Table of Contents

Cover Page

Excerpt

Dear Reader

Title Page

Dedication

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

EPILOGUE

Copyright

“Hello. This is Kal Johnson calling. Is Erika there?”

His voice was low and resonant. Masculine. God help her.

“This is Erika.”

“I thought we should talk on the phone.” Brilliant, brilliant, keep it up, Kal.

Erika bit her lip. There was a bellows stuck in her throat, and it was opening and closing with each beat of her heart. Talk, she thought. Say something that will make him…

Oh, she wanted it. They could settle into permanence—permanent celibacy, permanent family—and her life would not change again. Safe.

“Your daughter’s beautiful.” The ensuing pause was so long that at last she asked, “Are you still there?”

“Yeah. I…Erika, I’ve thought a lot since I got your letter. Are you serious about this?”

This. As though he couldn’t say it himself. Erika swallowed. She wanted a family—and an opportunity like this wouldn’t come again. Normal people wanted sex. Kal and his grief were her only hope.

“Yes,” she said. “Yes, I am.”

Dear Reader,

I’m the youngest of eight children and have more than thirty first cousins. When I married my husband, I acquired even more family, not just my beloved spouse, but his family.

So let me tell you a story.

It was like something out of a romance novel. I was in distress, fleeing personal difficulties, taking my two-year-old son with me. My destination: Iowa. My husband-to-be’s family were to meet me at the airport; though I had never met them, on the trust of his love for me, they had invited me to come to their home and stay.

My beautiful future sister-in-law met me at the airport with the words “Welcome to Iowa, Margot!” Just hours later my fiancé’s parents encouraged me to call them “Mom” and “Dad”—a tradition unfamiliar to me, but which I found immediately comfortable and welcoming. In the coming days Mom would inspire me with her courage and love (especially her love for my son!), Dad with his profound generosity, and Grandma with her wisdom and her chocolate chip cookies. I had already conversed at length with my brother-in-law-to-be on the phone. An added bonus was my new sister’s daughter, born the same day as my son. One couldn’t wish for better in-laws!

Five years later, five years sprinkled with love and laughter during periodic visits with these delightful people, I found myself with them again while completing this novel Perhaps that is why Mr. Family celebrates the Hawaiian concept of ohana—not just family, but extended family. Though the characters of Mr. Family—Kal, Erika (who first appeared in The Third Christmas), Hiialo and their ohana—are purely imaginary, perhaps you can feel in these pages the love I’ve been fortunate to know. I hope so. Wishing you and yours the same…

Sincerely,

Margot Early

P.S. I love hearing from readers. Please write to me at P.O. Box 611, Montrose, CO 81402-0611.

Mr. Family
Margot Early

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For my ohana

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank the following people, each of whom

helped in some way with this book:

For enriching my appreciation and understanding of art,

I’m grateful to Elaine Barnhart, Jan Carlile

and Alan Fine.

To all my ohana who helped in large and small ways during the writing of this book, thank you.

Laura and Cecilia, your friendship and wisdom

brighten my days.

And most of all, I thank the two closest to me, my

husband and son, for your patience and love.

CHAPTER ONE

Santa Barbara, California

January

WANTED: Woman to enter celibate marriage and be stepmother to four-year-old girl. Send child-rearing philosophies to Mr. Ohana, Box J, Haena, Kauai, HI.

“THAT’S THE WRONG page.” Impatiently Adele reached over the butter plate with a long-nailed hand that seemed dwarfed by rings, onyx and jade in hand-crafted gold settings. She gestured for Erika to turn the magazine pages. “It’s in the middle.”

“Wait, wait. Look at this.” Strangely excited—in the same way she became excited when a painting was going well—Erika Blade handed Adele the copy of Island Voice, open to the ad for a celibate marriage. In the last few months she had begun to pay attention to personal ads, to flyers for computer dating services, to bulletins for singles’-club activities. She never acted on any of them. Only desperate people did things like that, and she wasn’t really even looking for a mate. Not exactly. She was simply…curious.

Celibate marriage. Send child-rearing philosophies…

If she was ever to answer a personal ad, this would be the one.

Erika and Adele sat at an ocean-view table in the Surf Room, the grand glass-enclosed breakfast room of the famed Montecito Palms Resort Hotel. The glass-topped table was graced with potted violets, fine bone china, heavy English silver, the remains of breakfast, and transparencies of several of Erika’s latest watercolors of women by the sea. Momoy Publishing, owned by Adele and her husband Kurt, had published many of Erika’s paintings as limited-edition prints. In fact, Adele had brought the copy of Island Voice because she’d purchased an ad in it for Erika’s recent serigraphs. Her work sold well in Hawaiian galleries.

But Erika was less interested in the prints Adele had already published than in her verdict on the work shown in the transparencies. Nervous, she’d flipped past her publisher’s advertisement, lost her place and stumbled upon the personal from Mr. Ohana.

As Adele squinted at the ad, Erika took stock of the changes in her publisher’s appearance. Though Adele was only five foot three and tipped the scales at 140, she’d never let that turn her from the world of haute couture—an attitude Erika admired. She loved color, and Adele was an ever-changing palette. Her hair was cut in a severe bob that slanted from ear level on the left to chin level on the right. Its present hue was eggplant—Cobalt Violet, Payne’s Gray and just a touch of Cadmium Orange, if Erika had wanted to mix it from paint—and her dangling purple-and-sapphire earrings matched. During their eight-year professional relationship, Erika had come to anticipate meetings with Adele as a time to vicariously enjoy nail polish, chic hairstyles and makeup.

And at fifty-one, fifteen years older than Erika, Adele was one of the very few people in the world with whom Erika felt comfortable exposing something of who she really was. Adele was her judge, support and promoter of the thing most intimate to her—her art.

“Tell me you’re kidding,” Adele said. “Not the personals, Erika.”

Erika suddenly realized that she’d been injudiciously enthusiastic about the ad. Even Adele would think she was crazy.

“God, is it the biological clock?” exclaimed her publisher. “If it is, I’ve got a fifteen-year-old son you can have.”

Erika laughed, glancing nervously out the window at the sun-soaked Santa Barbara Channel and the islands beyond. Because it was Adele, she said, “Oh, I don’t know. Having a kid underfoot doesn’t sound half-bad.” After this too-truthful admission, she rushed on, “I’m trying to picture this Mr. Ohana.”

“Well, I doubt it’s his real name. Ohana is the Hawaiian word for family. Actually it implies extended family,” explained Adele, whose second passion, after art, was Hawaiiana. “A feeling of helping one another, of loyalty.”

Erika leaned over the table to stare at the upside-down personal ad. “Mr. Family?” The pseudonym seemed tinged with self-mockery.

“Yeah. He’s got a real sense of humor. ‘Send child-rearing philosophies’?” Adele rolled her eyes, then gave Erika a dubious look plain as words. Celibate? Surely it’s not that bad. Rather than dwelling on her artist’s unnatural whims, she flipped through the magazine until she came to the advertisement for Erika’s prints.

Erika took the magazine again and smiled at the ad for Sand Castles. “Can I take this?” Erika held Adele’s copy of Island Voice questioningly above the straw carryall slung over the back of her chair.

“Sure. I brought it for you.”

Erika slipped the magazine into her bag and met Adele’s black-rimmed eyes.

Her publisher sighed. She gathered the transparencies, glanced at one of them under the light and put them in their envelope to return to Erika.

Erika’s heart fell. But somehow she’d already known Adele wouldn’t take a chance on them.

“Erika, these paintings just don’t have your usual vigor—or depth. And they’re very similar to things you’ve done before.”

It was true. “Is it because I used Jean for a model in several of them? She’s so gorgeous…” Her sister-in-law had posed for some of Erika’s best work, including Sand Castles. “I’m having trouble making people look real.”

“Well, in Sand Castles you certainly managed it.”

Sand Castles was a watercolor of Jean with Erika’s eight-year-old nephew, Christian. Erika knew her feelings for Chris had translated in paint. She had perceived and understood Jean’s nurturing of her stepson. Because, of course, she’d played that role herself. It was Erika’s best piece ever. But in her publisher’s candid response, she saw the truth—that it was rare for her to capture so much feeling in her art.

She counted on that honesty from Adele, who went on, “No, I don’t think Jean’s the problem. I think you’re afraid to take risks, and you’re trying to stay on familiar ground.”

The words tolled inside Erika like the bell of truth. Afraid to take risks…Erika had her reaction, which was emotional. Visceral. It was hard to get up after a fall. Adele had watched; she should know.

“Look,” said Adele. “I don’t want you to feel bad about this. I know what you’ve been going through this past year. A lot of change. I think Sand Castles is going to sell very well, and if it does maybe we’ll do a second series. In the meantime, you can work on some new projects.” Scraping back her chair from the table, Adele drew an enameled cigarette case and matching lighter from her handbag.

Erika frowned. With soaring cholesterol and bloodpressure, her friend was a walking time bomb. “You know, I want to have you around for a few years, Adele.”

“Trust me. I’m prolonging my life—using techniques from the Adele Henry school of stress reduction.”

Cigarettes, cognac and French cuisine…

Adele changed the subject. “Speaking of Jean, did you say you’re without her as a model for a while?”

Erika took the hint; she couldn’t force Adele to take care of herself. “They’re in Greenland. Studying walruses.” Erika’s father, Christopher Blade, had been a renowned undersea explorer, and her brother, David, had followed in his footsteps after his death. Now, David and his second wife, Jean, and his son were in the Arctic for a year. The expedition had followed closely on the heels of an overfishing study in Japan. In fact, they’d spent little time in Santa Barbara since David had married Jean a year before. The sea was their home. It had always been Erika’s, too.

Adele contemplated the burning end of her cigarette. “Kurt and I are leaving for Hilo next week. Why don’t you join us? Make it a painting trip?”

Erika smiled, shaking her head. She loved Hawaii; when she was nineteen, she’d spent three months there with her parents and David studying sharks. But she wouldn’t intrude on her publisher’s vacation time with her husband in their getaway on the Big Island. It occurred to her that Adele felt sorry for her. That was the last thing she wanted—from anyone. “Don’t worry.” She laughed. “I don’t plan to answer any personal ads while you’re gone.” Afraid to take risks. She’d just confirmed it.

Adele drew on her cigarette with a wry smile. “Hawaii can be tough on malihinis—newcomers. Especially haoles like us.”

Caucasians. Erika remembered the word.

“But, hey,” said Adele, “Haena’s a beautiful place. And all he wants is to know if you follow Dr. Spock or James Dobson.” She rolled her eyes again. “Take my advice. Get a dog.”

Erika’s present living situation didn’t allow for a dog. In fact, she’d never lived anywhere she could have one. Dogs were for people with homes. They implied permanence. Erika wanted permanence—if she could get it without more change. She’d known too much of that.

She contemplated the personal ad in Island Voice. Celibate marriage. She was probably one of the few people in the world who could see the appeal of that.

Mr. Family, she thought. Mr. Family.

Minutes later Adele paid the check with her gold card, and they stepped outside into a crisp winter breeze that made the palms chatter. Her faded carryall slung over her shoulder, her silk dress from Pier 1 Imports swishing against her legs, Erika accompanied Adele to her black Saab.

Erika walked with the slight limp that had become natural to her. Two years of rehab had made her strong and lean, but her legs would never be as they once were. She felt Adele’s appraising glance.

“You look great,” said Adele. “Really.”

“Thanks.” Adele had known her in the periods Erika thought of as Before, During and After. The present was After.

Something to remember, to be thankful for.

They paused beside the driver’s door of the Saab and embraced. “Now take care,” Adele told her, “and remember, the invitation to Hilo is open. Kurt would love to have you, too.”

“Thank you, Adele.” Erika released her. “Drive safely.”

