Alpha and Omega

“These babies are squashing my kidneys, Kimo,” Sandra grumbled, as she struggled up the walkway to the front door of my parents’ house in St. Louis Heights, overlooking downtown Honolulu and the Pacific Ocean beyond. She was a stocky fireplug of a woman, with truck-driver shoulders and close-cropped hair, and as her belly swelled with the growing twins she looked more and more like a beach ball with a head.

Her diminutive partner, Cathy Selkirk, followed behind her. She was half-Japanese, but that half was clearly dominant; she had a sheer fall of waist-length black hair and the fine hands of an artist—though her art was poetry.

Cathy was the more maternal one, but she had some problem that prevented her from carrying a child. After a long discussion, Mike and I had both given sperm, and Cathy had donated eggs. Several of them had been fertilized and implanted into Sandra’s womb.

The first ultrasound showed us what Sandra was already feeling: she was carrying twins. The boy and girl, nicknamed Alpha and Omega for the time being—as the first and the last babies Sandra would ever carry—had taken over her life since then. She was a high-powered attorney with a Rolodex of every lesbian in the Aloha State as well as the political and legal clout to gain, and win, high-profile cases. But after six months her obstetrician had confined her to bed rest to ensure she could carry the twins to term. She had not reacted well to having her activities curtailed.

We had met together the week before to brainstorm names for the keikis. We liked the idea of sticking to the letters A and O, and settled easily on Addie for the girl and Owen for the boy.

This early December luau, sandwiched between Thanksgiving and Christmas, was Sandra’s last outing before popping the babies out. Our golden retriever Roby romped around us, even as our foster son Dakota tried to corral him without success.

As Dakota scrambled after the dog, his board shorts slipped down showing the waistband of his boxers and his T-shirt rode up. If only I had known myself at his age as well as he did, how different my life might have been. It sometimes astonished me how much my world had changed in the five years since I’d been dragged out of the closet. And now, life was about to change again, for all of us.

“Here you are!” My mother appeared at the front door, all five-foot-nothing of her in a bright blue muumuu, her coal-black hair pulled into a bun on her head. “I was worried you wouldn’t be able to come.”

My mother is a tiny dynamo, even into her seventies. She ruled my big, blustery father, my two brothers and me with an iron fist in a velvet glove, and though she doted on every one of her grandchildren she was eager to see Sandra add to that number.

My parents had organized this massive luau to welcome Sandra and Cathy into our extended ohana and provide an opportunity for everyone to shower the soon-to-be-born twins with baby gifts.

My mother took Sandra by the arm and led her inside, settling her in a comfy chair in the living room with an ottoman for her feet. Mike and I walked into the kitchen, where my aunts and my sisters-in-law jockeyed to get food out for the hungry masses. Dakota joined my nieces and nephews, who were swarming from the downstairs den through the kitchen and out to the back yard.

Mike and I detoured around the food prep and walked outside with Roby, then let him loose to speed over to a pack of family dogs hovering near the kalua pig roasting in a pit dug in the back yard. Family and friends were all around us, and quickly we were all chowing down as if we’d never eat again: Hawaiian specialties like my mom’s chicken long rice, my sister-in-law Liliha’s shark-fin soup, my godmother’s sweet and sour spareribs and my aunt Pua’s Portuguese sausage and beans. Mike’s mother had brought bulgogi, a spicy Korean barbeque, and my mother and my sister-in-law Tatiana had been baking cakes and pies and cookies all week, which shared space with platters of fruit, tubs of mango sherbet and chocolate ice cream in coolers, and about ten different types of salted, dried and preserved fruits called crack seed. I don’t know where the name came from originally, but it’s almost as addictive as the cocaine derivative.

Keola Beamer was playing on the stereo, singing about his family rocking in a wooden boat, but I could barely hear the music under the laughter and chatter of too many family members in one place. Fortunately my parents’ yard backs up on Wa’ahila Ridge State Park, and the kids made their own campground under the trees.

Sandra and Cathy were the center of attention. Everyone had either a gift or a piece of advice for the new moms. As the dads, Mike and I got our share—everything from jokes about our ability to change diapers to confidential suggestions to handle teething (a little brandy on the gums) and diarrhea.

