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There’s a knock—Alana again. She pokes her head inside and I sit up, keeping Kal’s ocean-blue comforter over my lap.
“Can I come in?” she asks.
“Of course,” I say.
Alana sits on the side of my bed. She reaches out a soft hand and pats my blanket-covered leg. “Kal is a good boy. I know you see that.”
“I do,” I tell her.
“I want you to know why I’ve always thought he wasn’t married.”
I swallow. Would Kal want her telling me this? But Alana is determined.
“His father left when he was young. Too young. Just nine years old. Though we’d had problems for years. Our girls shared a room so that Eric could sleep somewhere else at night. We tried to get along. We tried to hide the bickering, but children see things. Things they are too young to see, too young to be burdened with.” She shakes her head.
I reach out, taking her hand with mine. It’s clear this still causes her pain.
“So, he left. And life was better. There was less contention in our home. But Kal missed his father. He didn’t come around much. And he missed having another man around. He would never say so, but I saw it. In a way, I needed a man around too. Kal became that man. I was so sure, all these years, that this was the reason he didn’t start his own life. He worried so much about not being there for me, his mother, that he couldn’t take on anyone else. He worried about ending up like his father too. He would never want to have a family only to leave them. To not care for them.” She sighs. “But he would never do this. Kal is ten times the man his father ever was.”
My brows cinch, sorry for Kal’s pain—even Alana’s praise breaks my heart. “He is such a good man,” I say.
“Yes, but Meg Miller, listen.” She taps my hand. “I was wrong. So so wrong. All these years, I thought Kal’s worries, my dependence, and his father’s absence closed him off to finding love. I thought that my boy would never marry, never have his own family, never be the father he was meant to be. But I was wrong.”
“Of course that’s wrong. It isn’t your fault, Alana. He may worry but—”
“No,” she says. “Not my fault. It’s yours.”
My brow furrows. Wait. What? “Mine?” How are Kal’s childhood sorrows my fault?
“Yes.” She nods, and her tight curls bob with her. She wraps her fingers around mine and holds my hands to her bosom. “He needed to meet you. I was wrong about his worries. About my part. It wasn’t about me or his father. He had not met you yet, my dear. He needed you.”
28
Meg
I attempt to ignore Alana’s words the rest of the week…but they keep worming their way back into my brain every chance they get.
We’re on a sailboat—He needed to meet you.
We’re hiking through the trees—He needed to meet you.
We’re making dinner with Kal’s sister and husband—He needed to meet you.
Kal’s kissing every inch of my neck beneath the umbrella of yet another waterfall—He needed to meet you.
It’s a mantra that does nothing to help with the fact that I leave on a plane for Love in just a few hours. My second week in Hawaii only went quicker than the first.
How is that possible? How is it over? Already.
And how did it only make everything more difficult?
I’m packing up my things—that have somehow made themselves at home in Kal’s old bedroom. My eyes sting and my throat aches with unshed tears.
“You’ll come back,” Alana says, holding out her arms. “You will.” She nods, her smile so big, so bright as if she can see the future. As if she knows something I don’t.
I don’t say anything. I can’t. Not without falling to pieces.
Another week has only made my goodbye a million times harder. All of the things I felt last week—they’ve only magnified. I care for Kal more now than I did then, and yet, I still have to leave.