After Adele had backed the Saab out of its space and driven off, headed for an appointment with an artist in Solvang, Erika made her way under the palms to her own car, the sun-bleached, sea-foam green Karmann Ghia she had bought eleven months before, when she began driving again.

Sliding behind the wheel, she set her carryall on the passenger seat. The copy of Island Voice showed from the top, and Erika drew out the magazine, thumbing through, looking for the ad for Sand Castles, to convince herself that she really could paint.

But she couldn’t find the right page, and instead, she turned to the classifieds in the back. Mr. Ohana…

Haena’s a beautiful place. And all he wants is to know if you follow Dr. Spock or James Dobson.

Nothing else.

Not even sex.

Erika shut the magazine and started her car. Afraid to take risks.

No pain, no gain; no guts, no glory?

No risk…no fulfillment.

Ever since David had met Jean, ever since Erika had begun to feel superfluous to her brother and his son, she’d been lonely. She missed Chris.

She wanted a family of her own.

But the usual route to that place was not for her. She always met the same obstacle in the road. No, really, it’s not you. It’s me. I’m just not ready for this. Trying to sound normal, blaming it on her accident.

Yes, Adele, I’m afraid. You would be, too.

Mr. Ohana’s personal ad, however…maybe this was a risk she could take. A child. A celibate marriage. Yes, she liked the idea.

But why did he want it?

What’s wrong with you, Mr. Ohana? she wondered. What’s your story?

Pepeluali: February

Haena: the heat

On the island of Kauai…THE RAIN SHATTERED through the Java plum trees and the ironwoods, drumming on the roof of the bungalow hidden in the foliage. Wet tropical blossoms gave off a heady aroma scarcely noticed by the occupants of the house. On the porch, Hiialo was catching rainfall in a plastic cup to measure—a “science experiment,” she had told Kalahiki.

Kal was glad she was busy—and happy. Everyone knew when she wasn’t. He turned from the envelopes littering the throw rug to the open front door and the barefoot little girl beyond. He could hear her voice under the rain, talking to a lizard out on the porch.

“Aloha, Mr. Skink. My name is Hiialo. This is Eduardo…”

Eduardo was an imaginary friend of Hiialo’s, a thirty-foot mo’o, or magical black lizard. A fearsome sight for Mr. Skink, thought Kal.

“Oh, don’t run away,” said Hiialo. “Eduardo won’t hurt you. He only eats shave ice.”

Danny’s voice drew Kal’s eyes toward the floor where he sat. “Spark dis.” Pidgin for “Check this out.”

Running a negligent hand through his short-cropped hair, Kal moved to stand over the muscular brown shoulders of his Hawaiian brother-in-law. On the floor in front of Danny lay a photo of a bottled blonde whose curves belonged on a beer poster. She stood beside a sailboard, smiling brightly at the camera.

Well, sort of brightly. Kal was choosy about smiles. A smile wasn’t a matter of orthodontic work or a pretty mouth. A smile came from the soul and shone through the whole being. A good smile was contagious.

There was a sound from Kal’s bedroom, the amplifier going on. Jakka, Danny’s cousin, six foot four and 240 pounds, emerged from the hallway, carrying Kal’s Fender Stratocaster guitar. He played a riff, and Kal’s own fingers itched for the strings. They’d planned to practice today.

Besides being part of his ohana, Danny and Jakka were members of his old band, the three-man band they’d called Kal Nui—high tide. And his former band mates haunted Kal’s house as though waiting for something to change, for that tide to come back in. But today’s jam session had never gotten off the ground. Danny, the percussionist, had seen Kal’s mail and wanted to read the replies to his ad. Now he was perusing the letter from the blonde with the sailboard. He grimaced. “She’s from the mainland.”

Jakka, whose fingers were master of the bass, slowly attempted the lead-guitar melody to “Pau Hana,” the song that had helped make Kal Nui the favorite band on the Garden Island. Long time ago…

Playing the right chords at the right tempo in his mind; Kal tried to lose the nervousness that had been with him ever since he’d visited his post-office box that day. Seeing the letters filling the box—and the larger stack he’d had to stand in line at the counter to collect—had made it real. He hadn’t been serious when he sent the ad to Island Voice. He wasn’t that desperate. It had been Danny’s idea. Nonetheless, Kal had written the ad. It had seemed barely possible to him that somehow it would all work out. He might find someone he could get along with, someone who would love Hiialo. Hiialo would have two parents again, instead of just a never-there father—him.

And he…well, maybe things would be better for him, as well.

He hadn’t expected many answers. At most, two or three. But now he was getting replies from not just Hawaii but the mainland. There were dozens of envelopes on the floor.

Danny pored over another letter. “Did you really say a celibate marriage?”

“Yes.”

Jakka stopped playing and frowned at the letters on the floor. “Nobody wants that.” A line divided his brow from top to bottom.

Kal said nothing. His stomach hurt. Work tomorrow. On your left is Kauai’s stunning Na Pali Coast. “Pali” means cliff, and…He reached into his shirt pocket and surreptitiously popped an antacid.

“You know,” remarked Jakka, “if you marry some rich woman, you could quit baby-sitting tourists and play with us again.”

Danny said, “That’s the whole idea.”

“No, it’s not,” said Kal, with a fighting-dog state no one challenged.

Maybe someday he’d play professionally again, but that hadn’t been the point of the ad. Hiialo was.

Smiling, bemused, Jakka toyed with the guitar strings again.

Kal wandered to the front door. Hiialo had filled two cups with rainwater and was busily filling a third. Her hair, a sun-lightened shade of brown that seemed the consummate mingling of his own genes with her mother’s, swung lank around her face and bare shoulders as she moved about the porch, wearing only a pair of boy’s surfing trunks.

She was just four, so Kal didn’t mind her playing at being a boy, going without a shirt as he often did. Still, it nagged at him. He shouldn’t be her role model. He wouldn’t be, if only…

Scarcely aware of the leaden pall on his heart, the dead feeling, he turned back to the room. To the letters on the floor. It wasn’t going to work. No way could he invite a stranger into his life or his home—or within a thousand miles of his daughter.

Danny tossed his wavy shoulder-length hair back from his face and sat up straight as he read the message inside one note card. “Hey, Kal. This one’s not so bad.”

Kal stepped over the stack of opened letters and crouched beside Danny, who handed him the card.

Danny glanced at his watch and began to stand. “Gotta work, brah. Good luck finding your picture bride.”

Picture bride. At the turn of the century, most immigrant plantation workers in Hawaii were poor single men. A man who wished to find a mate from his own culture had one option—to choose a woman from a photograph sent by family members or a marriage broker in his homeland. Then the picture bride came to Hawaii…

Kal groaned as Danny used his shoulder for support to push himself to his feet, feigning aching bones. Danny was on his way to meet his hula group. Besides playing drums, he was a dancer, like—

“Hey, wait for me!” Jakka unplugged the Stratocaster, then hurried back to Kal’s room.

Danny swept up his car keys. Nabbing Hiialo as she came inside, he swooped her up in his arms. “Gotcha. And Eduardo’s not stopping me.” Danny was always willing to enter Hiialo’s make-believe world, to accept the existence of her imaginary giant lizard friend.

As Hiialo squealed in delight, presaging her uncle’s turning her upside down, Kal examined the card Danny had handed him. On the front was a watercolor of a woman with long curly gold hair swimming underwater with a dolphin. Ordinarily Kal didn’t care for sentimental artwork—and he’d been around enough art to form an opinion. But something about this image struck him as realistic, natural, as though the woman and dolphin were actually swimming together. He studied the watercolor for a moment before he opened the card and read the writing inside.

The script was small and lightly etched, the letters running almost straight up and down.

Dear Mr. Ohana,

As Kurt Vonnegut says, “There’s only one rule that I know of—” It applies to child rearing as to anything.

“Damn it, you’ve got to be kind.”

Sincerely,

Ms. Aloha

“So what do you think?”

Kal hadn’t known Danny was paying attention. Even now, he was swinging Hiialo back to an upright position, his eyes on his niece.

Kal stuffed the card back into its envelope—another mainland address—tossed it on the stack with the rest and stood up. Taking Hiialo from Danny and feeling the comfort of her small slender arms circling his neck, Kal told his brother-in-law, “I think this was a stupid idea.”

“What was stupid?” asked Hiialo. Then, seeing Jakka emerge from the hallway, she said, “What was that song you were playing, Jakka?”

Danny burst out laughing, and Jakka approached Hiialo, threatening to tickle. “You didn’t like my song?”

Hiialo grinned, and Jakka ruffled her hair affectionately. He met Kal’s eyes, his own apologizing for his earlier remark. “I miss our band.”

Kal thought, I miss her. He’d lost all his music in one bad night.

“Laydahs, yeah?” Jakka squeezed Kal’s shoulder briefly, then wandered out onto the lanai, down the steps and into the rain.

As Jakka crossed the tiny lawn to stand beside the zebra-striped door of his cousin’s lavender-and-green VW bus, Danny lingered on the porch. “You got to be kind,” he mused. Swiftly he executed a ka hola, four bent-legged steps to one side and back to the other, his hands and muscular arms saying aloha. “I like Ms. Aloha.” With a last tug on Hiialo’s hair, he turned and leapt down off the porch and into the rain.

“Danny!” In Kal’s arms, Hiialo perfectly and gracefully imitated her uncle’s aloha, eliciting approving laughter from Danny and Jakka. Stirring useless pangs in Kal’s heart.

Wish you could see her, Maka…

As his friends climbed into the Volkswagen and the bus backed out and disappeared down the wet driveway, Hiialo pulled the sleeve of Kal’s T-shirt. “Can we go to the gas station and get shave ice? Eduardo’s hungry.”

“That mo’o is going to eat up my last dollar on shave ice.”

“Please?” Hiialo smiled at him from her eyes, from ear to ear, from her heart. “And can we stop and see Grandma and Grandpa at the gallery? I have a picture for them.”

Her grin made him grin, too. So much like someone else’s smile…Kal asked, “You know who has the best smile on this whole island?”

Hiialo kissed him. “My daddy.” She slid down, starting for her bedroom, knowing they would go get shave ice.

“Put on a shirt,” he called after her.

“I know,” she said, as though he were so tiresome. “I have to dress like a girl.”

DAMN IT, YOU’VE GOT to be kind.

Kal turned again on his mattress, trying to quiet his mind—and ease the burning in his gut. But the moon outside was too bright, and tonight he couldn’t make his breath match the rhythm of the waves hitting the shore just two hundred yards away. He shifted his chest against the bottom sheet, wishing he could sleep. His fingers spread on the mattress, and he remembered touching something more.

But this bed, the captain’s bed he’d built of koa just to fit his small room, this bed was only wide enough for him and then some—Hiialo when she bounced up beside him with a book in the mornings, wanting him to read to her.

Hiialo…Shave ice…His eyes closed, and his mind, drifting off, played music. His own. Chords. Finger-picking…

He opened his eyes and stared without focus at a groove in the paneling beside his bed. Sitting up, Kal grabbed a pair of loose cotton drawstring shorts beside the bed and pulled them on.

He put his bare feet on the floor and reached past his two packed bookshelves, filled with humidity-warped paperbacks, music books, lives of musicians. His fingers grasped the neck of the Gibson L-50, familiar as the limb of a lover, and he pulled it from its hanger on the wall. As he slipped out of the room, he passed the other instrument still hanging, the shiny chrome National etched with palms and plumeria, and those in cases on the floor, the Stratocaster and the Les Paul. The guitars saved him each night. Companions in the emptiness of forever. Loyal as dogs.

In the dark, he went into the narrow front room and pushed aside the hanging curtain to look in on Hiialo. She slept in one of his puka T-shirts—full of holes. Her mouth was open, her legs uncovered. Kal drew the quilt back over her.

“Thank you, Daddy,” she murmured in her sleep.

