper prepared me for the person watching me now with an expression I couldn’t fathom for the life of me. Under his gaze, determination, surprise and whatever conflicting emotions had been surging through me were swept aside, as though the moon had suddenly passed in front of the sun, leaving only a rim of fire visible. I was dazzled, temporarily speechless as he stepped out of the darkness.

He was strikingly handsome, with high cheekbones and well-defined lips turned down in a suppressed grin. He was being mentioned as a candidate for the Territorial Legislature representing an upscale Japanese neighborhood in Kaimuki. It wasn’t right on the seaside, but close enough for a million-dollar ocean view.

He was younger than I expected, maybe early thirties, with a kind of samurai strength in his stance that had Johnny looking a little star struck. My own impression was that he was the most attractive man I’d ever seen. I wasn’t exactly a country bumpkin about such things. After all, my family had been leaders in island shipping, had hobnobbed with royalty—though now, it was true, we were terribly down on our luck.

“The auction was yesterday.” I managed to find a dry imitation of my voice.

“I was sorry to hear of your loss.” His tone was earnest with condolence even though Daddy had passed away several weeks earlier.

He didn’t know I hadn’t seen my father in the three years since I’d steamed out of Honolulu Harbor on the S.S. Lurline, bound for Mills College. We’d barely written. Before that, I’d been sent away to boarding school. At first I’d been puzzled, then hurt by his distance, but grew to accept the fact that when my mother slipped into a fever and never woke up, he had pushed me away—the blonde teenager who was so much like her—as a painful reminder of what he’d lost. Then he moved from the house, with its boarded-up memories, and fell into a decline that took him away from me, too.

After those first lonely years, I stopped looking for an over-the-rainbow ending. So, there aren’t any guarantees that love will last forever? Maybe it was better to learn the lesson early, instead of clutching onto juvenile fantasies that led to nowhere but disappointment.

Mr. Sumida paused in a moment of respect, then continued, “It’s your mother Carolyn’s paintings that I’m interested in. I’m something of a collector.”

Mention of my mother’s name caught me off guard, as if I was letting my thoughts show, and I searched for the right words to put to my emotions. “I won’t be able to help you with that, I’m afraid. I’ve loaned one of her oil paintings to the Honolulu Academy of Arts. They’re planning an exhibit of local artists next month. There are only a few others, and I’ll hang them in the house—nothing I’d want to sell. You can understand.”

“What about those paintings in the attic?” Johnny eagerly volunteered.

I shot him a look, but not before I noticed Mr. Sumida’s barely raised eyebrow. It was saying, “Yes? What about those paintings?”

“It’s true, some early works of Mother’s are packed away. From before I was born. I haven’t had a chance to look through them, but you can leave your card.” I gave him a meaningful look. “If you want.” I shoved my hands deeper in my pockets to signal indifference because I was still smarting from being caught in an embarrassing situation.

He slipped a slim wallet from his inside jacket pocket and set one of his cards on the desk. “You can reach me at my office phone, if you like.”

“I don’t think it will be anytime soon.” I dodged again. “I’m pretty busy with the house right now.”

“So I see.” He glanced around the room. “You’ve repaired the moldings nicely.”

“The library didn’t need as many repairs as the rest of the house because it was always kept locked. It’s the hallway that was badly torn apart by prowlers—you can tell where they pried apart the oak paneling and the built-in cabinet, like they were searching for something.”

“What do you think they were looking for?”

“Who knows?” I shook my head.

“Maybe a secret treasure,” Johnny cried with the glee of a teenager’s wildest fantasies.

“Oh, there’s nothing to those old stories.” I dismissed the possibility with a shrug. Daddy had left debts, not jewels presented to the family by royal decree. If you believed the rumors.

We gravitated into the hallway, with its grand staircase capped by a carved banister leading to the bedrooms. I deliberately walked the other direction. Toward the front door. An expansive arch divided the front hall from the living room and the sunroom beyond, which provided some light even at this hour.

That arch had always fascinated me as a child, and I’d avoided standing under it out of my own curious superstition that the whole house could fall in and crush me at any second. Now I stood beneath it, expecting Mr. Sumida to pass by.

“You’ve had the header reinforced, I see. The archway doesn’t look original to a home of the 1880s.” Mr. Sumida stood under the arch beside me, as though he read my mind and was tempting fate in his own way.