After we finished eating, Mike and I sprawled on the ground next to the pair of lawn chairs where Sandra and Cathy sat. My mother brought a stepladder out of the house and set it up, then stepped up on it. Tatiana hurried over to steady her. “Quiet down, everybody!” she boomed, and we all turned our attention to my mom.

My father got up from his chair and tottered over to her, leaning on his cane. I hoped I was as handsome as he is when I reached my eighties. His black hair had gone gray and there were lines on his forehead that weren’t there ten years ago, but his half-Hawaiian, hapa–haole genetic mix had served him well.

With the boost from the stepladder, and my father’s shrinking over the last few years, my mother was almost eye-to-eye with him. She took his hand. “You all know that we love this house, and we love being so close to our two oldest sons and their families. But it’s time for a change.”

“After nearly fifty years with this woman, she’s finally letting me have my way,” my father said. “We are going to sell this house and move into a condo by the water.”

My father, both my brothers and I all had the native Hawaiian love for the ocean. Lui, Haoa and I had grown up surfing with our dad, and all of us were happiest when we were either on the water or at its edge.

“Where are you going, Tutu?” Haoa’s eldest, Ashley, asked. She had inherited her mother’s luxurious ash-blonde hair and father’s height and love for surfing. At nineteen, she was trying to make a place for herself on the women’s circuit.

“We’re looking around Diamond Head,” my mother said. “No plans yet. But it’s time for us to start cleaning out this old house. And my boys know what that means. If you want something, you take it, or it goes for sale or to charity.”

“There goes the Kimo shrine,” Mike whispered to me, and I elbowed him. It was true; my room remained as I had left it when I went to college in California—my surfing trophies and posters on the walls, my childhood books on the shelves.

I hated the thought of parting with those old memories—but Mike and I lived in a three-bedroom duplex which was already overflowing. We had converted our junk room into a bedroom for Dakota when we got the official approval as foster parents. The third bedroom was an office Mike and I shared, which would also serve as makeshift nursery when the twins were with us.

“That’s all,” my mother said, taking my father’s hand as she stepped down from the ladder. “Now eat some more!”

Once the adults were groaning from eating too much, my mother organized her grandkids into a cleanup brigade. Dakota tried to slink away but she caught him. “Dakota! You are as much my keiki as everybody else. So you work too!”

He slumped his shoulders and pushed back his shoulder-length black hair, but I could see he was happy to be accepted as another grandson. Around us the kids carried the platters into the kitchen, emptied the trash and folded up the tables, and Mike and I tried to help Sandra stand up. “I’m as big as a house,” she cried. “Your parents don’t need a condo. They can live in me.”

We each stood to one side and lifted, with Cathy pushing from the rear. “Please, God, take these children out of me!” Sandra said.

Mike and I helped her totter out to the car while my mother loaded Cathy up with leftovers. “I want a Cesarean,” Sandra said. “Now!”

“Buck up,” Mike said. “Where’s that butch little lesbian we all know and love?”

We shoveled her into the front seat of the car as Cathy came out of the house, surrounded by an army of keikis carrying plastic containers of leftovers and shopping bags full of unwrapped gifts.

“How are you going to manage all this at your house?” I asked. Cathy looked almost as tired as Sandra, with dark circles under her eyes. And the babies weren’t even born yet.

“We have a nosy neighbor across the street. She’ll come over and help us unload everything,” Cathy said, as she shoved all the packages into the trunk. “We go to the doctor on Wednesday. If Sandy hasn’t gone into labor by then he’s going to induce.”

“You want one of us to come with you?” I asked. Mike and I had gone to a couple of visits with Sandra and seen the ultrasound.

“Bring a forklift.” She leaned up and kissed both of us. “Thanks. I’ll confirm soon.”

Mike and I stood in front of my parents’ house and watched them drive away. “Every time I remember we’re going to be dads, it scares the shit out of me,” I said.

“If my dad and yours could manage, then so can you and I,” Mike said. “Now come on, let’s clean out some of your junk while we’re here.”

