Chapter Ten

There, I thought with satisfaction, tying the tail end of an ACE bandage around my wrist. “Auntie,” I called out across the hall, “can you check on this for a minute before you leave?”

She came out of her bedroom wearing a powder blue dress trimmed in white piping.

“You look like a movie star,” I said, “not a medical supervisor.”

“Volunteer supervisor,” she said. “When Edward see’s the way you’ve dressed this bandage, he’ll promote you to the head of the class at Red Cross training tomorrow. Here—” she adjusted the tension as she crisscrossed the band around in a figure eight “—it isn’t easy to bandage yourself.”

I had my reservations about attending the class, until Edward convinced me that I could use the training if one of my guests got injured. Now, I needed to use it on myself.

“How did this happen, again?”

“I fell when I was walking in the forest.” I didn’t want her to worry any more than she had when Captain Maddox showed up at our door. My request to have him look into mischief at the house had taken her by surprise; learning that I had been attacked would have unleashed a round of pleadings to sell the house and move. “What time will you be home?”

“The Red Cross meeting will be over around four, and then we’ll get a bite to eat, so sometime after that.” She leaned to check herself in my vanity mirror and pinched her already glowing cheeks into more color. “Johnny’s gone off with a school study group for a couple of hours. It has something to do with a biology experiment.” Her reflection smiled back with approval. “I’m glad he’s taking his studies seriously. He’s not going to get through college by just throwing basketballs.”

Johnny at a study group? That sounded weird, unless someone at the Yamamoto farm was involved. “Yes, we should encourage more of that,” I agreed, keeping my inkling of Johnny’s other interest out of it. “This afternoon I’m researching the beach my mother painted. It’s the one in the painting that’s going to be in the Art Academy exhibit. Jamison Sumida—you remember, from the Historic Society?—he thinks he knows where the beach is and will drive me out there.” I kept my voice upbeat and casual. “He wants to buy the painting after the exhibit,” I said, intimating that spending an afternoon with him was a matter of financial necessity, not choice.

“The architect who collects local artists?” she asked with astonishment. “Is that really necessary?”

“The money will come in handy.” I sidestepped what I suspected was her main concern.

Just then a car glided down our driveway and stopped in front of the house. Auntie reached down to check that the seams of her nylons were straight, so I knew that the worst was over.

“That’ll be Edward,” she said with a smile, then gave me a serious look. “I won’t worry about you unless you’re not home when I get back.”

I nodded in agreement and called, “Have fun,” at her flying curls and hemline as she disappeared down the stairs.

Instead of waiting for Jamison, I walked to Makani Kai, confident that he’d look for me there when he found the carriage house locked. His big car purred into the turn-around soon after I arrived. I was trying, unsuccessfully, to coax a morning glory vine up through a veranda trellis.

Let me help you with that,” he offered. “You’ve hurt your wrist.” He circled my wrist gently with both hands, as if he would soothe the injury right through the bandage with a touch.

The gesture left me shaken, so I knelt to pick up a trowel and stabbed the dirt around the vines to camouflage my reaction. There was so much work that needed to be done before I could open the guesthouse. Everything was complicated by vandals adding more repairs for the carpenters, and now, someone was trying to get rid of me, too. For one agonizing moment, I wondered if Auntie and Jerry were right, that a woman wasn’t up to the demands of running a business. Then I remembered the expression on Rose’s face when she looked out at the lettuce field, and I stood up with my shoulders back.

Jamison was weaving the morning glory vine into a playful pattern of lavender blossoms through the white slats. “How’s this?” He took a step back to study the artistic effect. “And I’ve brought you something.”

“More drawings?”

“Not exactly.” His eyes hinted of secrets. “This is something for you.”

He carried a small flat package from his car that looked suspiciously like a painting and watched while I peeled away the brown wrapping paper with one hand.

A sudden thought took hold and twisted in my mind. This isn’t real. There’s no way this is real. The elegantly simple frame and painted canvas tore my breath away. I might have faltered, but I don’t think so. Jamison shifted against me as if to tuck his arm under my elbow while I held up the painting. “How?” I said.