“Header? Oh you mean the supporting beam. Yes.” I felt myself flush a little at my childish fears. Or was it his nearness? “The arch was always a big worry of mine when I was younger, so I had the renovations started in this room.”

He stepped into the living room to inspect a faded mural of the gardens that had once been tended behind the house. “Who’s restoring the wall painting? Someone local?”

“Actually, I’m doing it myself. I’d like to make it the focus wall of the room.”

“You must have your mother’s talent.” His eyebrows lifted, interested. “Did you study fine arts?”

“I took studio classes, but my degree was going to be in art history…if I’d been able to finish my senior year.” I didn’t mean to sound like an ungrateful daughter, so I added, “I wanted to come home.” I pushed every word of the telegram about Daddy that had reached me too late into the back of my mind.

An uncomfortable silence settled around us. I took a breath and forged on, “Restoring the house has been a marvelous learning experience. There’s a lot of family history here. What do they say, ‘If walls could talk’?” I jabbered away, but he didn’t seem to notice. And where had Johnny gone?

I looked up and his eyes met mine. “You’re fortunate that your dreams for the future have a sense of heritage. So many people spend their time inventing something that never existed, then find themselves resenting anyone who might break the illusion.” He spoke with a trace of wistful acceptance.

How different our lives must have been. He had probably worked his way through college, or maybe there’d been a scholarship. And before that, childhood in a plantation shack.

His candor was so unexpected that I retreated into the safety of idle conversation. “I read that you designed the Hayashi building last year. That must give you a sense of accomplishment.”

As if he needed my stamp of approval. I examined the shiny refinished floor with an intense interest so I wouldn’t have to look at him again.

“Yes, things have been going well.” A hint of amusement had crept into his voice, before he continued easily, “You aren’t worried that you’re too far from the beach to attract tourists? I’ve heard you’re opening a guesthouse.”

“We’re only a few minutes from the harbor here in Makana Valley. There’ll be strolling paths—you can see the ocean from a hill behind the house—and it turns out that the water pipes to the swimming pool are still working. When the dirt is cleaned out, it’ll get filled again.” For good measure, I added, “The Manoa Valley Inn is successful, even without a pool.” I was maneuvering us toward the front door as I spoke.

“Perhaps you’ll need a shooting range.”

Was the man mad? I glanced up to see him repressing a smile, but unable to hide the sparkle in his eyes. “Why, no. I was planning one for archery.”

He had an agreeably surprised expression that invited me to continue. “I was captain of the archery team in college, and I’ve hit my share of bull’s-eyes.”

Touché, Mr. Sumida.

“I’ll remember to stay out of your way during target practice,” he said, laughing.

“I’m a good shot with a rifle, too.”

We laughed together then, and I felt my mood lifting to match the good-natured teasing he’d started. Our awkward meeting seemed behind us as I relaxed into naturalness.

The soft light of early evening filtered through the front door as we stood quietly in the vestibule for a few moments. The smell of rain was in the air—but coming from the next valley over. It was what I loved about Hawaiʻi, the changes that flew across the landscape in a single day. Mother used to tell me, “If you don’t like the weather now, just wait five minutes.”

“I’d like to stop back in a couple of days to see how your renovations are going, if that’s all right. I’ll bring some drawings that show details for repairing the porch balusters and this doorframe. See how the designs have chipped away?” He ran his strong fingers across the mottled wood.

My reverie was so encompassing I had almost forgotten who I was with. It was as if I’d known this stranger longer than just a few minutes and we had formed a comfortable familiarity between us. In my mind, he changed into someone from an earlier time—a likeness blurred by passing years but brimming with intensity. I’m sure we had been standing together at nightfall like this before, looking through the darkening trees. That other persona became so real I turned…to find him watching me.

With some effort I pulled myself away from the bittersweet urge to forget about the renovations and simply stand next to him, listening to the breeze circling around the house. “That’s very thoughtful, Mr. Sumida. I’m afraid I’m not in a position to hire an architect right now. Of course, do feel free to visit.” After my unintended invitation popped out, I asked myself what in the world had gotten into me. Having strangers drop by at all hours was the last thing I needed. Then again, the drawings would be helpful. And maybe I would sell a painting after all.

“Good, then. Let’s not think of it as a business arrangement so much as a chance to restore a lovely structure. My friends call me Jami-san.” He pronounced it like a Japanese name.