We trudged up the stairs to what had been my room. When I opened the door, though, I was surprised. “What happened to the Kimo shrine?”

All my stuff was still there—but instead of the immaculate neatness my mother had always maintained, the room was a mess. My single bed was piled with old clothes. The floor was stacked with boxes.

“It sure can’t. Mom!” I felt like a teenager again, stretching the word out to multiple syllables.

She came up the stairs behind us. “Oh,” she said. “I didn’t realize you would start taking away so soon. I’ve been using your room as a staging ground. You wouldn’t believe all the stuff we’ve had stuck away in this house. Even things from my mother-in-law.”

“Really?” I asked. My granny had always been a bit of an enigma. She was a very proper white Mormon woman from Idaho who had come to Hawai’i as a schoolteacher, married my grandpa, a native Hawaiian, and given birth to six children, four of whom lived to adulthood. Granny died when I was eleven, so I didn’t know her well, and I found her imperious and scary. She had always lived in the same small bungalow in the McCully neighborhood inland from Waikiki.

My dad’s oldest sister, my aunt Elizabeth, had married a serviceman and moved to Kansas. His younger brother, Uncle Philip, was a non-conformist who didn’t believe in marriage or having kids. He and his long-time girlfriend lived near their second sister, Aunt Margaret, and her family in Hilo. After Granny died my father was the only one left to claim anything, and he moved a few boxes of her stuff to our house.

“You want any of this?” my mom asked. “I don’t and I know it will be terrible to convince your father to throw any of it away.”

I opened the closest box and found a photo album of my father and his siblings when they were little. “Look at Dad!” I said. “How cute was he?”

Three boys and two girls sat in a wooden cart hitched up to a white goat with a long beard. I could tell my dad easily; he was the biggest and the cutest, holding the goat’s reins like he was in charge.

We recruited Dakota to drag six boxes of family memorabilia out to my Jeep and stow them in the back. We said our goodbyes reluctantly, rounded up Roby, and then headed downhill to the highway that would take us home.

Dakota was quiet in the back seat, with Roby’s head in his lap. “You have a good time today, Dakota?” I asked over my shoulder.

“Just okay? Don’t let Tutu Lokelani hear you say that. When she makes a luau she expects rave reviews.”

Mike twisted around to look at Dakota as I got onto the H1 highway, a broad strip of concrete that cuts through the heart of O’ahu. Except for the occasional palm trees by the side of the road, it could be anywhere in the United States.

“Kimo and I went through a lot of shit so you could come and live with us,” he said. “Hours of parenting classes. Piles of paperwork. If you think we’re giving up on you because our family is growing, you’re wrong as can be.”

We had a running joke in our household, a line from the animated movie Lilo and Stitch, about an alien who lands in Hawai’i and pretends to be a dog in order to fit in.

Mike reached back to grab Dakota’s hand. “And it means you’re always going to be part of our family, our ohana. Forever. You understand that?”

Roby sat up and licked Dakota’s face, then tried to climb around behind him. “Get out of my hair, you goofy dog,” he said, and all of us laughed.

By the time we got home, Dakota had gotten over his pout, and he carried all the boxes inside without prompting, stacking them in the office.

Monday afternoon Mike had to go up to the North Shore to get some evidence for a case he was investigating, and he picked Dakota up from school and took him along. I got home around four and after I walked Roby we went out to the back yard together. I relaxed in a big Adirondack chair and he sprawled at my feet as I began looking through the albums of my dad’s childhood.

The sun was sinking behind the Ko’olaus, but the temperature was in the mid-seventies and a gentle breeze ruffled the leaves of the kuhio tree at the back corner of the yard. Someone was barbecuing, and the tangy scent of meat and charcoal floated by.

It was freaky the way my father looked so much like I did when I was a kid. When you looked at me and my brothers together, you could tell we were family—but each of us had taken a different dip in the gene pool. Lui looked the most Asian of us, Haoa the most Hawaiian. I’d always looked the most haole—and I realized, seeing my dad as a kid, that he had, too. The brother who was a year younger was almost his twin; he was the one who had died of pneumonia as a boy. How weird must that have been for my dad, losing a brother? I couldn’t imagine life without Lui and Haoa around.