“I love you, keiki.” She made no response, and Kal headed out onto the lanai through the open front door.

He inhaled the ocean and the flowers, the jasmine crawling up the wood rails, and as he sank down on the tired porch swing and stared at the plants in the moonlight, he felt the water hanging everywhere in the air.

A sprawling blue house with an oriental roof, a vacation rental owned by his parents, stood between the bungalow and the beach. No view from his place, but Kal could hear the ocean and the insects, the bugs of the wet season. He saw the gray shape of a gecko doing push-ups on the porch. Watching it, he reached for the unseen with his mind and his soul.

Nothing.

Where are you? he thought. I need you.

It was one of those nights.

She was dead.

He strummed his guitar, tuned up in the moonlight. A flat, F minor, B flat seven…“The Giant was sleeping by the highway/winds called pangs of love brewed on the sea…” The words were symbols of Kauai and of his life—with her and without her. “Why didn’t you wake up, Giant?/Why didn’t you wake up and save me?”

He sang into the night, the act of singing easing tension in his abdomen, and he didn’t hear the sound of feet. But he noticed the small body climbing up onto the swing beside him.

Fingers still, he stopped singing. “I’m sorry, Hiialo. Did I wake you?”

She shook her head, her lips closed tight, middle-of-thenight tears-for-no-reason nearby.

Kal rested the old archtop in the swing, the neck cradled in a scooped-out place in the arm. It was a system he often used—for holding a guitar so that he could hold Hiialo at the same time. He lifted her into his lap and cuddled her against him.

“I don’t like that song,” she said. “It’s sad.”

That was true. And the song was true. Mountains didn’t rise up to stop fate. Kal hadn’t been able to, either. Not the accident. Or Iniki, the hurricane.

It wasn’t a truth for children.

“Want to hear ‘Puff’?” Kal had played “Puff the Magic Dragon” too many times in bars in Hanalei to consider it anything but agonizing. Still, it was Hiialo’s favorite, and maybe Puff could wipe that teary sound out of her voice.

But Hiialo shook her head, snuggling closer against his chest.

Five seconds, and she’d say, Wait here, and dash off to get her blanket and a stuffed thing called Pincushion that Kal couldn’t remember where or when she’d gotten. Whenever she tried that trick, he’d get her back into bed, instead. If allowed, she would stay up all night.

Like him.

Hiialo whispered, “I wish you weren’t sad.”

Something shook in Kal’s chest. He opened his mouth to say, I’m not sad. But he never lied to her.

He hadn’t known he seemed sad.

“You make me happy, Hiialo. The best part of my day is seeing you after work and finding out what you’ve been doing.”

Hiialo’s little fingers touched the few dark golden hairs on his chest. “Will you tell me a story about my mommy?”

Kal winced.

“Tell me about when you were in the band in Waikiki and Mommy—”

“How about not?” He kept his voice light. “But I’ll play ‘Puff.’”

She shook her head. He took a breath and watched the trade winds make some nearby heliconia, silver under the full moon, wave back and forth like dancers. Maka had moved like that.

Gone.

In a weary tone of resignation, Hiialo said, “I’ll hear ‘Puff.’”

“What an enthusiastic audience we have tonight.” Kal set her on the swing beside him, then picked up his guitar. As he started to play and sing about the dragon, he thought, I’m not the only one who’s sad.

Hiialo couldn’t remember. But she felt the void.

Later, after he’d tucked her in with Pincushion and the invisible Eduardo, Kal went to get his guitar and hang it up in his room, and on the way he noticed the paper grocery bag into which he’d stuffed the letters to Mr. Ohana.

Damn it, you’ve got to be kind.

Yes, he thought. Be kind to my daughter.

He put away the Gibson, and then returned to the front room that was kitchen and dining room and living room crammed into a hundred square feet. He grabbed the grocery sack, took it to the boat-size chamber where he slept, turned on his reading light and dumped out the letters on his bed.

He had to push them into a heap to make a place to sit, and then he read them and dropped them, one by one, back into the paper bag on the floor. He’d work up a form reply to the letters. Thank you for responding to my ad in Island Voice…Good luck in life and love. Sincerely, Mr. Ohana.

Only one note he laid aside, without taking the card from the envelope. He could cut out the picture of the girl and the dolphin and give it to Hiialo to tack on the wall of her room.

Damn it, you’ve got to be kind.

Finally he took an old spiral notebook and a pen from his desk drawer, and he lay on his bed and wrote a letter he didn’t intend to send to a woman he’d never met. The bag of letters on the floor seemed pathetic—answers from a sad but hopeful world to an even more pitiable plea. But their collective refusal to despair gave him a fleeting, moonlight-made hope. And after he signed the letter, “Sincerely, Kalahiki Johnson,” he got up and pulled open another drawer, the big bottom drawer, and drew out the shoe box full of photos.

Pushing aside the cassette case that lay on top, cached among things he loved, he flipped through the snapshots, careful of fingerprints. Careful of his own eyes. Pictures still hurt.

The photo Christmas card showing the three of them was near the top. It seemed right. Stealthily, not wanting to wake Hiialo, not wanting his actions to be known in the light of day, he went out to the kitchen to find scissors and finally picked up Hiialo’s green-handled little-kid scissors from the floor by the couch. Biting closed his lips, his eyes blurring in the ghostly gray dark, he cut apart the photo.

Maka’s arm still showed, stretched across his waist as she touched Hiialo, and for a moment Kal pondered how to remove it. But at last he left it, because then Ms. Aloha would understand what he’d tried to say with words.

CHAPTER TWO

Santa Barbara

ERIKA COMMITTED HERSELF to overcoming fear of risk. In the days after she answered Mr. Ohana’s ad, she photographed scenes on the streets of Santa Barbara. A pink poodle outside Neiman-Marcus. Children giving away kittens in front of the supermarket. She spent as much time petting the poor dyed dog as photographing it, and she wanted to adopt a kitten. Instead, she developed the pictures and painted from them, telling herself this was the kind of gamble she’d promised to take. These were not women by the sea.

But what would Adele say? Would she say that Erika might lose her following? If her art stopped selling, if she had to get another job, she would die. Flower without water. Painting was all she had.

Erika’s reaction to the possibility was detachment; she tried to feel equally aloof about the other risk she’d taken. Answering a personal ad.

So when she pulled bills and catalogs out of her post-office box and saw a number 10 envelope hand-addressed to Ms. Aloha, she muted her feelings. The response had come from K. Johnson, Box J, Haena, Kauai.

K. Johnson.

Mr. Ohana.

She didn’t open the letter in the post office or when she reached the Karmann Ghia parked at the curb. Instead, she set her mail in the seat beside her and drove down State Street toward the harbor. She parked in the marina lot, in Jake Donahue’s space. Jake was her brother’s business partner and sometimes first mate on his ship. Jake was going to be in Greenland with David until June, and Erika was boat-sitting his Chinese junk, the Lien Hua. It was a usual sort of living arrangement for her.

Temporary.

Erika collected the mail and her shoulder bag and crossed the boardwalk, pausing at a gate in the twenty-foot chain link fence outside Marina C. She used Jake’s key card to open the lock and made her way down the creaking dock. Erika was painfully familiar with the harbor. It was where she had lived with her brother and his son on David’s old ship, the Skye. It was where she had lived During.

That was over, she reminded herself again. This was After.

Memories of that earlier time would always be with her. Some things shouldn’t be forgotten. Some things couldn’t be.

She reached the Lien Hua’s berth. Walking alongside the junk to its stern, she caught her muted grayish reflection in the dingy glass windows. Tall. Rayon import dress. Hair that fell several inches below her shoulders, neither smooth nor curly, brown nor blond, but simply nondescript.

Erika unlocked the cabin of the junk and ducked through the hatch, descending into the two-room space that contained all her worldly goods and most of Jake Donahue’s. Her art supplies lay on the fold-out kitchenette table. Unfinished watercolors covered the meager wall space in places where the sunlight wouldn’t fade them.

She tossed her mail on the narrow bunk where she slept. K. Johnson’s letter was on top, but Erika resisted picking it up, tearing it open. Restraint was possible through routine.

She opened the overhead hatch, then dropped down a companionway to the unlit galley. In the gloom, the light on Jake’s answering machine glowed steadily. No messages. From the small icebox run on dockside electricity, she took a bottle of fresh carrot juice. Erika removed the lid and sipped at it.

Suddenly she could wait no longer. She capped the juice, put it back in the refrigerator and returned to the salon and her mail.

She took K. Johnson’s letter topside, where the air smelled of beach tar, and settled in a wooden deck chair in the shade of the mast. The closest sailboats were deserted, covered. Opening the letter, Erika was glad of the solitude, glad her brother was faraway across a continent and an ocean, glad Adele was across another, glad no one could know that she’d done this insane thing. That she, a thirty-six-year-old woman, had answered a personal ad involving a celibate marriage.

And a four-year-old girl.

As she withdrew the letter and unfolded it, something dropped into her lap. A photo, upside down. Erika didn’t look. She put her hand against it, protecting it from the breeze, and turned to the page. The letter was written in black ballpoint pen on warped paper torn from a spiral notebook. Neat male handwriting.

Dear Ms. Aloha,

My name is Kalahiki Johnson, though you know me as Mr. Ohana, who placed a personal ad in Island Voice. I am thirty years old, and I was born and raised on the island of Kauai, where my father’s family has lived for six generations and where I work as a tour guide on the Na Pali Coast.

My four-year-old daughter is named Hiialo, pronounced Hee-AH-lo, which means “a beloved child borne in the arms.” Soon Hiialo will be too big to carry, but she will always be the most precious thing in my life.

Hiialo’s mother was my wife, Maka. Maka was a hula dancer and chanter who won competitions in hula kahiko, traditional hula, and also in hula auana, modern hula, both of which tell stories. She was a kind and graceful human being in every way, and we loved each other deeply. Three years ago, driving back from a hotel where she’d been dancing, she was killed in a head-on collision.

Erika set down the letter, biting her lip, unable to read on.

She’d thought that he was some yogi who’d taken a vow of abstinence. Or maybe that he was impotent or burned out on relationships. She’d wondered about Mr. Ohana’s reasons for wanting a celibate marriage, but she hadn’t expected anything like this. Though she should have.

Why was it affecting her this way? And she was affected, her eyes hot and blurry, her heart racing with horror, as though she’d just learned of the death of someone she loved.

And he was only thirty.

Since then I have raised Hiialo alone, but I work long hours, and it’s hard on her. I wish there was someone who could do what Maka would have done for our daughter and who would love Hiialo as she did.

If you are still interested in Hiialo and me, please write back. But understand that even if a permanent domestic arrangement is possible, your relationship with me would be platonic. Maka and I were married for seven years, and no one can replace her in my heart. I want no other lover, and I would prefer to live alone, if not for Hiialo. Please understand this, because, as you said, we all need to be kind.

Sincerely,

Kalahiki Johnson

Erika put the heel of her hand against her mouth, pressed her lips together. In her mind, she heard an echo of the past, and she couldn’t shut it out. One word repeated itself.

David.

Her brother.

For the three years after his first wife’s death, Erika had lived with him. For three years, she had been a mother figure to his son, Christian. That had been the best experience of her life, though it had begun out of duty. There had been much entangled pain—David’s and her own, both caused by the same woman.

But this situation was different. So different.

Talk about risk.

The winter breeze pushed at her hair, and Erika reached for the photo in her lap, so that it wouldn’t blow away. She turned it over, and her breath caught when she saw him.

He was a beautiful man.

Light brown hair, still damp from a swim, stood out in short uncombed spikes, as though he’d just come out of the water and shaken it. His lean muscular chest and arms were tanned the color of oak. The child’s skin, the skin of the almost-toddler in his arms, was a shade darker. And darker yet was the rounded well-toned female arm brushing his body, the hand touching the baby.