It was a portrait. A portrait that could’ve been a mirror image of my own face. A little younger, and improved, maybe. The eyes in the painting were wider than mine, set above lifted cheekbones. I had taken enough figure drawing classes to discern the perfect artistic proportions of the features in front of me.

It wasn’t the work of a mature artist, however. The technique was unpolished, though not juvenile. The lower right hand corner showed a signature beginning with a swooping C of the single name “Carolyn” followed by the letter H.

It wasn’t my face in the painting. It was my mother’s. A self-portrait that was painted before she married, when she was Carolyn Hartfield.

In that moment of recognition, it dawned on me that everything makes sense if you look at it from the right angle. I swallowed the gasp in my throat to regain some composure. “She was beautiful, wasn’t she? Daddy could have married any one, but he chose her.”

“It’s your mother, isn’t it? I want you to have it,” Jamison insisted. “I heard about the break-in at the Art Academy. There’s a rumor that a painting by a local artist was damaged.”

Was someone spreading rumors about my mother’s painting? “Well, there’s nothing anyone can do about that now.”

The expression on Jamison’s face told me that I was confirming what had only been a suspicion. “This isn’t meant to be a replacement for the painting you lost. I wasn’t going to put this on public display.”

I ran my fingers across the sculpted wood. “You made the frame? It’s beautiful.”

He nodded.

“I don’t know,” I hesitated. I shook my head as any tactful way to offer him money eluded me. Trying to maintain an even tone I said “It doesn’t make sense for you to give me a painting when you’re interested in buying one.”

A moment of surprise made me look vulnerable, and I had learned not to give in to those impulses. Letting down my guard was a luxury I couldn’t afford. The success of the guesthouse depended on keeping my wits about me.

“We don’t have to make any decisions about that now,” he said, taking the painting from me. “The resemblance to you is striking.”

I didn’t expect that.

He was staring at the painting with an unreadable expression. I had to admit, there was a compelling attraction to seeing a portrait of my mother as she had visualized herself in her teens. I couldn’t drag my eyes away, until the long pause almost made me squirm.

I looked from him to the painting and back, and realized I had to tell him the truth. I’d been naïve to think I could hold in everything that had taken place, spend a casual day with him, and not reveal the attack in the forest.

“Things have happened.” I hesitated, waiting to judge his response. “Things I can’t explain.”

His posture stiffened for a moment then relaxed. “Oh? Do you want to sit down?”

We settled ourselves on the veranda steps, shaded by the overhang. I smoothed my skirt from my hips to my knees in broad strokes with my right hand after he set the painting inside the door. “I’ve been having some…difficulties, you could say, with the house. And other things,” I said in a small voice. I had limited myself to telling Captain Maddox about observable details. This would be much harder.

“What kind of things?” His voice softened though his demeanor remained subdued and observant.

I couldn’t get into that until I filled in some background of my childhood, so I started with being sent to boarding school when I was twelve, then jumped ahead to last month when I’d come back from the Mainland. “When the Art Academy requested one of my mother’s paintings, I gave them a portrait of my grandmother.” I wrung my hands together before I went on.

“The one from the break-in?”

“Well, the police haven’t sorted out the details. That doesn’t matter. The painting was deliberately damaged, but there was something my mother had printed on the back. I was able to make out that it read, “The King’s Crown.”

Jamison nodded.

“It didn’t mean anything to me at the time.” I told him how I’d gotten an impulse to start sketching again—doing scenes from around the house, but always going back to one. How I’d picked an old stone bridge to add to the cobblestone road I was sketching that wasn’t so much a memory as what I thought should be there. Then I reminded him about my mother’s paintings in the attic.

I kept my eyes down, staring into my lap. “The problem is, her painting of the bridge is exactly the same as the sketches I’d made, even though I’ve never seen it before.” My mind ran wild, wondering if Jamison had already decided I was crazy. I decided to charge ahead and tell him how I found out later that my father had nicknamed the bridge The King’s Crown. “The house kept getting broken into, and remember the desk drawer?” I looked into his face.

He met my eyes and nodded. “I do.”