Under the albums were some failed attempts at quilting that my grandmother must have abandoned. The quilt on the bed Mike and I shared was the first one she completed, back when she was a newlywed. My parents had another, better quality one.

I was sifting through the fabric scraps when an old-time sepia photograph spilled out. My grandmother, looking impossibly young, wore a white wedding gown with a lacy veil over her forehead. To her right stood an older couple I assumed were her parents.

I peered closer, looking for evidence of my genetic makeup. My great-grandfather was a stern-faced man with light-colored hair cut short. He had big ears and a broad nose, and didn’t look like anyone I’d ever claimed kin to.

My great-grandmother was an older version of my granny. I remembered that Granny wore her salt-and-pepper hair in a tight bun, and I saw she’d copied her own mother on that. They had the same widely-spaced eyes, the same tight smile.

Why was the picture sliced in half, cutting out my grandfather and his parents? I flipped it over and saw the photographer’s mark—from Idaho Falls, Idaho.

That was interesting. I’d always thought my grandmother never returned home after coming to Hawai’i to teach. But if she was married in Idaho Falls, she and my grandfather must have gone back there.

I skimmed through the rest of the boxes. The only thing of interest was an old leather-bound book with My Diary in script across the front. When I opened it I found Granny’s maiden name, Sarah Carhartt, written in neat penmanship on the front page.

The sun had sunk below the horizon by then, and it was too dark to read, so I carried the diary into the bedroom, followed eagerly by the dog, who must have thought we were going to dinner, and sat up in bed to read the old-fashioned handwriting.

I am about to embark on the adventure of my life. I will turn eighteen on May 15, 1933. The next day, I will marry George Harmon and I will accompany him on his mission to the Hawaiian Islands.

Roby began barking, and I heard the front door open. “Loo-cie, we’re home,” Mike called, in his Ricky Ricardo imitation. I put the diary aside and went down to the kitchen, where Mike laid out a bucket of fried chicken. The three of us sat around the table and talked about Mike’s investigation, Dakota’s day at school, and the diary I had found.

Mike fed Roby a piece of chicken and said, “Your grandmother was married before? What happened to him?”

Between cleaning up after dinner and helping Dakota with his homework, I didn’t get back to the diary that night. I was curious enough, though, that I took it with me to work, on the off chance I’d get some time to read at lunch.

No such luck. My detective partner Ray Donne and I were roped into helping with the intake for a group of youth gang members, and I was swamped with that until just after two, when Cathy texted: Sandy labor. QMC now.

QMC was The Queen’s Medical Center. I ditched the last of the paperwork on Ray and took off. My office at Honolulu police headquarters was close by, so I was there before Mike. I found Cathy at the nurse’s desk in the delivery ward. “The doctor says she’s only a few centimeters dilated, so it’s going to be a while,” she said. “But you know Sandy. She wants the babies out now.”

“She’s due for a major attitude adjustment,” I said. “We all are. Babies live on their own timetable, not ours.”

Cathy went back into the room to help Sandra with her breathing exercises, and I called my mom, and then Mike’s, to give them the latest news. Then I paced around the waiting room until I remembered my grandmother’s diary, on the front seat of my Jeep. I retrieved it and sat on a hard plastic chair to continue reading.

I started again with that first sentence. I had never heard that Granny had been married before my grandfather and I was eager to see if she got out of the upcoming ceremony. But she didn’t; she described her wedding in mind-numbing detail, from the simple white satin gown with a “very stylish” matching cap, to everyone who attended the reception.

Granny was born in Utah and moved to Idaho Falls with her parents when she was ten. The stake, or Mormon congregation, had been there since 1895. The way she described the town reminded me of black-and-white Westerns I had seen—the old-fashioned buildings in the downtown, the prevalence of horses and cows. She loved to go out to the falls and sit there by the water contemplating the raw power.

Well, that was something she and I had in common, I thought. The love of water ran deep in our family.

