Page 52 of Talk Story

By the time I pulled into the driveway, the light had gone, and I was about as bedraggled as a person can get and still be upright.

Salt from the bay was stiff in my hair. A bruise was coming up on my cheekbone where Patel’s elbow had caught me, and another on my ribs that I’d feel every time I laughed for the next week. I smelled like a wet dog that had lost a fight with a mountain and the sea.

Under all of it, heavier than anything else, was the stone in my chest I’d driven home with.

Tiki met me at the door.

She sat dead center on the entry mat in full affront posture, tail wrapped tight and fixed me with a stare of such concentrated betrayal that I stopped on the threshold, hesitant to pass her lest she take a swipe at my shins. It wouldn’t be the first time.

“Hi, sweet girl,” I said (not truthful, but optimistic.) “I missed you too.”

Tiki rose, turned her back on me with the slow deliberation of a queen dismissing a disappointing courtier, lifted her kinked tail to show me exactly what she thought of being left home from an adventure, and pushed through the cat door we’d carved into the portal.

I followed as she stalked into the wide entry that flowed into the living room. Once there, she paused, threw a last, yellow-eyed glare over her shoulder to make sure the snub had landed, and vanished up the stairs into the dark of my bedroom.

“Fair,” I said to the empty space.

“That you, Katherine?” Aunt Fae’s voice, from the cozy dining and sitting room area where we hung out most. Light spilled from the area, welcoming me.

“Yup. Home at last.” I came around the corner.

Aunt Fae was on the floor on a yoga mat, doing physical therapy exercises: ankle circles—slow careful flexes the orthopedist had prescribed now that the cast was off. She had her reading glasses pushed up into her gray bob and a kitchen timer ticking beside her.

Aunt Fae did her PT the way she did everything: on schedule, to the letter, and slightly more than instructed.

“Well, now. I didn’t expect you.” She relaxed her feet onto the mat. “It’s Saturday. Figured you’d be over at Keone’s tonight.”

It was a perfectly ordinary thing to say; and it went through me like a gaff through a fish, because it implied “you have a place to be on Saturday nights now, you belong somewhere”—when deep in my heart, I was sure I never would.

I opened my mouth to reply, make some quip—and my face crumpled instead.

To my horror, I started to cry.

Not pretty crying; the painful, gasping, red-faced anguish that comes from somewhere old and ugly. I sobbed and gulped, standing in my salty towel.

Aunt Fae was up off that mat faster than a woman fresh out of a cast had any business moving.

“Kat. Honey.” She crossed to me; put her hands on my shoulders. “What happened? Are you hurt? Is Keone⁠—”

“Nobody’s hurt.” I scrubbed at my face. “Everybody’s fine. Except Victor Chang. He’s injured. But we caught them. We caught all of them. The case is over.” A sob hitched, caught in my throat like a ball of twine. “Auntie, no matter what I do, I’m never going to really belong here. Or anywhere. I keep throwing myself at this place like . . . if I help enough, if I solve enough, if I prove myself—they’ll accept me. But I flew in. I’m a haole girl. I’ll always be the one who’s ‘not from here.’ Keone said it himself today, about Patel—ʻshe’s not from here’—like it’s the worst thing you can be, like it explains her bad choices. And . . . and that’s me too . . .”

Aunt Fae did something she rarely ever did—she hugged me.

My aunt is not a hugger. She is an old-school New Englander, a woman who shows love through chopping firewood, making casseroles, bootstrap bluntness and showing up for hard things.

So when her arms came around me and held on, though I was much taller, I felt the strength of her, the commitment, the absolute acceptance. I cried harder, hunching over so I could reach her shoulder.

She didn’t loosen her grip until my sobs slacked off to hiccups. Then she set me back at arm’s length and gazed at me. Softness faded and blue steel shone in her eyes. That was Aunt Fae too; the steel was also love.

“Now you listen to me,” she said. “Because I’m only going to say this once and then we’re never speaking of this nonsense again. Sit down.” She steered me onto her nearby lounger. “You can’t tell me you don’t belong here after what I’ve seen since I came.” She shook her head. “I’ll tell you what I’ve seen, Katherine Ellie Smith.”

She started counting on her fingers. Her voice had the flat Down East certainty that brooked no argument.

“Keone loves you so much. That boy walks around concussed. He asked you to marry him and keeps taking your crap about setting a date. Wear the ring properly, for gosh sakes. His cousin Pono—Ilima’s nephew, Lei’s partner, the one gallivanting in Vegas this week—he calls me to check on you when he’s worried, did you know that? Lei Texeira, who does not give her time to anybody, has spent her days off chasing petroglyph thieves because you asked her to check into it, and she’d do it again. Meanwhile, Mayor Ilima Kaihale herself sat right here and told me she considers you family and can’t wait to have you as a daughter-in-law. Opal and Artie are about to hand me a job because they trust your judgment about who I am, and they consider you their adopted daughter. Pearl Yamamoto—Pearl, who doesn’t suffer fools—calls you ‘ohana to your face.” She’d run out of fingers and started over. “Uncle Kalani, the kahu, the man who tends the bones of ancestors, told you that bumbye you’d be kamaʻāina. That man does not flatter people, Kat.”

I wiped my eyes. “I know all that. I do. It’s because . . .”

“Because some thirty-year-old wound in you would rather have you believe you’re alone—than risk the possible heartbreak of believing you’re not.” She said it without cruelty, because it was true, and she’d known it about me since I was a child. “Your parents died, and you decided, somewhere down deep, that belonging to people was dangerous because they could leave. And you’ve spent your life since, making sure you’re an outsider so nothing can devastate you like that again.” She tapped my knee. “I did the same thing until you came into my life. I’m an expert at being alone—but it’s a lonely way to be right.”