“Remember on the way here—how we could smell the hibiscus and African tulips as we drove? How vibrant green the kukui trees were?”
Dylan nodded, recalling how he’d carefully studied the flora guide inside the case for the Road to Hana CD they’d purchased, then pointed out the trees and flowers along the way.
“Well, this . . . this is going to far surpass any of that.”
Dylan bit her lip. She didn’t want to go. But she wanted James to be happy. She wanted to be his number one, because sometimes, just beyond those beautiful eyes, she could see him thinking about his other life. About his wife. So she was going to continue on this road with him and help him forget. And she was also going to tell him about their baby.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
JACKS—AFTER
When Officer Keoloha drops us off at the restaurant, our nerves as frayed as our hair from the strong wind, I’m not sure what we’ll find—will the Jeep be here? Did Nick drive back to the hotel? Or go back to California? I try to ignore the hammering in my chest. My earlier anger toward him has subsided; my well of emotions has run dry. Reliving James’s last moments was necessary, but excruciating and exhausting. Finally. All the questions that could have been answered were.
The challenge is not letting the ones that couldn’t be haunt me.
But Nick is here. Waiting at the bar where we left him. Nursing a beer, staring into his glass like if he looked inside of it long enough, he’d find what he’s looking for.
My heart leaps a little. He didn’t leave. He didn’t leave me.
“Hey,” he says, his lips forming a slow smile. He doesn’t ask us how it was. I don’t offer any details. He doesn’t need to. I don’t have to. Because when he stands up and I reach him, I sink into his arms. And I know he can feel that I am emotionally lighter. That I’ve left a part of me back there on that cliff. I dig my head into his shoulder and close my eyes, and we stay like that for what feels like an hour but I’m sure is only a few seconds. Listening to each other without saying a word. Forgiving each other for our weaknesses. I can’t make eye contact with Beth. I know what I’ll see if I do. That look.
The ride back to the Westin is quiet, Beth finally giving in to her exhaustion once we reach Paia, snoring softly in the backseat.
“She’s a good sister,” Nick whispers.
“The best,” I concur.
Beth hugs me so hard the next morning that I have to fight to take a breath, and I gently wriggle from her grasp.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” she asks me again—easily the fiftieth time since we returned from Hana last night. “I still have time to change my flight so we can fly home together.” She looks at the cab that’s waiting for her.
“I swear, Beth, I’m fine. Besides, I have Nick.”
Beth gives me a look I can’t quite place. If I had to guess, it’s a cross between hope that I will recover and find happiness again and fear that I won’t.
But “Be careful” is all she says. I nod, even though that’s something I shouldn’t be promising her. Because I’ve figured out a funny little secret about life: Even if you stay on the sidewalks and pay your bills on time and use hand sanitizer, bad things still happen. Yes, maybe you can cut your odds by playing it safe. By attempting to predict each and every possible pitfall. But your fate will still find you, no matter how much you hide from it.
And now, just twenty-four hours—but what feels like a month—later, Nick and I are at the airport getting ready to fly back to an uncertain reality. The only certainty that I’ve learned is something about myself: I’m not the same person I was when I left California a week ago. The person who boarded that flight from LAX to Maui was weak. She was scared. Now I feel strong. Not quite indestructible, but much more durable. Like I used to be that crappy paper towel they show in the commercial, and now I’m the five-ply one. I used to break easily when there was a spill. Now I can mop up almost any mess. Pour that shit on me. I can handle it.
I drop my driver’s license as we’re making our way through security. It’s raining again, the sheets of water hitting the concrete and making everything slick inside the open building that houses the Maui airport. “Would it kill them to put some doors on this place?” I had joked to Nick earlier as we stood in the long line to give the airline our bags.
“Here.” Nick picks my license up off the ground and sticks it in the side pocket of my purse. “You don’t want to lose this.”
I smile at Nick and feel a memory flash through the back of my mind, one that I can’t quite grasp. I pause, trying to reach out and grab the thought.
“What is it?” Nick asks.
I run through a mental checklist: wallet, phone, toothbrush. I haven’t forgotten anything. “I just got a weird feeling for a second that something wasn’t right. But it’s nothing.” I shake my head and put my canvas bag inside the white plastic bin on the conveyer belt, mentally rolling my eyes at the word stitched in black thread on the side of the tote: Paradise. I think of Beth, who bought it for me years ago as a birthday gift. Telling me that even if I wasn’t traveling, carrying it would make me feel like I was on vacation. And I think of the irony now that I’m in paradise but not on vacation at all.
Once we get settled into our seats on the plane, I pull out the tabloid magazine I bought at the airport and start leafing through it. It’s time to get back to reality, and the first step is seeing what those Kardashians have been up to while I’ve been mourning. I look up to see Nick watching me, his face pensive.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
“For what?” I ask, even though I know what for. But the thing is, I’m not sure he has anything to be apologetic about. If I’m being completely honest, as I’d stood on that cliff without him, just me, my sister several feet off to my right, I was happy I was doing it by myself. Because now I know I can.
“For bailing on you yesterday. My meltdown after we kissed. I was terrible.”
I rested my hand on his arm. “No, you weren’t. You were human. And that’s okay.”
“I need you to understand something. I’ve touched on this with you, but I haven’t really gotten into it. Because it’s hard to explain to someone who doesn’t do what I do. But I see things at work. Terrible things. And to survive, you have to develop a shell. That’s the only way you can go on a call where a six-month-old baby has been horribly burned by his crackhead mother and then come back to the station and not fall apart. Because the bells are going to sound again an hour later, and you have to pull on your turnout pants and get back out there.
“People need me, Jacks. I can’t afford to fall apart. And I couldn’t see where Dylan died. Because my mind would have clicked together all the parts that were missing from the accident report. I’ve been the first responder on calls exactly like that one. I know how she died. And I didn’t want to see it. And I’m sorry I didn’t figure it out sooner. That I wasn’t smart enough to realize that was going to happen to me. I’m sorry I decided to put it in the box.” He points at his chest, and I think I know what he means, but I wait for him to tell me. “It’s where I put all the horrible things I don’t want to deal with.”
“I understand,” I say. And I really do—because I have a box too. It’s where I put the endometriosis. It’s where I filed James’s temper. It’s where I put James’s death. Until I realized that in order to be free of it all, I had to take the lid off and let it all out. And I hope Nick will be able to do that one day too.
Nick stares out the window as we taxi down the runway. “I was afraid if I didn’t put Dylan and her accident in that box, the whole thing might come apart.”
“You’d lose control,” I say, and he nods and wraps his hand in mine—his fingers are warm and comforting.