I had never known that she had been brought up a Mormon; neither of my parents were religious, and they had raised my brothers and me with a general appreciation of all beliefs—we attended Christmas Eve mass at the Kawaiaha’o Church downtown; honored the Kami—the nature spirits—of the four directions at the Shinto New Year’s Festival; and studied the ancient gods of the islands at Hawaiian school one afternoon a week.

Reading between the lines, I discovered that Granny’s family was wealthy, while George’s was not. After hearing a returned missionary speak in Idaho Falls, George felt the call, but his family could not afford the cost of sending him to Hawai’i. It looked like theirs was a marriage of convenience; her father footed the cost of the mission, and Granny had the chance to escape Idaho Falls and see the world.

I skimmed past the details of her first night as a married woman until she was ready to leave home. There are some things we don’t need to know about our grandparents.

My adventure begins! My first time on a train. As we leave Idaho Falls my parents stand at the station beside George’s. Will we ever see them again?

I put the book aside. That must have been so tough—to be an eighteen-year-old girl leaving everything behind for a new life somewhere else. How long did it take letters to travel from Idaho to Honolulu back then? The first trans-Pacific telephone cable was laid from Japan to the US via Hawai’i in 1934, but it must have been extraordinarily expensive to make calls.

I remembered my grandmother as a woman of few words, but you wouldn’t know it from her diary. She described the train compartment and everything she saw out the windows from Idaho Falls to Ogden, Utah. Then they transferred to the Union Pacific for the trip to San Francisco.

I scanned along, looking for information on the mysterious George Harmon—but there was very little. Occasionally she’d mention him in passing.

Every meal on the Streamliner is an event! George and I had the Nebraska Corn-Fed Charcoal Broiled Steak for dinner tonight, with baked potatoes and fresh corn, and a delicious lemon cake for dessert.

So I knew what George was eating—but who was he? How did he feel about the marriage? None of that was there.

The swinging door to the visiting area bounced open and Mike strode in. “Where is she? Did she have the babies already?”

“Are you kidding? Cathy said she’s only a few centimeters dilated, so it could be hours.”

Mike shuddered as he sat down next to me. “I don’t want to hear the clinical details. Just thinking of Sandra’s vagina gives me the creeps.”

“I can pull up some pictures online to show you,” I said. “I know you’ve never seen one in person yourself.”

“And you’ve seen way too many,” Mike said. We had both been conflicted about our sexuality when we were younger. I slept with as many girls as I could, hoping to find the one who could erase my uncomfortable desires. Mike had never experimented that way, confining his sexual experience to a series of random encounters with men.

We heard a deep, throaty scream come from behind the closed door to the delivery room. “Let me say I am so glad women have babies and not men,” I said.

Mike had some phone calls to make, so he stepped outside. I promised to get him if anything happened, and went back to my grandmother’s diary.

A true small-town girl, she was awed by San Francisco. She and George attended a worship service with a congregation in Oakland, founded by Mormons who had traveled to California around Cape Horn. While George met with the church elders, she spoke with a woman who’d visited the islands and learned about the louche customs of the people there.

The native women wear skirts made of grass! The Hawaiians are a simple people, content to live from the plenty of their land. But the church at Laie has made many converts.

She described in great detail the cruise terminal where she and George boarded the Lurline for their trip to Honolulu. Then her diary stopped for several days.

I looked at the clock and realized that Dakota would be getting out of school soon. Most days, he took a bus from Punahou that dropped him at the base of Aiea Heights Drive, and he walked the last blocks uphill. He was responsible for taking Roby out, and then working on his homework until either Mike or I returned to fix dinner.

It didn’t look like we’d be home by then. I called my best friend, Harry Ho, who lived down the hill from us with his wife and son. “Yo, brah,” I said, when he answered. “Can Dakota have dinner with you guys tonight?”

Life had been so much less complicated when I was single and living in Waikiki. If I worked late, all I had to worry about was where I would grab some fast food for dinner. But now with a partner, a foster son and a dog, there were always complicated arrangements to figure out.

Dakota was already on the bus home when I got hold of him and explained the situation. “Sure. I’ll go home and get Roby and then go to Harry and Arleen’s. I owe Brandon a rematch on Fluorescent Fighters anyway.”