I continued. “I kept thinking about the king’s crown and the way the diamonds in the real crown had been stolen fifty years ago but never recovered.” How could I go on, yet how could I end here? That I’d found a map showing where the old bridge had been built, and started following a Hawaiian wall. “Until someone hit me from behind and I fell.” I rubbed my bandaged wrist at the recollection.

“You shouldn’t have taken such a risk.” His words were harsh, unlike his eyes.

“It all seemed to begin the afternoon when the grandfather clock stopped, and you came to buy a painting.”

To my relief Jamison sounded thoughtful. “I see. You believe the painting and the bridge and the jewels are all connected.” It wasn’t a question. “So that’s what you were thinking when you first saw the painting in the attic?”

“Oh, that. Sort of. I was so shocked by its similarity to what I’ve been sketching that I decided to give you some kind of excuse. I didn’t mean to be deceptive.”

“I’m sure.” He sounded amused. “Has it occurred to you that trying to keep all your stories straight will land you in hot water one of these days?”

“I’m trying to bend the truth only a little bit so that if I get caught in—shall we say, an inconsistency—I can talk my way out of it.”

His laugh had a hard edge. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

“I don’t know. You showed up out of the blue asking about my mother’s paintings. Then there was the break-in at the Academy. I didn’t think you had anything to do with that,” I said in self-defense, remembering my reaction to the damaged painting. “You don’t talk much about yourself, or what you’re thinking. I wish I knew more.” It was difficult for me to say this out loud.

I searched his face, hoping I hadn’t made a mistake by telling him so much. What secrets did he hide behind those dark eyes? I had to trust someone because he was right, I was trying to keep too many things to myself and getting tangled in everyone else’s expectations.

He didn’t hold his half-hearted glare for long before it dissolved into calculated resolve. “Can you find the wall again?”

“You mean we’ll go together?”

“Only if you’re up to it.”

I hopped to my feet and extended my right hand to offer him a lift. As if he needed my help. He took my hand, holding it longer than necessary. I hoped he couldn’t feel the thudding of my pulse through my fingertips. Then he rose in one fluid movement and continued to hold my hand.

“Okay, then,” I said with a toss of my head that shook a curl loose. It wasn’t easy to lighten a mood that had turned heavy with longing. Especially if my hair wasn’t cooperating. I gave it another try. “No more secrets.”

****

Jamison led me by the hand as we made our way past the far end of the rock wall. Beyond stood the bridge. We were encircled in a natural clearing with soft light streaking across the arches. It had the intimacy of a secret garden, where lovers could meet without getting discovered. I didn’t want to break the spell. Jamison squeezed my fingers, and I thrilled to his silent understanding of my mood by returning a tiny pressure of my own. We stood for another minute. During our wordless reverie, I inhaled Jamison’s scent mingled with the sweet smell of the stream. And I ached with the kind of happiness of knowing that whatever we found here, however much our lives changed, we would have this moment together for the rest of our lives.

The pohaku rested several feet downstream from the farthest rock pillar, a silent sentinel from ages past. “Why don’t you stay here while I check the condition of the bridge?” Jamison’s voice was as smooth as the water-worn stones.

“Let’s try the side section first. It looks pretty solid.”

I told him my theory about the unusual lighting in my mother’s painting and pointed to the stonework railing that was now cast in shadow. He agreed that we could try there first. Together we climbed up the embankment, until we knelt in front of the small stonework design that my mother had highlighted. There wasn’t any mortar holding several of the smallest stones together, and he began jimmying them loose. I searched around and found a stick to wedge into the joint.

“I can’t believe we’re really doing this.” I leaned my weight on the stick to raise the loosest stone until it toppled.

Jamison wriggled out a dark square from within a hollow and set it in front of us. It was a tin box with chipped enamel, the kind that biscuits used to come in. Neither of us made a move. “I’ve never known anyone like you before.” My voice cracked.

“You know, you can count on me, Merrylei.” He pronounced my name with a lilt at the end. Then he jiggled the lid free of its rusty lip and opened it.