Maka. He’d cropped her from the shot, all but her arm.

Erika absorbed every detail of the picture. The sea. The man’s smile. His grin came from sensuous lips and slitted dark-lashed eyes of uncertain color and, clearly, from his heart. Anyone could see he held the baby often. Erika saw gentleness and love between the child in her green swimsuit and the man who held her in front of him, feet out to face the camera. Somehow the baby had been coaxed into a dimply laugh, and Erika wondered if her father’s fingers cupped under one small bare foot were responsible.

The picture was like a book, and when she read it she cried.

Erika heard the dock creak and saw a couple who owned a sloop two berths down approaching. Not wanting to talk, she stood up and limped to the cabin door, slipped inside. The junk rocked gently. She listened to the lapping of water, to some wind chimes outside. The monotonous music of solitude.

Her heart felt simultaneously fearful and excited.

He had answered her letter. From however many replies he’d received, Kalahiki Johnson had chosen hers. His answer had contained no proposal of marriage, no promises. Just an invitation to write back.

She lay down on her bunk and read it again.

Twice.

Three times.

The light faded outside, and she turned on the lamp over the bunk and studied the photograph and the letter, memorizing the words, especially the last paragraph.

A sensible part of her, the part that was the older sister of a man who’d lost his wife, wanted to step back and say, “Oh, Kalahiki, you’re young. You’ll fall in love again.”

But the photograph won a debate words would have lost. And Erika resisted admitting even to herself that he did not seem a man destined to live out his life in celibacy.

I have to tell him.

She would have to tell him about herself. Reveal her past to a stranger and hazard rejection because of it. It would be unconscionable not to tell him, but the prospect was horrible.

Erika found comfort where she could.

I don’t have to tell him everything.

Haena, Kauai

KAL PEDALED HARD through the rain to the post office to collect his mail. The transmission on his car had given out, so that morning he’d cycled to the office of Na Pali Sea Adventures in Hanalei in the rain. He would get home the same way, in the dark, on one-lane roads and bridges, veering into the brush and mud when headlights approached. Raindrops clattered against the wide green leaves all around him as he pulled up outside the small building of the Haena post office. It was after five, so the counter was closed, but Kal could still go inside and open box J.

“Please, Mr. Postman…” He thought in music all his waking hours. He dreamed music in his sleep.

Rain dripped from him onto the stack of bills and flyers he drew from the box. The letter from Santa Barbara was on top. The return address sticker read “Erika Blade” and had a logo of an artist’s palette beside it. Alone in the office, he tossed the rest of his mail on a bench, sat down and opened the envelope, his curiosity stronger than his embarrassment over the letter he should never have mailed.

To Ms. Aloha.

Erika Blade.

She had sent another card. Same artist, different picture. A very old woman sitting in the sand, gazing out to sea. The ocean really looked like the ocean.

As Kal opened the card, the photo dropped out faceup.

A good-looking brunette in cutoffs and a faded T-shirt sat against the side of a weathered wooden building with a drawing board against her knees and a paintbrush in her hand. She had long muscular legs and a laughing smile.

A good smile.

But sunglasses hid her eyes.

Reflexively fishing for an antacid from a bottle in his pack, Kal studied every detail, down to the shape of her toes, before he turned to her small delicate handwriting, which covered the whole inside of the card and continued on the back. She had a lot to say, and as he chewed on a tablet, he read with curiosity, not with hope.

Dear Kalahiki,

Thank you for answering my note. Reading of your terrible loss made my heart ache. I am so sorry about your wife’s death, and I wish there were something I could do to ease your grief.

My conscience dictates that I precede this whole reply with the advice that you not marry anyone at this time. Despite the things you said in your letter, I believe there is more love in store for you. You should find it before marrying again—for your daughter’s sake and your own.

This is what I believe, but I can’t know your heart. Leaving your choices to you, I’ll introduce myself.

My name is Erika Blade. I am thirty-six years old and a watercolor artist. But probably, if my last name is familiar, it’s because my father was the undersea explorer Christopher Blade. My brother, David, and I grew up on his ship, the Siren, and accompanied him and my mother all over the world on scientific expeditions until I entered art school in Australia and began to make art my career. While I was at school, the Siren sank and my parents were killed. My brother continued my father’s work, and I have helped him some.

About five years ago, I was seriously injured in an automobile accident. Though luckier than your Maka, I was temporarily paralyzed.

During the three years I spent in a wheelchair, I lived on my brother’s ship with him and his son, Christian. Chris was three at the time of my accident; he lost his mother soon afterward. For three years, I helped my brother look after him, and this experience shaped who I am today. I love children.

Eventually I decided to move off David’s ship and into a place of my own. Shortly afterward, I regained feeling in my legs. With the help of therapy, I have been walking for about eighteen months, but because of knee injuries in the accident I still walk with a limp.

Because my parents are dead, my family consists of my brother, his wife, Jean, and my nephew, Chris. However, they are seldom in Santa Barbara anymore; David’s work takes them all over the world. In any case, I want a family of my own. And, like you, I prefer celibacy. The arrangement you have suggested appeals to me very much. I think it would be good for me. I’m less sure it would be best for you and your daughter.

So, Kalahiki, I leave you to your thoughts. I would always be glad to hear from you again.

In friendship,

Erika Blade

The last line was her phone number.

On the front of the card, Kal found her name. No wonder she could paint the sea. Christopher Blade’s daughter.

Did his parents have her prints in their gallery?

Erika…

When he’d placed the ad, it was with the hope that there was someone like her out there. Someone who wasn’t interested in sex—but who still seemed capable of a meaningful relationship. Someone who loved children and would love Hiialo.

But Erika Blade didn’t know Hiialo. And he didn’t know Erika.

Can’t do this.

Kal replaced the photo and the card in the envelope, put them in his day pack with the other mail and stood up. Pushing open the glass door of the post office, he went out into the rain and the scent of wetness and grabbed his ancient three-speed Indian Scout from where he’d leaned it against the siding.

The downpour pelting him, Kal flicked on the headlight on the handlebars and pedaled out to the road, his T-shirt and shorts immediately drenched anew. He crossed a long stone bridge, riding as though he could escape the rain, and his heart raced. His mind replayed the contents of the letter, and he knew he would read it again that night when Hiialo was in bed.

Christopher Blade’s daughter. Three years in a wheelchair.

He could hear his tires on the wet pavement and the sound of the violent winter surf just a block away, a sound that once would have called him to the breaks at Hanalei Point, to Waikoko or Hideaways. Freedom…

Don’t even think about bringing her here, Kal. You never really planned to do it. It just seemed better than having your daughter in day care.

To temper tantrums and moodiness.

To trying to do it alone.

To messing up.

But he couldn’t go through with this. It wouldn’t be right.

Why not? Riding through the rain, Kal tried to remember exactly what Erika Blade had said about sex. Hardly anything.

Painful thoughts came.

Loneliness.

The glow of headlights cast a long shadow of his body and bicycle ahead of him on the water-running pavement. Kal steered into a roadside ditch, springing off his bike when the front wheel stuck in the mud. As rain streamed down his face, a red 1996 Land Rover whipped past. Kal recognized the vehicle. It belonged to a movie star who used his fifth home, in Haena, two weekends of every year.

Reminding himself to buy a helmet, Kal yanked his bike out of the mud and back to the road before he realized the front wheel wouldn’t turn and the forks were bent. He stood in the rain, and it drowned his voice as he yelled after the long-vanished car, “I hate your guts, malihini! You killed my wife!” He knew it wasn’t really the driver of this car who’d hit Maka—just someone like him. Someone who would never belong.

Kal leaned his arms on the handlebars, his head in his hands.

Erika Blade would be a malihini, a newcomer, too.

He wouldn’t write to her again. He’d said personal things to her. She’d said personal things to him. They were even.

And her advice was sane. Wait for love.

Wait…

He’d waited three years, dated women. They’d made him miss Maka even more.

Kal picked up his bike, slung it over his shoulder and began walking home through the rain. There was nothing to wait for.

She would never come back.

THE OKIKA GALLERY in Hanalei was a renovated plantation-style house with white porch posts and verandas. Next door, separated from the gallery by a wide walk bordered with heliconia, anthurium, spider lilies and ginger, a similar building housed the office of Na Pali Sea Adventures, the outfitter for whom Kal worked. The two buildings shared a courtyard away from the street.

The morning after he received Erika’s letter, there were no Zodiac trips going out, so Kal’s job was to shuttle sea kayaks to the Hanalei River for the tourists who had rented them. At ten-thirty, when he returned from that errand, he slipped out for his break.

It was raining, but the espresso stand in the courtyard was still doing business as he dashed through the downpour to the steps of the gallery. He entered through the open French doors, and Jin, his mother’s champion Akita bitch, stood up and came over to greet him.

“Hi, Jin. Hi, girl.” Kal crouched to pet the dog’s thick red-and-white coat, to rub her back and behind her ears, to look into her eyes in the black-masked face. As Jin licked his cheek, Mary Helen, his mother, abandoned a mat-cutting project at the counter to join him.

Kal had gotten his height from his father. With her neat tennis-player’s body and no-nonsense short blond hair, Mary Helen stood barely five foot two. She always looked at home in shorts, polo shirts and slippers—elsewhere known as thongs—the footwear of the islands. Born and raised in Kansas City, Missouri, Mary Helen had first visited Oahu in 1960 and met King Johnson at a dog show, where their Akitas had fallen in love and played matchmakers like something out of One Hundred and One Dalmatians. Or so Kal had been told. His mother had left the Midwest and moved to Hawaii to marry King. Gamely she’d faced the challenges of island life, slowly exploring her new world, learning the social subtleties and embracing the cultural richness of Hawaii. Hawaiian quilting, Japanese bon dancing, foods as unfamiliar as poi and kim chee—Mary Helen loved them all. When she and King had children, they had given them Hawaiian names. Now, in the critical eyes of the locals, Kal’s mother was considered a kamaaina, a child of the land.

Could Erika Blade do that?

“Hi, sweetheart,” said Mary Helen. “No trips today?”

“No. I’m going to go get Hiialo in a minute.” When Kal had no trips to guide, his boss, Kroner, let Hiialo work with him at the Sea Adventures office, doing small tasks her four-year-old hands could manage. Despite her tantrums, Hiialo had a knack for winning friends.

“She can come over here,” his mother said. “I’ll be here all day. I’m changing some prints on the wall.”

Kal had come to look at prints, but his taking a sudden interest in the family obsession—art—would make his mother suspicious. “I’ll bring her over to say hi. I’m going to clean the equipment room next door, so I thought she could help.” His parents gave enough to Hiialo; she spent every Tuesday with them at the gallery.

“Oh, that’s good for her.” His mother smiled approvingly. “And she’ll have fun.”

Kal straightened up from petting Jin, who walked away to keep watch out the front door. Why had he placed that ad, anyhow? It wasn’t as though Hiialo had no female influence in her life. She had his mother and his sister, Niau.

“Your dad took Kumi to the vet,” his mother told him. “And Niau went to Honolulu. She took Leo some prints. Did you know he’s remodeling? He wanted you to help.”

“I know. He called me.”

Kal’s oldest brother—Lay-oh, not Lee-oh—ran a gallery on Oahu. Keale, the next oldest, was a park ranger on the Big Island. Uncles and aunts. What didn’t Hiialo have? If he wanted, they could even get a dog, one of his folks’ Akita puppies. Though he wasn’t home enough…

He wasn’t home enough.

He needed a partner.

Kal sensed his mother looking him over, and he knew she was wondering if he’d wind up in the hospital again, receiving a blood transfusion. Apparently deciding he was going to make it, she smiled and said, “Come tell me what you think of this oil painting. A man from Kapaa painted it, and I think he’s good.”