He was only four years older than Brandon, and the two of them got along pretty well. “Cool. I’ll call you later.”

I have been severely ill since we left the harbor. George attained his sea legs immediately, and he has been very kind, bringing me broth and plain toast whenever I have the stomach for it. I cannot help but consider, lying feverish in my bed, whether this is God’s punishment. I must confess I do not possess the determination George has for spreading the Book of Mormon to the Hawaiian people. I just wanted to get out of Idaho Falls. But I promise, if I recover, to be the best wife I can be and devote myself to the Lord.

Poor Granny, I thought. To love water the way she did—but find that being at sea made her sick. That had to be awful. And her doubts were touching. But I couldn’t imagine a God who would punish someone who was trying to do good. At least let the poor woman get to Hawai’i!

Mike came back inside and we sat together for a while, both of us fidgeting. “What’s going on in there?” he asked. Then his stomach grumbled. When I looked at the clock I realized it was almost six.

I got up and walked down the hall to the nurses’ station. “I wanted to check on Sandra Guarino,” I said. “How’s she doing?”

To the nurse’s credit she didn’t even raise an eyebrow. “She’s in the transition phase from active labor to delivery right now. She should be achieving maximum dilation within the next hour or so. She’s carrying twins, right?”

“Well, you should be able to speak to them directly within the next two hours or so. Maybe sooner. The doctor is monitoring her to make sure there aren’t any complications.”

Cathy had briefed Mike and me about the possible problems with twin births, like twisted cords or breech births. Most twin pregnancies lasted only an average of thirty-five weeks. If the twins popped out too early, their lungs, brain and other organs might not be completely ready for the outside world, and they would be more vulnerable to all kinds of infections and developmental problems.

We were lucky that Sandra had been able to keep them inside as long as she had; the babies should be a week or two short of full-term when they popped.

My stomach grumbled and the nurse smiled. “There’s a vending machine down the hall if you want.”

I thanked her and checked out the machine. I thought the turkey sandwiches would be safe; I got one each for Mike and me, along with chips and soda. “Thank you, Lord,” Mike said, when he saw what I was carrying. “I didn’t get to eat lunch and I’m starving.”

“Here you go,” I said, handing him his food. “But you don’t have to call me Lord. Kimo will do.”

We gobbled our sandwiches and then Mike yawned. “I’m going to catch some Zs. Wake me if anything happens.”

I got up and paced around for a while, imagining all the complications. I wanted Alpha and Omega to be healthy. I sent up a couple of prayers, to the various gods of my childhood, promising to be the best dad I possibly could.

My seasickness has passed at last. George tells me he prayed for me, so maybe his prayers, and mine, were answered. I was finally able to go outside today, and the ocean was so beautiful—a bright blue, sparkling in the sunshine, stretching on for miles and miles.

This morning we docked at Honolulu. What a sight! The tall, stately Aloha Tower, and the Royal Hawaiian Band welcoming us with native music, streamers, and the flower necklaces called leis. Mine is a string of beautiful white and purple orchids that smell heavenly. It is awfully hot here, though! One of the elders from the stake in Laie met us and drove us to our new home in a Ford just like my father’s. The simple cottage a few blocks from downtown is charming, with large windows and a broad, overhanging roof.

I skipped ahead. Granny was unhappy in Laie. George was engaged in his mission every day, proselytizing and teaching. Granny was bored by the other Mormon women and their focus on home and family, and found them as provincial as the women of Idaho Falls. Laie was worse though, because at least in Idaho she had family and friends. And Idaho was not so infernally hot. Their house was not even close to the ocean. She complained about the strange place names and found the few native Hawaiians she met frightening.

Suddenly the door to the delivery room burst open, and two nurses and a doctor pushed Sandra out on a gurney. As they sped down the hallway, Cathy stepped out carrying a tiny baby wrapped in a blanket. She was wearing a hospital gown over her clothes and had a mask on a string around her neck.

At the same moment, Mike asked, “Did she have the babies? Where’s the second one?”

Cathy’s face was streaked with tears. “The doctor called it abruption,” she said. “The first baby came out, and then Sandy started losing a lot of blood.”

