“Keira, he’d never…”
“I don’t think it’s that.” She scooped up the bread crumbs from the island and dusted them into the trash bin between her feet. “And I have no damn clue what it could be.” She exhaled. “I just know it’s bad.”
“He’ll tell you.” I touched her arm and my throat locked up when I saw that Kiera's eyes were misty. Keira never cried. Nothing ever got to her, not that I’d ever seen. “Sweetie,” I’d said, taking her hand. “He’ll tell you, you know he will.”
“That’s the thing, Aly.” One quick sniffle and Keira cleared her throat, pretending like there weren’t tears on her lashes. “The only thing I know anymore is that my marriage is hurting.” Her voice was strong, like she was more pissed off than upset. And when that large shadow lingered in the door, interrupting our brief conversation, she’d turned away, busying herself with storing the condiments and deli meat back into the fridge.
“Hey,” Kona had said, leaning against the doorway. “Brian’s sister and her kids want to come over. That…that okay?” Keira barely glanced at him in answer, nodding once as Kona stared at her. It took him several seconds, time he spent watching her, focusing on the way she moved around the kitchen, how she’d worn no expression on her face before he exhaled, ignoring me completely. “I’ll tell him,” he muttered before he’d disappeared.
“He hear you?” I’d asked her, standing next to Keira as she stopped buzzing around long enough to watch Kona sit on the sofa next to Koa, patting the boy’s head as he leaned against his father.
“Who knows?”
The kiss Kona had given Keira had clearly stumped her. Her strumming lessened and she stared off toward the kitchen, focusing on the front of the house and the shoes that lined near the foyer table. Kona’s. Koa’s. Makana’s. All sandals, a few pair of tennis shoes and boots that were starting to take over with the clip of coolness in the air. Keira wasn’t really looking at anything, I didn’t think, and when the Dolphins intercepted the ball, and Keira seemed to hear the ruckus, she closed her eyes, blocking at anything but the quick movement of her fingers over the strings.
Until Kona’s sudden curse silenced the room.
It was three seconds. I counted because the silence in the room seemed louder than the noise of the game. “Shit, he’s down?” Brian said and I immediately abandoned Mack’s bracelet, knocking Keira’s knee once before I hurried into the TV room.
“What is it?” I asked Kona, not thinking, standing at his side, willing the players on the screen to move, begging Ransom to get the hell up. “Kona?”
“I don’t know.”
Keira came into the living room. There were already tears collecting between her lashes and I took her free hand, not daring to move my gaze from that screen.
“Why aren’t they saying anything? Makua, is Ransom okay?” Makana had joined us, along with Koa and the others, staring wide-eyed at the screen. “Makua?”
Ransom’s young siblings idolized him. They’d seen him hurt before, but as the seconds lengthened and the commentary on the screen was quiet, a little somber, I realized that Koa and Mack had never seen Ransom down this long. To them he was invincible. He was a champion and champions don’t get knocked down. If they do, they don’t stay down for long.
Tugging on Kona’s polo, Mack whimpered, her chin wobbling as she looked at her father for some sort of answer, something that would make sense of her brother laying still, unmoving on that field hundreds of miles away. When her father only shook his head, Mack abandoned her efforts to get his attention and went to Keira, pulling on her belt loop, her voice cracking when she tried to speak. “Makuahine…Makuah…Mom! What’s wrong with my kunāne?”
“Baby,” Keira said, alternating between gripping her phone and pulling her daughter against her side. “We don’t know yet. We have to wait.”
The room had gone quiet. Brian’s niece and nephew, no older than Mack and Koa, had abandoned their phones when the adults in the room stood. Ethan came up behind me, only resting his hand to my neck. He squeezed it, the touch soft, reassuring but it barely registered.
“Come on…” I whispered, wishing Ransom could see the frown I gave him through the screen, saying prayers, begging with God, pleading, that he’d just get up. That’d he’d walk away from this one too. “Come on, baby.”
“Keira, sugar, what can I do?” Cass said, standing on Keira’s free side. He smelled of cigarette smoke and diesel fuel. I couldn’t make out what he did, if he touched her, if he moved at all. My eyes were shut tight, my focus lost in a litany of prayers I wished would be answered, but I did feel a looming, heavy presence in front of me, one that was unmistakable, enormous.