Margot Early - Mr. Family

Mr. Family?

Like a daddy wolf. His wolf’s expression was on her, assessing her, sniffing the air. Alert.

Mutely Erika submitted to the examination.

It was brief, though Kal found her face hard to absorb in one take. Brown eyes. Olive complexion. Smooth skin. She was tall and slender, with the honed limbs of an athlete.

And a slight limp.

He draped the lei hala lei around her neck, and her thick hair reached out and wisped against his fingers, clinging to them with static electricity. “Aloha,” he said and touched his lips to her cool cheek. Strands of hair seemed to leap against his face, and he drew back.

Still feeling the kiss and his hands brushing her as he’d put the lei around her neck, Erika recalled the word for thank you. “ Mahalo. What a beautiful lei. ”

Well, she’d figured out that mahalo wasn’t Hawaiian for airport trash can, reflected Kal. When she clued into the fact that the word was used mostly by poolside entertainers and interisland flight attendants, she’d be all right.

She was fingering the lei, examining it as though she found it wondrous, which he had to admit it was.

In truth, the lei gave Erika an excuse not to look at Kal. A slanted half-inch white scar crossed the indentation above his upper lip. Its effect was to make her want to stare at his mouth, at his straight white teeth and the faintest gap between the front two.

Instinct distracted her from the flowers, made her glance down, and there was Hiialo, her arms reaching up with another lei. Erika crouched in front of her, and the little girl put the braid of reddish leaves around her neck.

“Aloha, Erika. I’m Hiialo.”

“Aloha to you, Hiialo.”

“My uncle Danny’s hula group made these for you.”

Had that been Maka’s hula group, too? No wonder the leis seemed so intricate, so special. An unexpected welcome from people she had never met. People who loved Kal and Hiialo enough to reach out to her, too. The depth of generosity, the level of hospitality and courtesy, seemed foreign—and beautiful.

No wonder Adele’s so crazy about Hawaii, thought Erika, looking forward to sharing stories about her trip. Then she remembered it wasn’t just a vacation. She might stay here.

Kal said, “Let’s go get your bags.”

AS THEY DROVE NORTH, Erika tried to adjust to riding in a car with two strangers who might become the most important part of her life. Luckily there was a lot on the road to occupy her. Sugarcane grew in fields between the road and the sea. Outside a shopping mall, men harvested coconuts from royal palms that reached skyward like Jack’s beanstalk.

When the businesses and houses of Wailua were behind them, Kal nodded toward the inland hills. “That’s Nounou Ridge. We call it the Sleeping Giant. Can you see him lying on his back?”

“Yes.” Erika knew from studying a map that they were on Kauai’s main highway. It almost circled the island, stopping only for the impassable mountains of the Na Pali Coast. Was Maka killed on this road? How did it happen? Who was at fault?

Kal was thinking of Maka, too. The road was narrowing. They drove past the place where her heart had stopped beating. If Hiialo hadn’t been in the back seat, he would have shown Erika where the cars collided.

He ran out of words until they neared the next town. “This is Kapaa. My folks have a gallery here. It’s right there.” He pointed out the Kapaa Okika Gallery.

Beyond the reflections in the windows, Erika caught a glimpse of paintings hanging against a light background. Then the gallery was out of sight, and the car trawled past shops full of tropical-print silks, colorful beach totes, surfboards and various trinkets. In a blink they left Kapaa, and the highway opened out with a view of the sea.

Miles farther on, as the road curved around the north shore, Kal indicated a lighthouse on a promontory. “Kilauea Lighthouse. You surf?”

“Not anymore.” Not well enough for Hawaii’s waves. Erika stole a glance at Kal. She’d seen in his photographs that he was attractive. But a photo couldn’t carry a man’s smell or his voice. She’d thought she was used to the low warm gravelly quality of the latter from talking to him on the phone. But hearing him speak and seeing his face, his body, all at once was a different matter.

The Pacific shifted colors under her eyes, like a quilt being shaken out.

We’ll be fine, she told herself. I’ll get used to him, and he won’t seem so sexy.

The countryside became lush, and Erika could feel the dampness in the air as the Datsun passed valleys planted in taro. Blossoms spilled from tree branches, and the roadside flowers held as many shades as her paint box. In a tree whose limbs stretched out on sweeping horizontal planes, like a bonsai, sat dozens of white birds with exotic plumage on their heads. They reminded Erika of tropical ports of her childhood, and she thought of her parents, especially her mother, who had loved flowers.

What a place to paint.

She subdued the now familiar doubts…that she’d never sell another watercolor.

“Daddy, Eduardo’s hungry.”

Erika glanced into the back seat. Hiialo had one toy with her in the car, the thing Erika had thought was called Pincushion. A watercolor subject. But she must have been mistaken about its name. “Is that Eduardo?”

“No,” said Hiialo. “This is Pincushion.” She frowned, as though puzzled that Erika had asked. “Eduardo is a mo’o. ”

“What’s that?”

Hiialo seemed at a loss. “Daddy…”

“Mo’os,” said Kal, “are giant magical black lizards of Hawaiian legend.”

“Giant?”

“Thirty feet long.” The topic was a good icebreaker. “The ancient Hawaiians worshiped their ancestors, who they believed could be powerful allies after death. Actually some people still depend on their aumakua, deified ancestral spirits, to help them out of trouble. In the old days, a kahuna, an expert in magic, would help people transform their deceased relatives into sharks or mo’os or whatever. Mo’os lived in ponds and were supposed to be fierce fighters, protective of their families.”

“Except Eduardo lives in our house,” said Hiialo.

Erika briefly entertained the notion that Maka had become a mo’o after death. It was a silly idea, but it seemed less cruel than death’s stealing her, leaving her husband and baby alone.

There was only a shade of humor in her next thought: I should make friends with Eduardo.

With Maka’s memory.

“We’re coming up on Princeville,” Kal said. “In a minute you can see Hanalei Bay.”

The terrain was changing again. The green hillocks inland had become mountains, rich forested green and draped in billowing shifting mist. Banyan trees grew alongside the road, their roots stretching twenty feet down the earthen embankment to the asphalt. Erika understood why Kauai was called the Garden Island. Everywhere, everything was verdant; plants with sprawling leaves caught the mist and the first raindrops.

A moment later a shower came in a clattering torrent. Through the rain streaming down the windshield, Erika caught her first glimpse of Hanalei Bay. A Zodiac motored across the water, and then the bay was obscured again by a tangle of foliage, trumpet vines, bottlebrush trees, amaryllis blossoms.

In another few minutes they reached Hanalei.

“That’s the gallery,” said Kal, identifying a white building with a wraparound porch.

Hanalei was not the tourist trap Erika had half expected. Despite its galleries and T-shirt shops, surf shops and boutiques, the community had an unpolished small-town atmosphere. Leaving the shopping area, they passed a soccer field set against the backdrop of mist-cloaked mountains. Beside the field was a green clapboard church with dramatic Gothic stained glass, a bell on the roof peak and a side tower with a pointed pagoda roof. In the doorway two women in identical holoku gowns and leis corralled some small children. Other people emerged, and Erika realized it was a wedding.