Where usually he would have begged off, Kal followed her to the counter, surreptitiously scanning the walls. He didn’t need to look that far. When he reached the counter, he saw that one of the prints his mother was putting up or taking down was by Erika Blade.

He tried not to stare, but he recognized the model as the same woman in the dolphin card Erika had sent. In this print, the woman was building a sand castle with a boy.

It was the best of her work he’d seen. The interaction between the woman and child, their absorption in their construction project, conveyed a lot. Motherhood. Happiness. Friendship. Nurturing. Fun.

If Erika Blade had a lot of prints out, she was probably doing well. What Jakka had said weeks before needled him. Marry a rich woman.

Not a pretty notion, but practical. Kal wasn’t looking for a woman to support him so he could play professionally again. But he worked six days a week. Needed to. At least she can support herself.

He dutifully assessed the oil landscape by the Kapaa artist. “It’s nice.” But his eyes drifted back to the print.

Jin left the door, wandered over to them and sat down by the counter. The Akita looked at Kal and so did his mother.

“Isn’t that lovely?” Mary Helen asked, noticing his interest in Erika’s print.

“Yes.” Kal turned away, chewing on unasked questions.

“That’s hers, too, up there,” said his mother. “The girl sailing. We sell a lot of her work actually. Her name is Erika Blade. I think she’s disabled.”

“Oh.”

Mary Helen’s head was tilted sideways, as though she was listening for the akua, the island spirits, to give up secrets. She was staring curiously at Kal, picking up on the anomaly of his looking twice at a piece of art.

“Well, I’m going to get Hiialo,” he said. “I’ll see you later.”

Then he left, before the akua could tell their tales.

CHAPTER THREE

Malaki: March

TO ERIKA’S DISAPPOINTMENT, Adele expressed misgivings about Poofie and Free Kittens. Good work, she said gently, but not enough universal appeal for a print series. How about something with people in it?

Erika was painting people now, but nothing she could sell: Six similar paintings, not just in watercolor but also in acrylic and oil. Two of the subjects had come from an incomplete photograph. The third eluded her and stood ghostlike on the side.

Maka, she thought, who are you?

She had shaped each different Maka using pictures of hula dancers from Hawaiian travel magazines, which now lay all about her studio. She had used no one model but had combined different characteristics.

What had Maka been doing? Was her other arm behind Kalahiki, holding him? Was her face turned up to his? What was she wearing? How tall was she? Her right arm was medium-size and well-toned—

The phone rang.

Erika had trained her heart not to leap at that sound, and now she debated letting the machine pick it up to prove her self-control. Ever since she’d received Kalahiki’s letter—and answered it—she’d been unsteady. She shouldn’t care so much. But she did. About a broken-hearted man she didn’t know. Twenty times a day, Erika laid those feelings aside, put them in the place where she put her reaction to his picture, a reaction that was all wrong.

Kal’s grief was his business, not hers.

That he looked like an engraved invitation to come to Hawaii and fall in love was irrelevant.

A celibate marriage was exactly what she wanted. A husband. A child. And no physical complications, no difficult intimacy.

She could keep her head, not get involved. It was easy when she remembered what doing otherwise could mean. Sex.

Yuck.

So he was hung up on his dead wife. Good. He could have his hang-ups; she’d keep hers.

The telephone rang again. She should answer. Adele was back from Hawaii. This might be something about work. Like what? She’s already rejected all my paintings.

The phone rang a third time. Erika set down her brush, dropped down to the shadows of the galley and picked up the receiver. “Hello?”

There was a silence, like a punctuation mark. Then, “Hello. This is Kal Johnson calling. Is Erika there?”

She sank down on the steps of the companionway. With a slight breeze from the open hatches blowing her oversize T-shirt against her back, she clutched the receiver. His voice was low and resonant. Masculine. Unique.

God help her.

Sexy.

“This is Erika.” She was in a vacuum and her insides were being sucked out of her. She heard the engine of a cabin cruiser crawling past in the harbor, and a slow wake rocked the junk at its berth.

“I’m not sure if you know who I am, but—”

“I know who you are. You’re Kalahiki.”

Across the Pacific, in the sun-dappled morning shadows inside the bungalow, Kal heard her say his name for the first time. At the same moment he saw Hiialo outside beating Pincushion against the porch. “Bad Pincushion! Bad! No talk stink!”

What had Pincushion said?

“I thought we should talk on the phone.” Brilliant, brilliant, keep it up, Kal.

Erika bit her lip. There was a bellows stuck in her throat, and it was opening and closing with each beat of her heart. Talk, she thought. Say something that will make him…

Oh, she wanted it. They could settle into permanencepermanent celibacy, permanent family—and her life would not change again. Safe.

“Your daughter’s beautiful.” The ensuing pause was so long that at last she asked, “Are you still there?”

“Yeah. I…Erika…”

Silence surrounded her name. Silence…and feeling. It was so dark in the galley she didn’t know why her eyes burned that way, why she felt so—

“I just wanted to tell you some things,” he said. “I’ve thought a lot since I got your letter. Are you serious about this?”

Erika swallowed. This. As though he couldn’t say it himself.

“Yes.”

“My house is small. It’s a bungalow. I could fix it so we’d have our own rooms, but it’s still cozy. It’s not right on the beach, either. Close, though.”

Erika tightened her fingers on the phone. Was he saying he wanted her to come?

“I don’t make a lot of money. I’m buying the house from my folks. They have a gallery, by the way. Actually they have three. I went into the one in Hanalei and looked for your prints. They have some.”

Parents. Did his parents live near him? The thought was reassuring. Mr. Family.

She asked, “What’s the name of their gallery?”

“The Okika. It means ‘orchid.’”

His voice was both warm and sandpaper rough. It made her want to hear him talk more.

But he was quiet.

Erika asked, “What does Hiialo do while you work?”

“Um…she goes to a day-care center.” Actually, she’d been to a few. One in a church basement with forty other kids. One with an elderly woman who had made the mistake of saying Hiialo needed a firm hand. The latest situation was a home with an unhappy dog tied up outside.

“My nephew used to be with me while I worked, when he was Hiialo’s age.” As soon as she’d said it, Erika wished she hadn’t. She sounded too eager. Desperate.

But an opportunity like this wouldn’t come again. Normal people wanted sex. Kal and his grief were her only hope.

“Hiialo is…” His voice startled her. “Well, she’s moody. In fact, she can be a bugger sometimes.”

“All kids can.” The dock made its endless aching cries.

“I’d like to…” On the lanai, Hiialo was making Pincushion and her stuffed lion, Purr, shake hands. Kal remembered proposing to Maka. At Waimea Beach. Kissing. I love you…“You could come over here,” he said. “I’ll buy your ticket. If it doesn’t work out, I’ll buy you a ticket home, too.”

“I’ll buy my own ticket.” Somehow. Her hand was deep in her hair, tearing at it. She felt like crying. What if he didn’t like her? What if he didn’t think she’d be a good stepmother for Hiialo? What if…“When do you want me to come?”

“Not right away. I have to figure out some things. About the house.” About how to tell his parents.

How to tell Hiialo.

“I’ll call you again, yeah?” he said. “And I’ll send pictures of the house. Maybe you could come in June?”

“That sounds great. I’m boat-sitting for my brother’s business partner. He’ll be back in June.” Oh, she sounded flaky. Practically homeless.

“Good,” said Kal.

Her worries evaporated. She was wanted—by a stranger. Why was he doing this?

He said, “Let’s get off the phone for now. I’ll call you again soon. Do you have any questions before we hang up?”

“Yes.” With a presence of mind that astonished her, she asked, “What’s your phone number?”

Moments later she set the receiver back in its cradle. Still sitting weakly on the steps, she leaned against the side of the counter and wept.

“DADDY, PINCUSHION’S stuffing is falling out.” As Kal hung up the phone, Hiialo appeared before him, bringing everything into immediate and demanding focus.

“You beat the stuffing out of him. That’s why it’s falling out.”

Hiialo started to look tearful, and Kal reached for Pincushion, who was made from a faded gray-blue sock and wore a turban. In addition to a split seam on the side, one of his felt eyes was coming off. Repair time.

“I’ll fix him.” Sewing up Pincushion would calm him.

A picture bride. Danny’s analogy was accurate, and since the night he’d said it, Kal had stumbled upon two accounts of Japanese picture brides from the turn of the century. One was in the newspaper, the other in a book sold in the office of Na Pali Sea Adventures. And he’d remembered that his parents’ next-door neighbor, June Akana, who had taught Japanese bon dances to him and his sister and brothers when they were kids, had been a picture bride, too. She and her husband were in their nineties, still going strong. Best friends. People could be happy.

But the picture brides of old hadn’t come to Hawaii for celibate marriage.

Oh, shit, what were his friends going to say? They all knew what he’d advertised for. He’d told them why, because of Hiialo, because he was never home and she needed someone who could be. He needed someone who would be. He killed a useless yearning. Not for love—for life. His own.

The Stratocaster in his hands. Playing…

But he was doing this for Hiialo.

“You’ll be all right, Pincushion,” said Hiialo, patting the toy in Kal’s hand. She trailed after him as he went to the kitchen drawer where he kept needles, thread, extra guitar picks, junk. The scissors were missing, as usual.

“Hiialo, I need your scissors. Could you please get them for me?”

“Yes, Daddy. Thank you for fixing Pincushion.” She went over to the couch and looked underneath it, then went to her room to find the scissors.

Sunshine. Hiialo was like sunshine now, but she was changeable as the north-shore weather. And sometimes as wild.

Would Erika Blade, a thirty-six-year-old childless woman, really be able to handle it?

Dear Erika,

I’m glad you’re coming to Hawaii. I’ll try to call you once a week. Here are the pictures I promised you of my house. You can see what Hiialo looks like now. She is holding Pincushion, who is her favorite toy…

I mentioned my family on the phone. My folks live in Haena, and my sister, Niau, lives in Poipu, on the south side of the island. My brother Leo…

MIDAFTERNOON sunlight shone through the open hatch and the windows of the Lien Hua. Lying in her berth, Erika read Kal’s second letter and studied the photographs he’d sent. At four, Hiialo was sturdy, with thick, wavy, medium brown hair cut in a pageboy. Even in the photograph, in which she was crouched on the lanai of the green bungalow with the thing called Pincushion, she seemed full of energy, ready to leap to her feet and race away. Not like Chris…

That’s okay, thought Erika. I know I can love her.

If she was certain of anything, it was her ability to love and care for children. Chris had been exceptionally good, exceptionally bright. Exceptionally quiet. But she could love Hiialo. It would be easy.

Another photo showed Kal with his brothers and sister and parents and their three dogs, all Akitas. His father—King, said the corresponding name on the back of the photo—was tall and white-haired. His mother, Mary Helen, seemed compact and athletic. And Kal and his siblings all had a look of radiant good health and of energy and power—not unlike the dogs. One brother was bearded, the other clean-shaven. His sister had shoulder-length light brown hair. They were a handsome family. Kal was the youngest.

The photo and letter, the proof that he really was a family man in every sense, reassured Erika. Since his phone call, she’d had doubts. Kal was a stranger. With David so far away, no one would really know if she got into trouble.

She ought to write to him, tell him.

She ought to tell someone what she was doing.

But she knew what her brother would say: Kal will get over Maka’s death.

For the hundredth time, Erika tried to quiet her qualms about that. She had advised him to wait—for someone else, someone he could love.

She should send him photos of her and David and Chris and Jean to give him the same kind of reassurance he’d given her. But she had no photos of herself with them, only with Chris, when she was in a wheelchair.

Not an option.

She looked back to the letter.

…I haven’t told anyone our plans. June is a long way off. Before you come, I’ll explain to my folks and Hiialo. Also, my in-laws. Maka’s folks live on Molokai, but her brother and her cousin live in Hanalei and they’re like family. In Hawaii, ohana, or family, means more than just your immediate relatives. It can extend to all your loved ones—

The telephone rang, and she went down into the galley to answer. It was Adele, calling to ask how the painting was going. Did she have anything else yet? Had she tried placing those “other pieces” in a gallery?