I introduced myself, and because I didn’t know if we should shake hands, nodded in what I hoped was a polite excuse for a bow.

I saw someone moving around a shiny black car at the turnaround in the driveway. That would be Johnny. He spotted us in the doorway and trotted over breathlessly shouting, “Lei-lei, did you see the new Cadillac?”

Instead of answering, I implored Jamison, with dramatic excess, “Please ignore a childish nickname of mine that embarrasses me more than I can say.”

“I won’t tell anyone your secret,” he whispered, imitating the sinister rasp of a movie villain.

The three of us spoke casually of cars and basketball and Humphrey Bogart’s latest movie and other nonsense as the remaining dregs of tension I’d felt during the last half-hour ebbed away into the darkness. Jamison Sumida was the most handsome and suave man I ever met. Not old enough to be fatherly, but not juvenile like the boys I had dated on the Mainland.

All the same, as he drove away, I realized that I knew nothing about him other than what little I’d read in the newspapers. Somehow in the mix of our conversation, he had teased information out of me. My mother’s paintings, the renovations, my college art classes. All the while giving nothing of himself. It was a conversational art form that was dangerous for the unsuspecting.

“Come on, let’s make sure all the lights are out,” I suggested to Johnny.

A chill had come over me. I didn’t want to go back into the house alone, or more accurately, didn’t want to walk out alone in the dark.

“Not getting chicken in your old age, are you?”

“Race you to the library,” I fired back, already sprinting into the unlighted hallway.

Johnny covered the ground between us in several strides, letting out a tiny yelp when he bumped into the banister. It struck me as odd, since he knew the house almost as well as I did. Then a current of alarm shot through me that had chicken skin rising on my arms despite the balmy night.

Jamison Sumida had negotiated the downstairs back rooms in near darkness without a sound. As though he knew his way around. The creaking…could it have been the stairs?

I shivered again. This time it was the memory of his arms holding me. There was the strength of a warrior about him, but as we talked, I saw that his eyes weren’t warrior eyes at all. They were darkly hidden, with fleeting sparks of clarity. And his scent—a hint of Lifebuoy, perhaps—but much more.

He had gotten more information out of me than was necessary for a casual art collector. Never mind. I’d turn the tables on him when he came back. Find out why he was interested in paintings that weren’t widely known outside Honolulu’s budding art community. I was already planning my strategy as Johnny and I walked back to the carriage house.

“What were you showing Mr. Sumida with that old gun of your grandfather’s? Geez, Lei-lei you looked like you wanted to shoot something.”

“I heard some noises.” I’d never felt uneasy alone in the house until the vandalism became a daily problem. “There was another broken window yesterday. I’m worried that my leasehold farmers are behind it. Mr. Ching seems like the ringleader.” I cast a look over toward several small lettuce patches that were tended on the property behind the house, as if I might spot him in the darkness. “I can’t seem to convince him that no one’s going to be evicted when the guesthouse opens.”

In itself, the reluctance of the farmers didn’t completely unnerve me; what did was the ghostly sensation the last few days of being watched. Especially in late afternoons when long shadows felt like fingers reaching out for me—by someone who was determined to stop the guesthouse from opening. By any means necessary?

“Let’s not say anything about the gun to your mother.”

“You don’t have to warn me about that, I can tell you,” Johnny ended with a snort. “She’s probably forgotten all about the gun collection, and if she remembers, it’ll be just one more thing for her to worry about. Probably one of the carpenters stayed late,” he concluded, sensibly.

Hearing someone else come up with a logical explanation, even if was my sixteen-year-old cousin, shored up my resolve to restore the house. What started out as a solution to my financial predicament was becoming a passion. Every brushstroke I added to the mural my mother painted so many years earlier, brought me closer to her. Yet, the changes carried the house forward into a new time, with new experiences waiting for me.

I suddenly saw things a little differently. Coming back to Hawaiʻi—and the house—hadn’t been an interruption to my life. It was the start of something new. Any resentment I felt began falling away in that instant. The loneliness of boarding school and faraway college classes seemed to break apart, too, as though I’d been building a protective shell over the years without realizing it. I suddenly felt a little lighter, like an old winter coat I no longer needed dropped from my shoulders, leaving me less covered but more nimble on my feet and excited for the chances in front of me.

