“Congratulations on your client.” Hamlin held up his glass of cabernet.
Storm touched his glass with hers. “It’s a divorce situation, maybe even a hostile one, but I’ll take it.”
“What’s your read on it?”
“I can’t tell if the mom and son are trying to protect each other, or if they’re at odds, but I know they’re not telling me the whole story yet.”
“You’ll figure it out.”
“I hope so.” Storm grinned at him. “I’ve got a plan that will help me get to know them better. Ben is in that surf meet this Sunday, the Sunset Triple Pro. He invited us to watch.”
Hamlin’s eyebrows rose with interest. “That would be fun. What time would we need to leave?”
“Maybe tomorrow around ten? I asked Leila and Robbie to come, too. Brian has to work.” Leila’s boyfriend Brian was a Honolulu police detective, and he was involved in a trying case that had been going on for a few weeks.
“Where would we stay?”
“Aunt Maile and Uncle Keone have friends with a cottage at Laniakea. They’ve offered to let us use it.” Storm knew Hamlin thought she was related to half the population in the islands, which was a concept she didn’t discourage. He enjoyed her aunt and uncle, who lived on the Big Island, and had raised Storm until she moved into Miles Hamasaki’s household. Both she and Hamlin knew that the six degrees of separation people talked about on the Mainland shrank to one or two degrees in Hawai‛i.
“Are your aunt and uncle coming?” Hamlin asked.
“No, they’re going to a baby lu‛au.”
Hamlin took a sip of his wine and Storm knew he was mentally reviewing his obligations for the weekend. “I’d love to see one of those meets. What’s the surf prediction?”
“Big and rising.”
“Yeah?” he said, and Storm knew she had him. Hamlin wasn’t a surfer, but he had been an All-American runner in college and was still a fan of most active sports, especially if he could see the event live.
Storm slipped off her shoe and ran her bare foot up his trousered leg. “Want to start our wild weekend at my place?”
His green eyes sparked candlelight from across the table and the corners of his mouth curled up beneath his bushy moustache.
***
The girl’s brown knuckles glowed white against the bucking gunnels of the wa‛a and her short, wavy black hair flopped in time with her swooping stomach. Why had she volunteered to sit in the front, anyway, where she could see the prow climb vertically against the wall of blue, blue water, so angry she thought the canoe would be hurtled like a flimsy spear halfway to the center of the earth?
Weren’t they too far from shore? It seemed like the wind, which whipped the crest of each wave into her face with the blast of a fire hose, was pushing them farther down the coastline. Why didn’t Uncle Bert turn around now? They were certainly out far enough to catch some waves. That was the plan, wasn’t it?
She could see right through the adults’ efforts. What did they think, she was stupid? A year ago, she would have killed for this adventure, but now, with the whole neighborhood trying to console her, she would rather have slipped off alone to her secret spot in the sugar cane fields. She would puff stolen cigarettes and try to sort out her mother’s death. Instead, she’d let her best friend Pua, who had seemed genuinely excited about the idea, talk her into canoe surfing.
The boat plowed through a wave, but the next crest was hidden behind the first, and the boat hit it head on, instead of on the quarter. Storm catapulted from her seat and banged her knees against the bow. Just as she scrambled back to her place, the boat rocketed down the face of another wave.
“Try bail!” shouted Uncle Bert. He dug with the paddle and gasped with exertion.
Storm grabbed the plastic bucket as it floated by at mid-calf level, though she knew it wouldn’t help. Her arms and shoulders ached with the effort, but she couldn’t keep up with the water coming over the gunwales. The canoe was foundering, no longer cutting through the water.
Pua looked back over her shoulder, her mouth a gaping chasm as she shouted, “Look out!”
“Jump!” Uncle Bert’s voice was ragged and choked-sounding.
Storm didn’t jump; she was launched. And this time, Hamlin woke her up.
“Storm, you’re having a nightmare.” He stroked her damp hair from her face. “You’re safe. Was it the water one, again?”
“Yeah,” Storm whispered.
He held her, and before long his breathing became deep and regular. But Storm was afraid to close her eyes, because she knew the next part of the dream lurked behind her lids, whether she was awake or asleep. Her lungs would burn just as they did that day when she was tumbled in the roiling water until she didn’t know up from down, while the red hull of the overturned boat, with its broken and jagged ama, hovered ten feet above her head.
The dream was always the same, and her eyes burned with salt, or tears, in the effort to snatch a breath while she gasped and strained to find Pua and Bert in the white, churning surf.
Eighteen years later, she still couldn’t tell anyone how she’d navigated the surging reefs from a half-mile out, except to say that she could see an animal pacing the beach. She was certain that it was pua‛a, the pig, her ‛aumakua, and it appeared to paw and snort its distress as it kept vigil.
People still avoided mentioning the canoe accident; it was too painful for everyone involved. Storm had made her way through a channel in the shallowest and most treacherous reef, where the waves were so big that one of the rescue canoes capsized. None of the crowd lined up on the shore had seen a pig, or any animal, but few of the Hawaiians questioned her story. They were too busy comforting Bert’s wife.