“Ah…I’m just experimenting right now.” Erika thought it through at light speed. “Actually a friend has invited me to Hawaii in June. I’m going to do some work there.”

“Oh, great! Which island?”

“Kauai.” Belatedly Erika recalled that Adele had seen Kal’s ad. But surely it wouldn’t occur to her that Erika had answered the ad.

It didn’t. “Wonderful. I think it’s recovered a lot since Iniki. The hurricane in ‘92? Try to get up to the north shore…”

Erika listened to Adele’s suggestions and chewed on her bottom lip.

Yes, it was good that David was in Greenland and no one really had to know what she was doing. She would write to her brother and tell him who she was staying with and where. But why say more? If it turned out that Kal didn’t like her, no one would have to know the truth.

“Erika? Are you there?”

“Oh, yes, I’m sorry. I’m spaced out today, Adele. What is it?”

“There are some galleries on Kauai that carry your prints. I’ll send you their names. I know they’d love it if you stopped in.”

The Okika Gallery, Erika remembered. Kal’s parents owned three galleries. It seemed like destiny. She longed to tell Adele everything. But if she did, Adele would worry. Anyone would worry, would question her judgment. Erika hated that. Better to say nothing, just leave Adele her new address and stick to her story. “All right.”

After they’d hung up, Erika climbed back up to the main cabin, where the paintings of Kal and Hiialo and Maka confronted her. She needed someone to ease her anxiety, to believe with her in this risk she was taking, believe that it would work out.

There was really only one person who could help with that, and Erika wished the phone would ring again.

He had promised to call.

Apelila: April

Dear Kal,

Thanks for your letter and the photographs and your phone calls. I painted the enclosed picture for Hiialo. I did it using the photos you sent. I hope she can recognize who it’s supposed to be…

The watercolor was of Pincushion. Kal loved it, had wanted to keep it himself. He’d considered taking it down to the gallery to get it framed, but then…Questions. How come he had an Erika Blade original. Of Pincushion.

I stole it, Mom.

Instead, he’d put the watercolor in a cheap document frame, replacing a photo of the great blues guitarist Robert Johnson, and he’d given it to Hiialo, as Erika had wanted, saying it was from a pen pal. After explaining what a pen pal was, he’d added, “Sometimes I talk to her on the phone, too.”

Soon he’d have to explain more. To everyone. Erika was coming to live in his house, maybe for good.

Sitting on the porch swing while Hiialo played in her room, Kal remembered his phone conversation with Erika just that morning. He had asked if she’d told her brother what they were doing. “I wrote to him,” she’d said, and Kal had wondered if she knew she wasn’t answering the question. He was pretty sure she did.

He was pretty sure she’d told her brother almost nothing.

Kal talked to her once a week, always calling Thursday at seven in the morning. It was his day off, Hiialo usually wasn’t up by then, and it was around ten in Santa Barbara. Making the call was agonizing every time. The cultural gap between them was bigger than Waimea Canyon. But Kal wanted to know all he could about Erika Blade before she arrived, before he brought her into Hiialo’s life.

She was hard to know. She turned conversations away from herself and tuned into him, perceiving his difficulties as a single father almost as though she’d been one herself. Or had known one, which she had.

Her brother.

He left the swing and went inside. It was already one o’clock, and he had things to do. He’d recently enclosed the back lanai, creating a new room—for Erika. It still needed finishing touches. But Danny and Jakka had stopped by that morning, and a jam session had eaten half the day. “Hiialo, let’s go to Hanalei. I need something from the hardware store.”

Kal heard a rustling from his room and took a step down the hallway, pushed aside the beads in his doorway and looked in. Hiialo peered up from where she crouched beside his open desk drawer, photos spread out around her. The portrait of a naughty girl.

Kal saw a photograph of Maka under the leg of his folding metal desk chair. Entering the room, he picked up the chair. The surface of the photo was marred, across Maka’s face.

“What are you doing, Hiialo? Those aren’t yours.”

She began a cry he knew would rise to a full-throated wail. She looked at a photograph in her hands, a snapshot of her mother, and ripped it in half.

“Hiialo.” Kal scooped her up, and she hit him with her fists and kicked him, screaming. “Don’t hit. I don’t hit you.”

Her small arms and legs struck a few more times, to prove that she didn’t care what he said, before she subsided to screams. He carried her through the beads and out into the main room and then through the curtain door of her room. Her voice had reached a high continuous sob, and she cried, “It’s your day off! You’re supposed to spend it with me! You’re supposed to spend Thursday with me!”

Kal couldn’t speak. Even as he left her on her bed, kicking the wall and crying, he wondered what he’d done that had made her that way.

Not enough time at home.

He should have skipped the music, told Danny and Jakka it was his day with Hiialo.

Listening to her shrieking, he wondered if all parents felt trapped. Guilty for wanting their own time. For wanting…

Music spun inside him, trying to soothe. “Rock Me on the Water…”

He went back into his room and saw the photos scattered on the floor, including the one that had been ripped in half. In the next room, Hiialo’s cries reached a crescendo, and Kal crouched down to pick up all the Makas from the throw rug.

HIS FATHER CAME BY late that afternoon to look at some bad siding on his rental property, the blue oriental house in front of the bungalow. Kal was caretaker of the vacation home. He cut the grass and cared for the plants and cleaned after tenants left. The blue house had been rebuilt after Iniki; he’d just discovered that the siding was poorly installed.

Leading Raiden, one of the Akitas, up to the porch, King asked Kal, “Where’s the keiki?”

“Taking a nap.” They stood together under the porch awning with the rain pounding the roof and the garden, and at last Kal said, “Yeah, it’s been a great day.” He told his father about the photos.

King shook his head. He’d seen Hiialo in a temper, too. They all accepted her moods as part of her nature, but everyone hated the sulks and the screaming.

Together the two men toured the back-porch room, scrutinizing the construction. King had never asked the reason for the project; the house was small. When they’d examined the new room, Kal offered him some juice—he seldom bought beer, which he liked but which made him sick—and they sat on the veranda with Raiden exploring the yard nearby.

The Akita had a pure white coat and double-curled tail, and Kal studied the dog with admiration and envy. His parents’ stud was immaculately bred, intensively trained, utterly trustworthy. Kal knew the time that went into raising an animal like that.

He didn’t even have time for his daughter.

Watching Raiden lift his leg against the heliconia, Kal said, “I’ve made friends with an artist in Santa Barbara. Erika Blade. We write letters. Talk on the phone.”

His father tipped back his cup of guava juice. “She’s a big artist. How’d you meet her?”

“I placed a personal ad. She’s coming to Kauai this summer. She’s going to stay here.”

Lazily King stretched out his legs and rocked the porch swing. “With you?”

On the top porch step, Kal shrugged. “Here.” His house, not his bed.

The rain drizzled, creating waterfall sounds all around the lanai, and Raiden came over to lie at his master’s feet.

“Is this romance?”

No, thought Kal. It’s practical. “Something like that.”

The rain poured from the gutter and splattered on the ground at the corner of the house. As Kal stared out at it, his father said at last, “Well, we’ll look forward to meeting her.” He stood up and so did Raiden. “I’m going to take a look at that siding.”

Kal glanced toward his own house. All was quiet indoors, Hurricane Hiialo sleeping. Watching the Akita follow his father down the steps into the rain, he drew a quiet breath. King hadn’t criticized, hadn’t shown any disapproval at all. Kal knew that when his father had said they’d look forward to meeting Erika, he meant it.

His parents always kept things in perspective. They’d survived Hurricanes Iwa and Iniki.

And Kal had cried in his dad’s arms after Maka died.

CHAPTER FOUR

Iune: June

HIIALO KICKED HER SEAT in the Datsun. Thud, thud, thud, in a mindless rhythm. Her lips were tightly sealed, her eyes nervous. In her lap was a plastic bag containing a braided lei hala lei, made of flowers of the pandanus tree, and a second lei made of braided red ti leaves.

“Stop kicking the seat, Hiialo.” He ate a Turns. “You okay?”

She nodded.

She’d been up half the night, coming out of her room every five minutes for another drink of water. Must have picked up on his mood. All he’d told Hiialo was that he’d placed a want ad to meet a woman; he was lonely without her mom. His daughter had reacted as though what he’d done was sensible. But did she suspect the truth about Erika? That if all went well she would stay for good, as Hiialo’s stepmother?

Kal saw the sign for the airport and manually worked the Datsun’s broken turn indicator, flipping it back and forth as an Aloha Airlines plane flew in over the sea, descending to the terminal.

“Is your pen pal on that plane?” asked Hiialo.

“I think so.”

Her lips clamped shut again.

Kal parked in the visitors’ lot and came around to Hiialo’s side of the car to lift her into his arms. “I love you, Ti-leaf.” It was his special name for her. Ti leaves were a symbol of luck; she was all of his. Everything he had.

Hiialo kissed his face and rested her head against his shoulder. “I love you, Daddy.”

Kal carried her toward the terminal, thinking, Hiialo B. Goode…

LOW GREEN SHRUBS—Hooker’s Green Dark, thought Erika—lined the shore, and white caps dotted the ocean beyond. Her carryall was tucked under the seat in front of her, and she resisted reaching for it to open her compact. She looked fine—especially for a woman who hadn’t slept in a week. She’d been too excited to sleep.

Absently Erika touched her hair. Days earlier she’d gone to the beauty college in Santa Barbara for a free haircut. The result was that her hair hung at one length, just brushing her shoulders. Nothing dramatic, but she was glad she’d done something. She wore a silk sheath of aquamarine—shin-length, with slits partway up both sides. Sandals, no stockings.

She hoped Hiialo would think she was pretty, would like her. That was everything. Meeting Kal was just…

Well, okay, it was natural to want him to like her, too. In fact, it was necessary. She couldn’t afford to go back to the mainland. Adele hadn’t wanted to publish prints from any of her recent watercolors. Erika didn’t know what she was doing wrong, but it was months since she’d sold anything. Until she received royalties from Sand Castles, she had four hundred and fifty dollars to her name, not even enough for a ticket home. She was going to have to get a job.

But if she had a job, she couldn’t watch Hiialo during the day.

I have to sell some art.

As the plane touched down, the captain welcomed everyone to Kauai. “The temperature in Lihue is eighty-five degrees…”

The plane taxied interminably before it stopped and the seat-belt signs went off with a quiet ding. Erika remained in her seat, letting the other passengers go first. She’d be slow on the stairs. Beside her was a diminutive local beauty in a beach cover-up and flip-flops. She jostled Erika with her bag, then turned and said in charming apology, “Oh, I’m so sorry!” Her voice was musical, her manner sweet. Had Maka been like that?

A graceful human being in every way…

Suddenly Erika felt about a hundred years old.

When the other passengers had passed, she stood up, ducked under the overhead and limped to the door. Slowly, holding the railings, she descended the stairs to the humid airfield and made her way to the small utilitarian terminal. As soon as she stepped inside, she smelled flowers.

He was there, conspicuous for his height and his looks and the little girl beside him, who wore turquoise shorts and a tank top silk-screened with the image of a surfer and the slogan “Breaks to da max!” She was peering intently into a nearby planter bigger than herself.

Kal spotted her and waved, and Erika walked toward him, conscious of her limp, of him watching her. Three yards away, she thought, Your eyes are blue.

Teal, so fine a shade that Erika was surprised she hadn’t always known the color. A teal she could mix from Turquoise and Hooker’s Green Dark. He wore off-white, slightly wrinkled cotton pants and an aloha shirt in navy blue, black and yellow, covered with trumpet vines and ukuleles. Despite the flip-flops on his feet, Erika knew he had dressed up for her coming, but in contrast to the men she knew in Santa Barbara, he seemed casual. Unpretentious. No designer labels, no cologne. Yes, red meat, yes, domestic beer. Shaka. Hang loose.