Another nurse followed Cathy out of the room. “It’s a separation of the placenta from the uterus,” she said. “It’s a common complication with twins, but it is serious. Are you the donor?”

She looked at me and I was about to say that Mike and I were both the fathers, but Cathy stepped in first. “I told her you and Sandy have the same blood type.”

“That’s the rarest type,” the nurse said. She was a Filipina in her fifties, with a kind face and dark hair in a bun. “I’m not sure we’ll have enough on hand for what she needs. Can you donate?”

I left Mike with Cathy and the first baby. I didn’t even know if it was the boy or the girl. The nurse motioned me into an examining room and said, “I’ll be right back.”

I couldn’t sit down. I was so worried about Sandra and the other baby. Would it be all right? I had no idea what the medical condition entailed, but from the way they rushed Sandra out of the delivery room it couldn’t be good.

The nurse returned with an armful of stuff. “Have a seat,” she said. “Read this form and fill it out while I get ready for you.”

I took the paper and sat on the examining table. I skipped through the first part easily; I was healthy, and hadn’t been in contact with anyone who wasn’t. The second section was more complicated; I had to recall the details of the times I had been hospitalized, and remember the name of the pill I was taking for high cholesterol. I thought I was out of the woods when I finished that—until I came to the blood donation statement.

I had forgotten the bias blood banks had against gay men. When I came out of the closet I stopped giving blood as my own private protest against what I felt were archaic standards. I also stopped lying about my sexuality. I didn’t walk around with a sign that read “I’m here, I’m queer, get used to it,” but I answered questions honestly.

But if I answered yes to number seven on the form, that I’d had male to male sex within the past seven years—hell, within the past seven days—the nurse was going to tell me I wasn’t qualified to give Sandra the blood she needed.

Fuck that. I checked “no” and completed the rest of the form and handed it to the nurse. She scanned it quickly, and I waited for her to catch me in my lie. After all, she knew that Mike and I were both the fathers of Sandra’s babies, and she’d have to be clueless not to figure out what was going on.

I must have been fidgeting, because she said, “Please, sit still. Try to calm down. Sandra’s going to be fine, and so are both the babies.”

She didn’t know that. But I closed my eyes and visualized my happy place, that deserted beach where I go with my surfboard, ready to catch the best wave I can. I felt the needle but I didn’t flinch. I kept my eyes shut and focused on the waves rolling in.

So she knew. I got up and thanked her and walked back down the hall to the delivery room. No one was in the hallway.

I peeked in the door. Mike and Cathy were sitting in armchairs next to each other. Cathy was holding the baby and Mike, wearing a gown like Cathy’s only much larger, was already playing peek-a-boo.

“Not yet,” Mike said. “This is Owen. Our son.” He held the newborn out to me, wrapped in a blanket. His little eyes opened and he stared at me.

The door opened behind me and I had to jump aside as the Filipina nurse stepped in. “Sandra’s out of surgery and she’s in recovery now. If you all want to come with me you can meet your new daughter.”

Mike handed Owen back to Cathy, and we followed the nurse down the hall to another room. She pulled aside a curtain to reveal Sandra lying on a gurney. She looked like crap—her flyaway light brown hair was plastered to her scalp, and her eyes were red with tears. But she held the second twin clasped in her hands.

Mike stepped close to Sandra, and she handed Addie to him. I looked at the perfect little girl, and then at him, and when our eyes met, I began to cry. Mike followed me a moment later. Then Cathy and Sandra joined in.

“Look at us,” Sandra said, wiping away her tears. “A bunch of crying fools.”

Mike handed Addie back to Sandra. Cathy slumped into a chair next to the gurney, still holding Owen. I’ve seen victims of violent crimes who looked in better shape.

I popped out my cell phone and started taking pictures of the babies, which I emailed to all the grandparents along with the relevant details of time and weight. Each of us called our parents then, and the room was so noisy the babies began to cry. “Get used to this,” I said to them. “You’ve come into a big, boisterous family.”

