CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

We tied off to my mooring in Kona Bay the same day Congressman Bill Kelleher’s trade legislation hit the House floor. It failed by a narrow margin, but he vowed to keep up the fight.

Two hours later, I accompanied Snyder to his bar to collect my mail and run the errands I had been planning for the past two days.

“Hey, guys,” Lolly said. “You’re back. How about a beverage? My treat.”

“Just my mail,” I said. “But I appreciate the offer.”

Snyder went behind the bar and tapped a beer for himself as she pushed through the swinging doors that led to the office. A minute later, she returned with a box stuffed with mail.

“I had to sign for this one,” she said, handing me an overnight letter.

I looked at the return address. Dunross, Frankel & Wood.

Inside was a copy of an article clipped from the Honolulu newspaper. A yellow Post-it with a handwritten note from Patricia Dunross had been stuck to it. Thought you’d want to know about this was all it said.

I unfolded the paper and saw that May Ling’s tragic story had become front-page news in the city, prompting a spontaneous outpouring of donations that already reached well into six figures.

At my recommendation, J.R. had retained Patricia to represent May Ling in finalizing the details of her immigration and ongoing litigation against Joey Soong and the White Orchid. Apparently, Patricia Dunross had taken it upon herself to set up a charitable foundation in May Ling’s name, as well.

Patricia was quoted widely throughout the article, stating that it was May Ling’s wish to use the contributed funds to establish a home where people such as she and her son could find shelter while they sorted out new lives in America. It ended with May Ling’s own words: “Someday, I want to repay.”

“You okay?” Lolly asked me.

I had to clear my throat. “I believe I’ll take that beer,” I said.

She came to the door wearing a pair of board shorts and a bathing suit top. Her hair hung loose across the smooth brown skin of her shoulders, and her eyes took me in an inch at a time.

“Hello, Lani.”

“Been home long?”

“Long enough to shower.”

Her smile was weary and thin, but she stepped aside to let me in. I slipped the sandals off my feet, left them on the stoop and came inside.

“There are some things I need to say and I don’t want you to interrupt me,” she said.

“Okay.”

“I dreamed of you again last night,” she said.

“You sound angry.”

“I am, and you’re interrupting. You’re like a goddamned song I can’t get out of my head.”

I waited through the silence she left floating there, listened to the mynahs and mourning doves in the palms outside her apartment.

“Do you have any idea how much I care about you?” she said finally.

“I—”

“No, you don’t,” she finished for me.

I saw her face flush beneath the tan. She shook her head.

“You don’t even care about yourself, Mike. You’re last on your own list.”

She moved into the kitchen and I took a seat at the breakfast bar.

“First, your brother calls and you fly off to LA. The next thing I know, your ex-partner calls and you disappear again. You don’t even tell me where you’re going, or when you’re coming back. When you do come home, you look like . . .”

Her hands swept the air in front of me.

“Like that for Chrissakes. Beaten up, bruised and God knows what all. What am I supposed to do with that, Mike? I mean, what is that?”

I fingered the shrinking lump on my forehead, glad she hadn’t seen it when it was fresh. But I knew she was right. The part of my life I hadn’t spent completely focused on being a cop, I’d spent trying to lock it away. I lived behind an invisible line and I didn’t know exactly how I had arrived there.

“Lani,” I said. “I was trying to protect you. I didn’t want you involved.”

“That’s what I’m talking about,” she said. “You never want me involved. But I want to be. I want to be involved. I’m thirty-freaking-three years old, Mike. I think I can handle being involved.”

“I meant to say I didn’t want you hurt.”

“Oh, that’s even better.” She turned away from me, laughed without humor, then her voice went soft and low. “Mike, all I want is a little stability in my life. But you’ve got a choice you need to make.”

It was the truth, and I knew it. I had thought of little else for the past two weeks.

“I love you, Mike,” she breathed. So quiet, I almost missed it.

I kissed her softly, and felt her hands on my shoulders, my neck, the back of my head. She kissed me in return.

“I have something I need to show you,” I told her.

“Where?”

“Do you trust me?”

She gave a look that went straight through me.

“You’ll need to put something on,” I said.

Pale orange light glowed from a place well beyond the entry gates of the Kamahale plantation. I saw the puzzlement in Lani’s eyes as we drew closer to the source, driving slowly through the dense rows of coffee that grew along the edge of the road.

My business partner, Tino, had done everything I had asked of him on the phone a few days earlier. He had been busy. With the help of a contractor friend of ours, he had carved an acre—a perfect square—from the lush green fields. The light from at least three dozen tiki torches flickered along the perimeter of the land where I now hoped to build a home with Lani.

I held her as Lani stepped down from the Jeep, and stood beside her in a silence broken only by the night music of tree frogs and crickets deep inside the jungle. A warm breeze pulled at her hair as she gazed down the gentle slope to the lights of Kona and the vessels that lay at anchor in the bay.

When she turned to me, the torchlight played across the most beautiful smile I think I have ever seen.

“Mike?”

I was kneeling on the red soil, a tiny velvet box in my outstretched hand.

I slid the ring onto her finger and kissed her.

“What about the Kehau?”

“I can still do my charters,” I said. “But kids need a place to run and play. They need swing sets and bikes and tree-houses.”

She moved beside me and wrapped her arms around my waist.

There were no more words. There was no need. Everything I needed to know was reflected in her eyes. I held her close, felt the warmth of her breath against my chest as the sky faded to purple and the first fine dusting of stars appeared from behind the clouds.