My uplifted attitude pushed back against the creepy sensations I’d been feeling. I reminded myself that there wasn’t any reason for a carpenter to loiter after the crew left. I could straighten things out when I spoke to the contractor in the morning. That would settle that.

Auntie May had the radio on and a top-ten hit floated out the open windows, lifted on the breath of night. I recognized Tony Martin’s achingly mellow voice singing, “Fools rush in, where wise men never go…”

Fools, indeed, I hummed along, then stopped to glance back. A slice of moonlight cast the house in a dark silhouette against the sky.

“Though I see the danger there, if there’s a chance for me, then I don’t care…” the voice crooned on.

Someone had been watching the house again. I sensed it the way you could always tell when someone was staring at your back, like a hollow tingle boring into your skin. If you turned around quickly, they looked away. But not quite fast enough.

The sensation floated around me in the night air, hovering long after the last strains of following your heart into danger had flitted away.

****

I was preoccupied, still, when I woke the next morning. I’d been dreaming of my mother’s paintings—walking through the gardens and seascapes she captured on canvas. In my dream, they were as translucent as liquid glass that I effortlessly slipped through without the barrier of two dimensions.

A slash of buttery gold filtered through the treetops outside my window. Determined to be ready when the carpenter crew arrived, I dressed in wide-legged trousers and a blouse, then opened my door to let the air circulate with the sounds of rustling leaves that broadcast the start of day.

My dressing table was at an angle that gave me a view of the landing at the top of the stairs. There wasn’t any sign of Johnny, so he must have left for school. Auntie May was bustling around in her housedress between her room and those downstairs.

“Are you spending the day with the carpenters again?” She poked her head in-then-out, without waiting for my answer.

“Umm-hum, if I can ever get my hair to cooperate.” Then I muttered to the mirror, “How does Veronica Lake do it?”

I had parted my hair on the side in order to sweep a long wave beside one eye like the movie star, but every time I bent over, I couldn’t see a thing. The wave insisted on flopping over my face.

“What’s brought on this great interest in hairstyles?” Auntie popped back in again. She was eying the curlers I slept in, scattered on the glass in front of me. “Not a certain Mr. Architect? Johnny told me he was coming back to buy some paintings.”

“Not hardly. I wanted to try out something new, that’s all. Maybe for the grand opening.”

For today, I’d simply clip the wave back with a barrette. It wouldn’t do to have my hair dipping into the painter’s buckets.

“Speaking of The Architect, what do you know about him?” It wasn’t remotely possible that she was thinking of a romantic connection between us. Even in socially mixed Hawaiʻi, there was a subtle under-current of separation between the groups—Hawaiian, Caucasian, Japanese, and military. The Japanese were particularly close knit. Men who had come to the Islands as field laborers married picture-brides brought over later from their own country.

Before she could answer, the phone rang downstairs. “Do you want me to get it?” I asked.

“You stay and doll yourself up. It’s about time you attracted a nice young man and settled down.” She hadn’t said, “and give up this guesthouse idea,” but it was in the air.

Auntie May had barely turned thirteen when my mother married Daddy and moved away into the Makana house. I could understand how the place represented the loss of her adored older sister, rather than the last vestige of my parents’ life together. She’d been siding with real estate brokers and insurance agents who urged me to sell the property.

“It’s for you,” she called up from the bottom of the stairs. “Mrs. Davenport, from the Art Academy. She says it’s important.”

I bounced down the stairs but stopped short seeing Auntie’s hand over the receiver. “She sounds very upset,” she whispered.

I nodded my thanks for her discretion. Mrs. Davenport was on the Board of Directors. “Hello, this is Merrylei.”

After the first few words, the voice on the other end began rattling out of control. “My dear, I have some distressing news. I don’t know how to start.”

“Please, Mrs. Davenport.” I gripped the phone as though I could wring some sense out of it. A coil of unfocused dread tied up my stomach.

There was a long silence before she spoke. “Last night the Academy workshop—the one in the back—was broken into.” More words rushed before I was able to pick out, “…police don’t know. They need a statement from you.”

The ache in my mid-section spread to my heart. I could barely keep the tremor from my voice as I refused to ask the question that fear had formed in the back of my mind. “My mother’s painting—are you calling about it?”

“The painting was in the workshop for re-framing and now it’s...gone.”