Green-tinted light around us dissolved into a faint mist rolling down the valley. Rain would follow soon. I looked at Jamison, and he nodded. Beneath small neat squares of rice paper, there was a packet of letters tied in pink ribbon. I picked up a paper square that had Japanese writing on it and handed it wordlessly to Jamison.

“The white seabird flies

on paper wings. Telling all

that we are one.”

When he finished translating, Jamison met my eyes with an anguished intensity. “It’s a haiku poem.”

“It sounds like a love poem.”

“We should get back before everything gets wet.” He placed the paper back in the box.

“Who wrote it, does it say?” I didn’t move a muscle.

“We can talk about it back at the house, out of the rain.”

I looked up into his eyes, grasping in their expression that this experience was as new and unexpected for him as it was for me. Beneath the squares of Japanese poetry, several envelopes were addressed with only my mother’s first initial written in a clear hand. “Just another minute, before we go back.” I untied the ribbon and opened the top envelope.

My dear C

I can’t think of anything harder than writing this letter, because I won’t be able to see you anymore. The matchmaker in Japan has made an arrangement for me and sent a picture of my future wife. We knew all along that our families would never let things work out for us. I am going to try to make the best of it, so I won’t go to our usual place again after I leave this letter for you.

Forever, H

I read it the second time out loud, then again the third time to myself. “I’m not sorry we found this together,” I said with my eyes still down.

“Some things are meant to be.” Jamison put his arm around me to pull me closer, and I felt his breath in my hair, sending fiery chills down my spine.

Jamison fit the lid back on the box and took me by the hand again. “I’m okay,” I protested. A protruding tree root tripped me up, but I managed not to stumble.

“Of course.” There was a trace of disbelief in his tone. “Let me get you out of here in one piece, and I’ll tell you everything I know,” he bargained.

A dozen questions pelted my brain as we walked silently through the forest, but by the time we settled on a sofa in the living room, I couldn’t think of what to say. We had set my mother’s portrait up on a side table, and her mural spanned the facing wall. The room seemed filled with her presence. It was difficult to believe that what happened at the bridge wasn’t part of a crazy dream, and I would wake up soon. “The first time I saw you, do you remember?” Jamison started. I looked at him in bewilderment thinking of the dark library. He was staring at the portrait.

“Yes.” I was wary.

“I’d come to your auction,” he admitted in a rush, “and knew that none of your mother’s paintings were being offered. I figured I had nothing to lose by coming on my own the next day to speak to you personally about them.” He paused. “I’d seen you from a distance at the auction.”

I wondered if it should bother me that he’d sought me out alone when he knew the paintings weren’t for sale; instead I experienced a warm flood of delight. His lips curved into a knowing smile

“I had your mother’s portrait, you’ll recall.” He searched my face as it dawned on me how the resemblance must have struck him. “Found it, I should say, where my father intended.” He looked at me anxiously, and I realized I was holding my breath. “His name was Hiroshi.”

As he spoke I nearly flinched at the crawling chill that was becoming all too familiar at the back of my neck. The letters to my mother were signed with an H.

I slowly exhaled as Jamison went on, “He died when I was eight. From tuberculosis. The matchmaker had hidden his illness from my mother’s family. They passed off a twenty-eight-year-old spinster as a younger girl.” What I initially construed as dark irony in his tone shone through as empathy. “The first meeting between them when the ship arrived from Japan must have been difficult, crowded among all the hopeful young brides and grooms with their pictures.”

The scene was more than I could easily visualize. For his mother there would have been a harsh ocean voyage to a strange island, with a stranger’s bed waiting. And his father...scanning the crowd with his emotions steeled against the heartbreak of a first love that wasn’t allowed to be. I gripped the tin box in my lap a little tighter, waiting for my emotions to settle.

“He was a good father, even when he began coughing too much to work. My mother took me into the cane fields with her while she hoed between the rows until I was old enough for school. After he passed away, I used to go down to the end of plantation road the way we’d gone together. The painting was rolled up in one his old tackle boxes where no one else would ever look.” Jamison blinked several times, lost in thought.

“I’d never seen anything like the portrait before.” His voice got rougher, reflecting the strain of his disclosure, then softened. “I think I’ve been half in love with the girl in that portrait all my life.” He leaned toward me, stroking his fingers against my cheek. His eyes sought mine, full of questions. “Then I met you.”