Mr. Family?

Like a daddy wolf. His wolf’s expression was on her, assessing her, sniffing the air. Alert.

Mutely Erika submitted to the examination.

It was brief, though Kal found her face hard to absorb in one take. Brown eyes. Olive complexion. Smooth skin. She was tall and slender, with the honed limbs of an athlete.

And a slight limp.

He draped the lei hala lei around her neck, and her thick hair reached out and wisped against his fingers, clinging to them with static electricity. “Aloha,” he said and touched his lips to her cool cheek. Strands of hair seemed to leap against his face, and he drew back.

Still feeling the kiss and his hands brushing her as he’d put the lei around her neck, Erika recalled the word for thank you. “Mahalo. What a beautiful lei.”

Well, she’d figured out that mahalo wasn’t Hawaiian for airport trash can, reflected Kal. When she clued into the fact that the word was used mostly by poolside entertainers and interisland flight attendants, she’d be all right.

She was fingering the lei, examining it as though she found it wondrous, which he had to admit it was.

In truth, the lei gave Erika an excuse not to look at Kal. A slanted half-inch white scar crossed the indentation above his upper lip. Its effect was to make her want to stare at his mouth, at his straight white teeth and the faintest gap between the front two.

Instinct distracted her from the flowers, made her glance down, and there was Hiialo, her arms reaching up with another lei. Erika crouched in front of her, and the little girl put the braid of reddish leaves around her neck.

“Aloha, Erika. I’m Hiialo.”

“Aloha to you, Hiialo.”

“My uncle Danny’s hula group made these for you.”

Had that been Maka’s hula group, too? No wonder the leis seemed so intricate, so special. An unexpected welcome from people she had never met. People who loved Kal and Hiialo enough to reach out to her, too. The depth of generosity, the level of hospitality and courtesy, seemed foreign—and beautiful.

No wonder Adele’s so crazy about Hawaii, thought Erika, looking forward to sharing stories about her trip. Then she remembered it wasn’t just a vacation. She might stay here.

Kal said, “Let’s go get your bags.”

AS THEY DROVE NORTH, Erika tried to adjust to riding in a car with two strangers who might become the most important part of her life. Luckily there was a lot on the road to occupy her. Sugarcane grew in fields between the road and the sea. Outside a shopping mall, men harvested coconuts from royal palms that reached skyward like Jack’s beanstalk.

When the businesses and houses of Wailua were behind them, Kal nodded toward the inland hills. “That’s Nounou Ridge. We call it the Sleeping Giant. Can you see him lying on his back?”

“Yes.” Erika knew from studying a map that they were on Kauai’s main highway. It almost circled the island, stopping only for the impassable mountains of the Na Pali Coast. Was Maka killed on this road? How did it happen? Who was at fault?

Kal was thinking of Maka, too. The road was narrowing. They drove past the place where her heart had stopped beating. If Hiialo hadn’t been in the back seat, he would have shown Erika where the cars collided.

He ran out of words until they neared the next town. “This is Kapaa. My folks have a gallery here. It’s right there.” He pointed out the Kapaa Okika Gallery.

Beyond the reflections in the windows, Erika caught a glimpse of paintings hanging against a light background. Then the gallery was out of sight, and the car trawled past shops full of tropical-print silks, colorful beach totes, surfboards and various trinkets. In a blink they left Kapaa, and the highway opened out with a view of the sea.

Miles farther on, as the road curved around the north shore, Kal indicated a lighthouse on a promontory. “Kilauea Lighthouse. You surf?”

“Not anymore.” Not well enough for Hawaii’s waves. Erika stole a glance at Kal. She’d seen in his photographs that he was attractive. But a photo couldn’t carry a man’s smell or his voice. She’d thought she was used to the low warm gravelly quality of the latter from talking to him on the phone. But hearing him speak and seeing his face, his body, all at once was a different matter.

The Pacific shifted colors under her eyes, like a quilt being shaken out.

We’ll be fine, she told herself. I’ll get used to him, and he won’t seem so sexy.

The countryside became lush, and Erika could feel the dampness in the air as the Datsun passed valleys planted in taro. Blossoms spilled from tree branches, and the roadside flowers held as many shades as her paint box. In a tree whose limbs stretched out on sweeping horizontal planes, like a bonsai, sat dozens of white birds with exotic plumage on their heads. They reminded Erika of tropical ports of her childhood, and she thought of her parents, especially her mother, who had loved flowers.

What a place to paint.

She subdued the now familiar doubts…that she’d never sell another watercolor.

“Daddy, Eduardo’s hungry.”

Erika glanced into the back seat. Hiialo had one toy with her in the car, the thing Erika had thought was called Pincushion. A watercolor subject. But she must have been mistaken about its name. “Is that Eduardo?”

“No,” said Hiialo. “This is Pincushion.” She frowned, as though puzzled that Erika had asked. “Eduardo is a mo’o.”

“What’s that?”

Hiialo seemed at a loss. “Daddy…”

“Mo’os,” said Kal, “are giant magical black lizards of Hawaiian legend.”

“Giant?”

“Thirty feet long.” The topic was a good icebreaker. “The ancient Hawaiians worshiped their ancestors, who they believed could be powerful allies after death. Actually some people still depend on their aumakua, deified ancestral spirits, to help them out of trouble. In the old days, a kahuna, an expert in magic, would help people transform their deceased relatives into sharks or mo’os or whatever. Mo’os lived in ponds and were supposed to be fierce fighters, protective of their families.”

“Except Eduardo lives in our house,” said Hiialo.

Erika briefly entertained the notion that Maka had become a mo’o after death. It was a silly idea, but it seemed less cruel than death’s stealing her, leaving her husband and baby alone.

There was only a shade of humor in her next thought: I should make friends with Eduardo.

With Maka’s memory.

“We’re coming up on Princeville,” Kal said. “In a minute you can see Hanalei Bay.”

The terrain was changing again. The green hillocks inland had become mountains, rich forested green and draped in billowing shifting mist. Banyan trees grew alongside the road, their roots stretching twenty feet down the earthen embankment to the asphalt. Erika understood why Kauai was called the Garden Island. Everywhere, everything was verdant; plants with sprawling leaves caught the mist and the first raindrops.

A moment later a shower came in a clattering torrent. Through the rain streaming down the windshield, Erika caught her first glimpse of Hanalei Bay. A Zodiac motored across the water, and then the bay was obscured again by a tangle of foliage, trumpet vines, bottlebrush trees, amaryllis blossoms.

In another few minutes they reached Hanalei.

“That’s the gallery,” said Kal, identifying a white building with a wraparound porch.

Hanalei was not the tourist trap Erika had half expected. Despite its galleries and T-shirt shops, surf shops and boutiques, the community had an unpolished small-town atmosphere. Leaving the shopping area, they passed a soccer field set against the backdrop of mist-cloaked mountains. Beside the field was a green clapboard church with dramatic Gothic stained glass, a bell on the roof peak and a side tower with a pointed pagoda roof. In the doorway two women in identical holoku gowns and leis corralled some small children. Other people emerged, and Erika realized it was a wedding.

Somberly she looked away.

Kal was silent.

As they left Hanalei and continued driving west, the road narrowed. Vines and blooms overhung the road, which was broken by one-lane stone bridges. To Erika, it seemed a fairy-tale place—enchanted. They passed the sign for Haena, and soon Kal turned right, toward the ocean, on a gravel road. At its end, amid a jungle of flora—plants with pointed Cadmium Red leaves resembling lobster claws, trees with frilled and lacy hanging blossoms—stood a Private Property sign. Kal turned down the dirt drive.

A stand of mixed tropical trees to the left hid a tiny one-story green house. The dwelling would have blended in with its background if not for its white porch pillars and railing, a faded wind sock hanging from the roof of the lanai and a child’s bright plastic tricycle in the road. Erika recognized the bungalow from the photos Kal had sent.

But he didn’t stop there.

“Where are you going, Daddy?” asked Hiialo.

The Datsun continued down the gravel drive. “I thought Erika would like to see the beach.”

Separated from the bungalow by a forest of trees and shrubs was a vast lawn and a low slate blue house with an oriental roof. Palm trees shaded the beach. The calm summer sea was every shade of blue and green. It took Erika’s breath. When Kal parked beside the beachfront house and she got out, she could only stand and hold her arms about herself as the trade winds cooled her body.

“This house is a rental property owned by my parents,” said Kal, as Hiialo climbed between the seats and out his door. “It’s occupied off and on. When my aunt and uncle from the mainland visit, they stay here. I take care of the place.”

Erika stared at the sea. “I didn’t imagine you were this close to the ocean.”

No longer having to concentrate on driving, Kal studied her face. Prominent bones, smooth planes, a straight nose. He’d already noticed that with different expressions the whole arrangement of her features seemed to change—and that she had a way of looking at things with deep concentration, as though planning to paint them someday. Erika’s was not a boring face.

“Daddy, I want to go home.”

“Burnbye, Hiialo.” In a while.

“We can go,” said Erika. “I can walk back here anytime. This is just beautiful.” I want to stay…She spotted a boat covered by a canvas tarp, lying on some vines under what seemed to be a pine tree. “Is that yours?”

“That’s the outrigger,” said Hiialo. “It was my dad’s wedding present from my mom. She and Uncle Danny made it.”

Maka. “It must be a very special boat,” Erika said. Hiialo was sweet. This would be easy.

Kal moved toward the car. Erika would have preferred to walk to the bungalow, but they all climbed into the Datsun, instead, and he backed up the driveway, spun the wheel and reversed into a gravel space beside a wobbly green gardening shed.

He parked, switched off the ignition and stared straight ahead, out the windshield. Then he looked at Erika. “We’re here.” He lifted his eyebrows slightly, then turned away, reached for the door handle and got out.

He and Erika carried her belongings up to the lanai. Seeing Kal and Hiialo kick off their flip-flops beside the door, Erika bent down to remove her sandals. When she straightened, she saw a gentle smiling expression in Kal’s eyes. He held open the screen door. “E komo mai. Welcome.”

Stepping into the shadows, onto a warped hardwood floor covered with irregular remnants of gold-and-green carpet, Erika surveyed the small front room. The walls were cheap paneling. On the right side was the kitchen, on the left a couch, an old end table and a throw rug. Over the couch hung a framed print of a schooner, a Hawaiian chief in the bow. A hanging lamp with a plastic tiffany shade advertising Coca-Cola dangled above the coffee table, and two pieces of batiked cloth blocked a doorway opposite the porch.

Erika peered down a hall and spotted a threshold obscured by bamboo beads. At the hallway’s end was a real door, a solid door.

She glanced at the kitchen, the sink, the gas stove. Crayon drawings on the refrigerator. The baseboards looked streaky—perhaps hurriedly swept after a long dust buildup. For some reason, the sight touched her.

This place might become her home. Kal might become her husband—though not her lover—and Hiialo her child. It seemed hard to imagine, but she said sincerely, “I like this.”

Kal swallowed, relieved. Surprised. “Thanks.” He set down her duffel, garment bag and a blue suitcase she’d said contained art supplies and ankle weights. “Let me give you a tour.”

“I want to show you my room,” said Hiialo.

“Okay.”

Hiialo went to the batiked curtains and pushed them apart. Ducking between them, Erika found herself in a tiny chamber with a single koa captain’s bed. The wood was familiar; there had been a lot of koa on the Skye. Hiialo’s closet was built into one wall, and a window looked out on a yellow-blossomed tree beside the driveway.

The watercolor of Pincushion hung over the nightstand, in a plastic frame, no mat. The cheap frame affected Erika much as the hastily dusted baseboards had. “This is a wonderful room, Hiialo.”

