Unease stirred. This story sounded a little like her own.
“One wrong step and we can go down a path that takes us farther and farther from what’s right, from where we intended to go.” Tears rolled down Faye’s cheeks. “I was lonesome and found solace in the drugs Richard brought home. Within a couple of months, I knew I couldn’t come home. I was too ashamed. Everything went downhill from there. Richard left me. I had no money and a drug habit that was eating me alive. I left my daughter with friends and went to a clinic to dry out. It didn’t work. I was back on the streets within two months of getting out.”
A tightness began to squeeze Kaia’s chest. “What about your daughter?” she whispered.
“She was raised by loving grandparents. I knew she was fine, but I wasn’t. My next marriage lasted ten years, but neither of us was ever really happy. I was searching for the paradise I’d lost, but I never found it.”
Kaia couldn’t speak.
Faye sent Kaia a beseeching look. “What really made the change was finding Jesus. I felt clean and new again. Happy for the first time in years.” She took a deep breath. “Except for one thing. I knew I had to try to make right the wrong I’d done here.”
Kaia couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. She didn’t want to hear this. She shut her eyes, but the other woman’s voice continued inexorably.
“It’s you I wronged, Kaia. You and Bane and Mano.”
Kaia opened her eyes again and stared at the woman she knew and yet didn’t know.
Faye glanced at Kaia’s grandfather. “And Makuakane. I wronged him terribly, as well as Makuahine.”
Father and Mother. Kaia felt frozen in time with each minute moving by like a sea turtle on land. Her gaze went to her grandfather. She didn’t want to believe it.
He nodded. “Faye is your mother. Paie.”
Faye in the Hawaiian language was Paie. Why had she never thought about that? Kaia knew Faye had grown up here yet had never questioned her name. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. Her brain felt like poi.
Jesse reached over and took her hand. His strong fingers gripping hers gave her the comfort she needed. She clung to his hand with all the desperation she felt. Her gaze went back to Faye. In the pictures she’d seen of her mother, Paie was wearing Hawaiian attire, and she looked very different in her perfectly tailored linen shorts and beige top, so unlike the colorful clothing in the pictures. But focusing on Paie’s face, she saw some of her own features staring back at her.
“Why have none of your friends recognized you?” she asked. She almost didn’t know her own voice. It was hoarse and strained.
“I’ve pretty much kept to the house except on outings with Heidi. I tried not to go places where I might run into old friends.”
Faye held out her arms. Kaia knew she should be feeling something—anger, joy, something. But she felt only cold and empty. Mechanically, she rose and went into Faye’s arms. But the touch of her arms made her feel even colder.
She pulled away quickly. “Why are you here?”
“I want you to forgive me, Kaia. I’m so sorry for leaving you and your brothers. I can’t make any excuses because there are none. I was blind and willful.”
“Forgive you?” Kaia turned the words over in her mind.
“Yes, I want to make it up to you. Can we be friends first and maybe feel our way to a deeper relationship?”
Friends. Her mother wanted to be friends with her. The pain was more than she could bear. She wanted a mother to love her, not a friend. “You walk out and leave us orphaned and then expect to just pick up twenty-five years later like you’d just taken a little walk?” She stood and clenched her hands together. “My real mother was my t?t?. She was there to teach me to braid my hair. She was there the day I learned to swim, when my first tooth fell out, when I had my first date. How dare you come back now and want to be my friend !”
The betrayal gathered and built until she felt she would burst from the pressure. She whirled and faced her grandfather. “How long have you known about this?” she demanded.
“She came to me just minutes before you arrived,” her grandfather said, his tone slow and measured. “Sit down, keiki. Think; reason this out. Your mother is asking for nothing more than for you to put the past away and make a new future.”
“It’s more than I can do.” Kaia stared at her mother. Faye—Paie—or whatever she wanted to be called—looked pale. Kaia hardened her heart.
“Please, Kaia. I’m so sorry,” her mother whispered. She rose and came toward Kaia.
Kaia took a step back as her mother reached out to touch her again. She put her hands up to her face. “Leave me alone. I can’t think.” She looked down at Jesse. “Can we get out of here?”
“Sure.” He stood, and his eyes were filled with sympathy.
Kaia looked back to her mother. “You’ve talked to Bane, haven’t you? That’s why he was trying to tell me it was time to look for you.”