I’m not sure what happened next. I think he pulled me against him and was kissing me with an eagerness that was unexpected. “Why?” I asked through the rush of his kisses. His lips traveled to my neck as I melted into his arms. I finally managed to speak through my panting breaths while I pushed against his chest. “Is it because I look like her?”

He set the box aside on a table and pulled me to my feet, turning me around to face a gilded wall mirror. His heart pounded against my back while he held me close.

“Listen to me,” he said with a warm urgency. “My fantasies about the painting were a way to escape plantation life. The imagination of a child.” He tilted my head to meet his eyes reflected in the mirror. “You—you meet obstacles head on. You’re a ganbare painting come-to-life.” The rise and fall of his chest rippled through my shoulder blades to a place deep inside me.

“I’ve never been anyone’s fantasy before.” My voice, at least, was composed.

“And you’re prettier than the portrait. Has anyone ever told you that your eyes are as blue as the ocean on a clear day?” The laugh in his words raised a flush of warmth across my cheeks.

“Yes, but I don’t agree with the first part.”

“You have more of an effect on people than you realize.” He put both hands on my shoulders and turned me to face him. I hoped I wasn’t blushing and looked away, catching sight of the tin box in my glance.

“Would you read some more of the poems?” I asked to divert him from noticing how his closeness was affecting me.

His lips twitched, as he looked over at the box. “Are you familiar with haiku?” I searched my memory for a verse that danced out of reach. Nothing I could put my finger on. “Not really. My mother and I used to read poetry together.” An unfamiliar sensation passed over me, part bereft part uplifting.

We returned to the sofa, then sat with our shoulders touching while he lifted the rice paper packet from the box. “My father used this symbol called a kamon to represent him and our family.” He pointed to a mark that looked like an upside down T. “It means mountain. He chose it to remind him of enduring stability.”

“So you knew...back at the bridge, when you saw the kamon you knew that your father had written the poems.” I considered that for a moment. “And the letters to my mother, too.”

Jamison put an arm around me and crushed my shoulder into his stronger one. I wanted to understand his feelings, to hold them in my hands and turn the clear prism of their shape at different angles until scattered colors of light appeared. Daddy’s glass paperweight could be held up to the sun like that. An entire rainbow was hidden inside, if only you knew how to direct the light.

I still remember the afternoon glow bending around Jamison and me on the sofa when I asked him, “What if we’d never met? I could have stayed on the Mainland, or sold the house. Would you have looked for the girl in the painting?”

“Even after I knew who Carolyn Hartfield was—and that the daughter of our plantation supervisor had married the Wentworth heir and moved away years earlier—she didn’t seem real to me.” He turned serious, thoughtful. “I was content with the painting.”

“It sounds a little lonely.”

“Alone, sometimes, but not lonely. I didn’t think I was missing out on anything until that day you tossed your hair and vanished behind the auction block.” He grinned. “Maybe I did come to the auction looking for something. I just didn’t understand what. I knew who the Wentworths were. It was a chance to get close to the legend.”

“Then you came back to the house the next day.”

“There was something about the portrait that I’ve never been able to get out of my mind. It was the glow in the girl’s eyes.” He looked at the painting, and I wondered where his thoughts had taken him.

“That would be my mother’s technique of layering pigment. She must have been experimenting with it in her earliest works.”

“Perhaps.” He cleared his throat. “When I walked into your library for the first time, I didn’t expect to risk my life to find out.” The corners of his mouth turned down in an unsuccessful effort to keep from smiling.

“You got off easy,” I teased. “I didn’t even have my finger on the trigger.”

He rested back against the sofa and cocked his head toward me, not disguising his amusement. “That’s good,” he drawled. “That’s very good.”

I looked down at the tin box to avert my eyes before he pounced on the triumph that must be gleaming in them.

“One of my mother’s hankies is in the bottom.” I fingered the delicate monogram. “Something’s wrapped inside.”

I lifted out the gossamer cotton, feeling the silky slither of a thousand glints of radiance tumble into my hand. “Oh my god, oh no. Not this.”