Hiialo pointed to a turquoise-and-green ginger pattern quilt on her bed. “This is the quilt Tutu made for me. She gave it to me when I was born.” Her gaze drifted up to Kal, behind Erika in the doorway.

Turning, Erika caught him with a finger to his lips. He and Hiialo must have a secret.

Tutu. “Is that your grandmother?” Maka’s mother?

Hiialo nodded. “My tutu on Molokai. Not Grandma.” She sat on her bed and turned on a lamp with a friendlylooking dragon at its base. “Would you like to see my Barbie dolls? I have Cinderella, too.”

Kal tried to remember the last time Hiialo had shown an interest in dolls. The change seemed to confirm everything he’d suspected: a woman in the house could make all the difference.

But he said, “Let’s let Erika settle in first, Hiialo.” He stepped around the bed and opened the door to the remodeled porch. “This is your room.”

Erika followed him. The narrow room ran two-thirds the length of the house. Windows stretched along two sides, bamboo blinds rolled near the tops of the frames. The sashes were raised, bringing in heady floral scents, and by the window nearest the driveway, new track lights shone down on an art table.

When Erika saw, her eyes felt hot. He didn’t even know her, and he had done all this. He’d made a place for her to work.

What if I can’t sell another painting?

She had to. She’d lower her prices. She’d paint women by the sea again.

Then she remembered something else—the things she hadn’t told him. About her accident and her paralysis. It wasn’t his business, but the untold facts made her feel sneaky.

Kal flicked the light switch. “It’s hard to get natural light in this house. Too many trees. Tell me if you need more light for your work. The table’s an old one my folks had in their Poipu gallery.”

It was hard to get out the words. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

Erika crossed the koa floor to the captain’s bed. It was wider than Hiialo’s—full-size—and covered with a slightly faded yellow-and-red handmade quilt. The pattern was tropical, Hawaiian, with vines and blossoms radiating out from the center. Where had it come from?

“Do you like it?” burst out Hiialo. “My great-grandmother made it for my daddy for when he was born. And my daddy built your bed.”

She had to stop this feeling—like she was going to cry. He’d made everything so homey. He must want her to stay. Of course he did. He’d invested a lot in her coming.

Kal’s bare feet moved over the polished hardwood until he stood beside her. He, too, examined the quilt, which his mother had brought over. It had been packed away in a box during the remodeling of his parents’ home twenty years before, and he’d forgotten it existed. His mother hadn’t. You know, I looked and looked for this when you and Maka were married. You know where I found it? In the shed behind the kennels. Your dad and I were clearing it out the other day to make the new whelping room…

Erika studied the quilt, wanting to soak up its history—and Kal’s. “Which of your grandmothers?”

“My dad’s mom. She grew up here. Hiialo is the sixth generation of my dad’s family to be born and raised in Hawaii.”

“I remember.”

There were four doors in the room, one that opened to the outside, toward the mountains. Kal opened the nearest, the original door to the porch, and went into his room.

Hiialo scooted in front of Erika into her father’s bedroom, then huddled close to Kal. Erika followed more slowly.

Inside, her eyes were drawn toward the light from the open window. The quilt on his bed was purple and lavender and well-worn. It was folded over double, and it took a moment for Erika to realize why.

He slept in a single bed.

Erika looked away from the piece of furniture, as though she’d caught him there naked. He really didn’t want a lover.

On one wall was a stereo and a rack of tapes and CDs that stretched to the ceiling. Bookshelves and two guitars hung nearby. One instrument was chrome, etched with Hawaiian designs, the other an old archtop. On the floor beneath them were an amplifier and two cases Erika suspected held electric guitars.

She was startled. Kal had never mentioned music to her. “You play?”

He nodded, without humble disclaimers.

“You never said anything.”

Kal touched the Gibson, drawing sound from the strings. “No.”

Erika decided he wasn’t as simple an equation as she’d first thought.

The bathroom was across the hall. Thin strips of black mold grew on the tub caulking—difficult to prevent in watery climates. For a single father who worked six days a week and cared for a rental property as well, he kept a clean house. You do good, Kal, she thought.

“There’s a gecko, Daddy,” said Hiialo.

An orange lizard scaled the wall above the towel rack.

“Oh, cool!” Erika peered closer.

The lizard scurried away.

“They eat cockroaches,” Hiialo told her.

Erika glanced at Kal.

He shrugged. “It’s Hawaii. We get some.” He stepped out into the hall, Hiialo one pace behind him. “You probably want to unpack, relax.”

“Actually I brought some gifts for you.”

Hiialo’s eyes grew large.

In her own room, Erika crouched beside the bed, opened her tote and removed a gift bag. “This is for you, Hiialo.”

As Kal entered the room, bearing Erika’s other luggage and a large flat box containing watercolor paper, Hiialo peeked in the bag. “Oh, look! Oh, Daddy, he’s cute! He looks like an Akita puppy.”

Erika’s gift was a small stuffed roly-poly dog. It was cinnamon-colored with a black muzzle and fluffy curled-up tail.

Smiling, Kal squatted beside Hiialo to look at the stuffed animal. “Sure does. Hiialo—”

Erika watched him mouth, What do you say?

“Thank you, Erika.” Her grin was toothy, dimply.

Erika said, “There’s something else in the bag.”

Hiialo reached down to the bottom and pulled out a tin of felt-tip pens. Her face fell. She met Erika’s eyes. “I already have these.”

A blush burned Kal’s face. “But some of yours are drying out.”

Erika wished she’d chosen something Hiialo didn’t have.

Hiialo put the pens back in the gift bag and hugged her stuffed puppy. “Thank you, anyhow, Erika.”

“You’re welcome, sweetie. I hope you enjoy them.”

“I’m going to go make a little bed for my dog.” A moment later she disappeared into her room.

Kal shrugged, an apology. “She’s only four.”

“She’s darling,” Erika replied politely. She lifted out another gift sack, this one heavier and decorated with suns and moons, and handed it to Kal. When he took it, she saw the veins in his sun-browned forearms and the calluses on his hands. He had nice hands.

Kal opened the. bag and pulled out a thick navy blue T-shirt with a primitive design in black, white and rust on the front. The figure of a whale was circled by a field of white dots.

“It’s a design of the Chumash Indians of Santa Barbara,” said Erika.

“Thanks. I’ll wear it now.”

He set the bag, not yet empty, on the bed and started to unbutton his aloha shirt with the eagerness of a man who hated to dress up.

As he took it off, Erika had an impression of a lean muscular chest and roped abdominal muscles. Trying to ignore him, she memorized the colors in the flowers outside the window. When she sensed that he’d put on the new shirt, she glanced back at him.

He was holding out the hem, checking the fit, which was good. “Thanks,” he said again.

“There’s more.”

Kal picked up the sack and withdrew a quart of beer from a micro-brewery in Santa Barbara. She saw him hesitate before he said, “Thank you. We’ll have to share it tonight.”

“Thank you, Kal. This bed…” It was bigger than his.

Wide enough for two.

“The drawers came off an old dresser. The rest was easy.” He edged toward the window, touching the frame.

His legs, Erika noticed, were long. Even covered by the loose twill of his drawstring-waist pants, they suggested muscle. Though his skin was golden brown from the sun, it was also smooth, the kind of skin that made her want to touch the area around his lips and his mouth, touch that tiny scar. And the bare abdomen, the chest, the shoulders she had glimpsed when he changed his shirt. He was powerfully built. Six years younger than me.

The thought was not unappealing. He was certainly a grown man.

But her observation was distant. Uninvolved. She assessed him as she thought another woman might.

When he turned from the window, Kal found her staring. Shot by a feeling he hadn’t expected—something sexual—he hurried to end the moment. “You probably want to rest. Are you hungry?”

“The food on the plane was good. I’d just as soon spend some time with Hiialo.”

“Look, I don’t expect you to baby-sit. That wasn’t the idea.” Not exactly.

Good. Maybe he wouldn’t mind if she had to get a job. “Well, she’s why I came,” she said, suddenly needing to make that clear. He could have changed his shirt in the other room.

“Mmm,” Kal agreed. Hiialo’s door was opened just a crack, but he could hear her playing in her room, talking make-believe with her stuffed friends. He leaned against the wall he had framed. “So…you probably want to make sure you like us before we go any further with this.”

Erika felt the quilt beneath her—and the bed. Things had gone pretty far. “I don’t see anything likely to make me run away.”

You haven’t seen my daughter throw a tantrum.

But Erika Blade struck him as a woman who wouldn’t flee difficulty.

“We can give ourselves as much time as we need,” he said. “I was thinking of about six weeks.”

Panic stricken, Erika thought she might break into hysterical laughter. Six weeks to decide if she wanted to spend the rest of her life in a celibate marriage to a man with more sex appeal than Brad Pitt?

But even making contributions to household expenses, she should be able to make her money last six weeks. And surely she could produce some marketable art in that length of time. “Six weeks sounds reasonable.”

Kal nodded. The air in the room felt oppressive, stuffy, and he knew it was because of the topic, the future he’d planned, the prison of a marriage without touch, a marriage to a stranger.

He said, “I’ll leave you alone. Maybe we can go swimming later.”

She nodded and so did he. Kal hurried out of the room, then the house. Moments later as he stood on the lanai quaffing the air, he realized he hadn’t been fleeing the awkwardness. He’d been getting away from Erika Blade’s tawny arms and legs, her narrow bare feet, her brown hair and eyes. He was fleeing the woman herself.

Because he found her very beautiful, which was the last thing he’d expected.

CHAPTER FIVE

THEY AGREED ON A SWIM before dinner.

At five Kal threw on some faded red surfing trunks and went into Hiialo’s room to tell her to put on her swimsuit. She was playing with her new stuffed puppy, whom she’d named Fluff. Kal wondered if Erika liked dogs.

“Hiialo, want to go swimming?”

“Yes! Hooray!” She tucked Fluff in a shoe box she’d lined with doll blankets, and then hurried to her closet, which looked about like his, a pit, and began throwing her clothes around, looking for a swimsuit.

Kal went out into the front room.

Erika was on the lanai, dressed in a coral swimsuit, a sarong around her waist. He could see the muscles in her suntanned back. Strong. Unaware of him, she crouched to touch a Mexican creeper growing beside the veranda. She studied it with the intense concentration he’d noticed before, as though she had to take a test on it later. He saw her eyes drop slightly, her lids brush her cheeks, and she swallowed.

Emotional…Whatever she felt, Kal understood. She’d just moved in with a stranger she’d met through a want ad.

He walked out onto the lanai and Erika straightened. He said, “You’ve got a towel. I was going to ask if you needed one.”

“No, I—I brought everything.”

“Literally?”

Erika met his eyes, and her heart moved from her chest to her throat. “Yes.” She’d even sold the Karmann Ghia. “I don’t own much. I’ve always lived on boats.”

The way she said it made him wonder. She must have traveled all the time as a kid. No neighborhood. No best friend, unless it was her brother. Kal had never known anyone who could put all her worldly goods in four pieces of luggage and a cardboard box. “This house is kind of like a boat,” he said, “that stays in one place.”

His half smile, combined with the sober look in his eyes, made Erika feel he knew things she’d never told him.

Hiialo bounded out of the house, clutching her Pocahontas beach towel. “Let’s go. Come on, Eduardo.” She shouted, “Can we go in the outrigger, Daddy?”

Erika made the kind of involuntary wince someone does when the music comes on too loud. Because of Hiialo? Kal wondered. That would be bad. If his daughter was an amplifier, she would go up to eleven. Higher than high, louder than loud. “Not today.”

Barefoot, Erika stepped down to the soft green lawn. The thatch was short and dense, different grass than she knew on the mainland. The warm earth invited her to sink in roots. She wanted to. She could be happy surrounded by so much color.

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