I headed west—and traffic was thick, partly because a car had broken down on the shoulder. Trunk’s open, hood’s up, flashers are on. Someone had attached a white handkerchief to the radio antenna—like the situation’s so bad, they’ve surrendered. And as I was approaching, I could see this little old Asian lady—she was literally tiny—maybe five feet tall and probably in her sixties. At the time that seemed ancient to me. She was wrestling the spare tire out of the trunk of her car. As I got closer, I could see she’d gotten the jack out, too.
And I was watching all these other people—most of them adults—in all these cars in front of me just drive past her, like she was invisible. That was weird to me, coming from a place where if you didn’t stop and help someone in trouble, there was a chance that they’d die.
So I pulled over, just behind her, and yup, her back right tire was flat. It was shredded—it’s lucky she didn’t lose control and crash when it blew.
I climbed out of the car and I said, “May I give you a hand with that, ma’am?”
That was when I realized that she’d picked up the cross wrench and was holding it defensively. My first thought was maybe she’s scared because she doesn’t speak English. I was pretty sure she was Japanese—there was a Japanese family that owned a ferryboat on our island, and I’d learned a bit of the language—not much, though. We mostly spoke in Malay or Indonesian. Anyway, I held out my hands to show that I wasn’t dangerous and I said something like “Good day, Grandmother” in Japanese. I didn’t have the vocabulary to tell her that I’d change her tire, so I pointed to the tire and the jack and to myself, and I said, “Help you, I will.”
I remember that clearly, because she laughed and lowered the wrench and said—in English that was better than mine—“Thank you, Yoda. Very kind, you are. I’m so glad of that. People who look like you aren’t always friendly to people who look like me.”
I gaped at her honesty, and I think I blurted something like, “That’s terrible!”
She just smiled and said, “I think the spare’s flat, but if I can wrestle it onto the car, at least it’ll let me limp to a gas station.”
We chatted while I got the jack into place. She asked where I’d learned to speak Japanese. I told her about the island and my parents moving back here, and how I missed living so close to the ocean. I’m sure my homesickness was radiating off of me in waves.
She told me she lived about a block from the beach, and if I wanted to, I could park in her driveway when I visited my old friend, the Pacific.
Her name was Hiroko Nakamura, and maybe it’s weird that a sixteen-year-old boy was best friends with a sixty-year-old Nisei woman. (Nisei means that Hiroko was born in America. Her parents were Issei—they were born in Japan and immigrated here.)
And maybe it’s not weird. I was safe in the quiet of her garden. And I quickly established a routine of stopping in for an early morning—
“Wait,” Peter said.
Shayla looked up from the computer screen and into the man’s disconcertingly blue eyes. They were still sitting at the breakfast counter in the SEAL’s kitchen, and she was reading aloud what they’d already written—the story of how Peter had come to meet Maddie’s mother, Lisa, back when they both were in high school.
Those eyes narrowed slightly. “Did I really say that?” he asked.
She knew exactly the that to which he was referring.
Harry was hovering and he repeated it: “I was safe in the quiet of her garden.”
“I paraphrased,” Shayla explained. “You talked in circles around it for about ten paragraphs, so rather than make this an epic tome, I boiled it down to the essence. Isn’t it true? You felt safe there.”
“Yeah,” he admitted. “But…”
“Too touchy-feely,” she guessed. “For you, maybe, but your audience is a fifteen-year-old girl. She’s dealing with some of the very same things that you were back then—new city, new school, a loss—”
“My loss wasn’t even close to hers,” he quickly pointed out.
“But acknowledging it still makes you—sixteen-year-old you—more relatable to Maddie,” Shayla countered.
“Okay, but that bit about the garden just feels like I’m, I don’t know…” He laughed. “Sharing an embarrassing secret.”
“What’s embarrassing?” Shayla asked. “About wanting to feel safe?”
Seriously? Harry said. You just seriously asked a Navy SEAL alpha male…?
It was, indeed, a serious question, and she held Peter’s gaze as he silently looked back into her eyes for a moment. A long moment. She tried to ignore that inappropriate feeling of warmth and connection as she stared back at him, determined not to look away.
Peter blinked first. And nodded. “You’re right,” he said. “Also, the point of this story is…to share. I have to get used to the fact that if I’m uncomfortable, that means we’re probably doing this right.” He met her eyes again. “Right?”
“Yes. Right,” Shayla said as Harry laughed and whispered Oh my God is this guy real? I need you to have sex with him, immediately. “Shhhh—sure! Absolutely!” She cleared her throat and focused on the computer. “Where were we…? Ah.”
I was safe in the quiet of her garden. And I quickly established a routine of stopping in for an early-morning swim, before heading off to the pain in my ass that was school.
Anyway, that long introduction—how I met Hiroko—brings us to a foggy San Diego morning, several weeks later.
I’m sure you can guess what’s coming, since you already know that Hiroko was Lisa’s great-aunt. She’s Lisa’s grandfather’s youngest sister, and was childhood friends with Kiyo, Lisa’s grandmother.
But back then, I didn’t know about that connection and I was caught off-guard.
I’d seen Lisa at school. It would’ve been hard to miss her. She was a senior and one of the popular kids. She had the lead in the school play, she was dating the school basketball star, she was the prom queen….I stayed far away. I had no time for any of that. But Lisa had this charisma. When she walked down the hall, it was impossible to look away.
So. Foggy morning. I drove over, parked in the driveway, and went for my swim.
Hiroko had an outside shower—a small, wooden, open-aired stall attached to the side of her little cottage. I used it to rinse the salt from my skin before I changed and went to class.
Sometimes she was awake and in her kitchen. On those days she always shared her breakfast with me.
But sometimes, probably when she hadn’t slept much the night before—insomnia was her mortal enemy—her kitchen door was tightly closed, and the windows were dark.
This was one of those shuttered mornings.
I was quiet as I came, barefoot, up from the beach. I silently unlatched the gate to the garden, and went around to the back of the house.
I was running late, so I went for the efficiency of pulling off my trunks and hanging them over the clothesline on my way to the shower. I swung open the door, turned on the water, and was underneath the spray before I realized I was not alone in there.
Lisa was sitting on the bench where I’d left my clothes for school.
That was as far as they’d gotten. “So yeah, that was awkward” was how Peter had concluded the story when he’d first recounted it. “We talked, she made sure I wasn’t taking advantage of her aunt, and, well, that was that.”
Except for the part where he’d been naked in front of a girl he couldn’t keep himself from watching when she walked down the high school corridor.