They chatted a few more minutes. Fawn hung up after promising to pray for them all. Edega had still not appeared for dinner, so Black Sands Annie called him again. While she waited, she glanced through the mail. Her hand hovered over an envelope from the mortgage company. Not another one. She didn’t want to open it but knew she had to. Tearing the back flap, she pulled out the sheet of paper inside and scanned it. If they didn’t get the back payments caught up in one week, the bank would begin foreclosure.
Foreclosure. Her appetite left her. There was no way they could catch up. Where would they go? Her father wandered into the kitchen, and she stuffed the letter into the pocket of her jeans. She’d figure out something. She’d tried to talk to her father about it several times over the past couple of months, but he always brushed her off. She was on her own with this one.
Her father stared at the scientific calculator in his hand but hardly seemed to see it. “I think our research will bring in a flood of publicity,” he announced. “We should be invited to every volcano study in the world with what we know now.”
Annie tried not to smile. His research would hardly change the world, but since her mother died, he had become preoccupied with this study exhausted by other scientists years ago. “I need to talk to you,” she said, putting the food on the table. Wilson stood nearby on hind legs, making small leaps into the air like a circus animal. Annie laughed and dropped some food on the floor. Wilson pounced on it.
Her father’s lips tightened. “One day you will come home and discover I have gotten rid of that animal myself.” Her father sat at the table and made a note on a scratch pad. “Is there anything to drink?”
“I made jasmine tea.” She grabbed the teapot and poured him a cup. He was still jotting down notes when she brought the steaming mug back to the table. Often she was as invisible to her father as the tide that rolled the waves to shore. As long as the house ran smoothly, her father and Leilani looked past her. Let one thing happen, and they would howl for her to fix it. Maybe Fawn was right: she mothered them all too much, trying to make up for their loss.
But the thought of stepping back, of not being needed, made her stomach clench. If she’d watched over her sister better, Leilani might not be missing now. “I need to talk to you,” she told her father again. She perched on a rattan stool at the granite counter and locked her heels on the lowest rung.
He finally looked up from his notes. “I heard the phone ring. Did Leilani call?”
Her mother had always said Edega Tagama had the peculiar ability to ignore anything he didn’t want to think about, though Annie never noticed while her mother was alive. She wanted to shake him, to tell him that his family was unraveling right under his nose. Staring at him, however, her anger melted away. He’d become almost childlike—he needed her so badly.
She picked up Tomi’s bankbook and held it out to her father. “Mano gave me this,” she said.
The vertical lines between his eyes deepened. He took it and opened it. His eyes widened, and she heard his soft exhalation. “This has Tomi’s name on it. Where did Mano get it?”
“He found it in Tomi’s things.” She told him about the phone call from Tomi, and his frown changed to an astonished smile.
He jumped to his feet. “You’re saying your brother is alive?”
“And Mano thinks Leilani might be with him.” Maybe she shouldn’t have said that. Neither she nor Mano was convinced of the possibility now that they’d found the altar.
“My son is alive.” His eyes began to glisten.
“We don’t know for sure yet.”
Her father watched her like a keiki seeking a parent’s reassurance, so she gave him a confident smile. “Tomi is supposed to get in touch with me. I’m sure he’ll answer all our questions then. Until then, I’m assuming Leilani is with him and is fine. Either that or she’s with friends.”
“Good. I want to show him how the last piece of my research has fallen together. It should be ready for publication in a few more weeks. My son is alive,” he said again in a tone of marvel.
If he could find someone to publish it. Annie wanted to encourage him, but he didn’t seem to realize his research wasn’t fresh. Her gaze dropped to the bankbook on the table. What if that money really existed? Could they use some to get caught up on the mortgage? She scooped up the bankbook and stuffed it into her pocket with the bank’s letter. She sat beside her father at the table, but all she could do was pick at her food. She put her plate down for Wilson. He crouched like he was about to pounce on a chicken, and then growled ferociously as he began to tear at the meat. When her father finished, she cleaned the kitchen, then decided she had to do something.