A pair of nurses, drawn by all the noise, came in. “Time for both moms to get some rest,” the first one said. “We’ll take the little ones to the nursery. Are you breast feeding?”

“I’m going to try,” Sandra said. “But I’m not sure this cow will have enough milk.”

“We’ll work things out,” the nurse said. “Now you get some rest. Your babies will be hungry soon, and you need to recover from the C-section.”

After a round of kisses between adults and babies, Mike and I walked out. It was close to eight o’clock. “Should we pick up Dakota and Roby?” I asked.

“Actually, I was thinking we might have one last night without parental responsibility,” I said. “What do you think about that?”

He leaned in and kissed me. “We’re dads,” he said. “I can’t believe it.”

“We’ve been dads since Roby came to live with us,” I said. “We’re just expanding the ohana.”

I got home first; I always drive faster than Mike. Though he was only a couple of minutes behind me, I was already lying in bed naked, waiting for him. “That’s something I’ll never get tired of coming home to,” he said, stripping his own clothes in record time and hopping into bed with me.

I turned toward him and we kissed. We both had five o’clock shadow and vending machine breath but it didn’t matter. Both of us were hard and I felt the need pulsing through me.

After we were both satisfied, he rolled up next to me, with his arm around my shoulders and my head on his hairy chest. “Love you, babe,” he said, then yawned. “Nobody’s going to change that. Not even a pair of brand-new keikis.”

He was snoring a moment later. I extricated myself from his arms and went into the bathroom, where I washed up. I couldn’t sleep. I was too excited at the thought that our babies were in the world. So I sat at the kitchen table with my grandmother’s diary.

I was eager to see how far the entries took her—would I see my grandfather there? The births of my father and his siblings? I skimmed through a couple of weeks of boring entries, Granny growing more and more disenchanted and unhappy.

Today George came home early because he was running a fever. I put him to bed with a cold compress and tried to provide the same care for him he gave to me when I was sick on the boat.

George continues to fade away and I feel powerless to do anything to help him. A doctor came up from Honolulu and said that he had never seen such a bad fever. The more time I spend by his bedside, mopping his brow, holding his hand, the more I realize how much I care for him.

He is such a good man, and does not deserve such an illness. He loves this island and its people, and I have come to see things through his eyes. When one of the Mormon ladies comes to sit with him for a few minutes, I walk to the ocean’s shore and pray to our God, and the gods of the Hawaiians, to heal him. Those few moments by the water’s edge are my own salvation.

I have not been able to write for some time because my heart has been too heavy. Just as I saw how much I cared for my beloved George, he was taken from me.

He was buried two days ago in the cemetery on the hill. Since then I have been in bed myself, prostrate with grief. Today for the first time I am able to sit up, take some broth, and pen a few words.

I do not want to go back to Idaho. There is nothing for me there. Here, though, I may be able to make a difference, and keep George’s memory alive. And I have come to love this island as George did, from the rough surf to the tempestuous winds to the endless sunshine. The elders have suggested that I go to Honolulu, where a Mormon family has a spare bedroom, and I can find some work as a teacher to support myself.

I sat back. So that explained the story I had been told growing up, that Granny had come to Hawai’i as a teacher. Not exactly the truth—but then, I had learned from years as a homicide detective that the truth is rarely simple.

Leaving Laie was harder than I expected. We had so few possessions and yet everything reminded me of George. A very nice young native man named Keali’i drove up from Honolulu to pick me up, and he helped me sort through everything and load up his truck. He was so very kind, and made this difficult process so much easier.

That was it—at least for this volume. I would have to search through the rest of the boxes to see if Granny had started another diary of her life in Honolulu. I was pretty sure that the nice young native man named Keali’i was my grandfather. I wanted to read more, to see how their love affair developed and how their family had grown.

I yawned, and looked at the clock. It was after one in the morning, and I’d had a very long day. Time to go to sleep and rest up for the new day—and for dealing with the new life ahead of me.

Mahalo for reading about Kimo and his ohana. The story collection Accidental Contact and Other Mahu Investigations is available wherever e-books are sold. If you’d prefer to continue with the next novel, in which Kimo and Ray transfer to the FBI, that’s Children of Noah.

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