My hands remained steady as Jamison took the necklace from me. Dozens of diamonds glittered in three cascading tiers of brilliance. “It’s the necklace my grandmother was wearing.” I fought back a surge of hysteria before it could bubble through my self-control. “She was wearing it in the portrait that was taken from the Art Academy and slashed to pieces.”

****

Jamison’s expression was somber. “Can you promise me something?” he asked.

We were on the veranda standing next to the trellis. He and I now seemed as entwined as the blossoms he had arranged—was it only a couple hours ago?

“I think so.” Making an unqualified commitment didn’t come naturally to me.

“Try not to go anywhere alone—at least until we can find out more about the necklace.” He rubbed his jaw. “It’ll be best not to tell that police captain about it just yet.”

“Captain Maddox,” I supplied.

“Or go back to the bridge. I’ll be back late next Saturday afternoon.”

“You’re leaving?”

“I’ll be on the Big Island for a week. The Inaba family is expanding the lobby of the Kona Hotel and they need some design ideas. They’ll be contracting for custom-made furniture, too.” He chucked me under the chin. “They’re local Japanese, and it’ll be good for business.”

News of his job prospects should have cheered me up; instead it delivered a sharp pang of disappointment. As if anticipating his absence, I stared at him longer than I should have, noticing how handsome he looked even with casually rolled up shirtsleeves. Then I pulled myself together and congratulated him.

“About next Saturday night,” he said, “I could come by to check on how you’re doing.” I must not have been able to camouflage my mixed feelings. “To ease my own mind,” he grinned. “I know you’re perfectly capable of taking care of yourself.”

“I don’t think that will work out because I’ll be at the Charity Ball until late.” Why did I have to sound so apologetic?

“Yes, of course.” He took his car keys out of his pocket and jingled them, then put them back. “You’ll be safe enough in the company of Honolulu’s finest, I’m sure.” From anyone else, the words would have sounded facetious.

“I accepted the invitation several weeks ago.” Again, that apologetic tone, darn it.

“Have a good time,” he said much too cheerfully, “and I’ll come by on Sunday if that’s better.”

We agreed on one o’clock and made plans to try, once again, driving to the end of plantation road.

“I’ll see you then.” I managed a watery smile.

Shadows of the tallest palm trees were lengthening across the lawn, waving their farewell in sweeping arcs. Jamison took the tin box from me and set it on the veranda railing. With one arm wrapped around my waist, he pulled me against him with an effortless motion that lifted me to my tiptoes. His lips burned against mine while my senses tunneled into sheer abandonment until he released me to slide against his hard body. I was poised to receive his kisses again when he loosened me enough to realize I had stopped breathing.

“About my mother’s portrait,” I whispered, trying one last time to get to the heart of his feelings. “Are you sure you don’t want to take it back with you?”

His forefinger traced an invisible line across my jawbone and smoothed back a strand of hair before he answered. “I’ve been thinking that a person can make up a lot of stories for themselves. They can stay bottled up inside like a cheap pint of sake.” He looked down at me with watchful eyes before he continued. “But there comes a time when you just have to let go.”

Then he kissed me on the forehead and both my eyelids, and asked to walk me home.

Our walk down the path seemed endless, and over in an instant, all at once. We stopped in front of the carriage house, where, still in a dreamy state beyond hours or minutes, I thanked Jamison and we said goodbye.

In the same otherworldly daze, I climbed the stairs to my room and hid the tin box behind my leather suitcase. I don’t have much recollection of what I did after that until I heard Auntie knock on my door to check on me and I plummeted back to earth.

It hadn’t simply been the shock of finding the letters—or the necklace, for that matter. I would deal with them tomorrow. A line from one of Robert Frost’s poems kept rattling around in my head, “From what I’ve tasted of desire, I hold with those who favor fire.” That fire was coursing through my veins right now as if I’d finished off a whole bottle of sake myself. I groaned and dropped my face in my hands.

When I lifted my head I took a deep breath. There was nothing I could do about it, now. Nothing, that is, but admit I was falling in love with Jamison Sumida.