2 Empath (28 page)

“This is my boyfriend, Zane,” I introduced, nearly tripping over the word, which had tumbled out before I could think.
Boyfriend.
I had never called him that out loud before. But he wasn’t likely to argue about it now, was he?

“Hello, Mr. Lam,” Zane greeted with a smile.

Emilio nodded back. Then he turned to me with a grin. “Well, I didn’t think he was your brother.”

I laughed. Zane’s blond hair and green eyes would indeed be unlikely in my family tree. “No,” I agreed. “I’m an only child.”

I studied Emilio back, and noticed that his skin, though weathered, was a shade lighter than mine. Still, in the face, he looked Hawaiian. Or maybe I was seeing what I wanted to see. As proud as I had always been of having Hawaiian blood from Kalia, it had seemed more theoretical somehow. Now, looking into the face of a living ancestor who, biology aside, had lived nearly his whole life in Hawaii, I felt something different. I not only felt genetically Hawaiian, I felt…
connected.

To a military brat who’d been moved around like a chess piece her entire life, that feeling was pretty darn cool.

Emilio’s face slowly darkened.

“What is it?” I asked, alarmed.

“What happened to your father?” he asked tonelessly.

My mind raced. Had I said something that made him think — “Nothing happened to my father,” I said quickly. “He’s perfectly fine. He’s a Colonel in the Air Force; he used to be a pilot. He’s working at Hickam even as we speak.”

Relief spread over Emilio’s face, but only gradually, as if he were afraid to believe the best possible news. “He isn’t here with you.”

I tensed. This is where things got complicated. “No,” I began. “But that’s not because he doesn’t care. It’s because he still has no idea that you exist. I only just found out myself, because—” I paused a moment. I was sure that, at some point, I would tell Emilio the whole wildly unbelievable tale of my gift and Zane’s and the amazing lengths to which his high school sweetheart had gone to keep him alive. But now was probably not the time. The man had enough to process. And despite his valiant psychological rally, it was obvious that he was still gravely ill.

“It started with a genetics project at school back on the mainland,” I explained. “I knew something was wrong when I got the results, but I didn’t want to break it to my dad until I figured out what happened. When we got to Oahu, Zane and I… got some extra help and were finally able to put it all together. We went to see you in Waianae and your neighbor sent us here.”

“Tessa,” he said in a whisper. “God bless her. I was…” He shook his head. “I’ve been out of my mind.”

The door to the room swung open, and the nurse poked her head inside. She took one look at Emilio, and her dark eyes lit up like jack-o-lanterns. “Well, well!” she barked, her lips twitching to resist a smile.

“There you are,” Emilio said, his voice as loud and clear as he could make it — which was, unfortunately, not very. “
Finally.
I’ve been waiting for those damn forms all day!” His eyes twinkled devilishly, and a sudden flash of resemblance to my father made my heart melt in my chest. “A man could
die
in here waiting for you people to get your paperwork straight! You going to get me the damn dialysis or not?”

The nurse’s chest swelled and her gaze locked on his, their eyes engaged in a fierce, but clearly not bitter, battle. After a long moment, she let out her breath with a humph. “I’ll
think
about it!” she fired back. Then she turned with a flounce and walked out.

Emilio’s dry throat let out a sound that was supposed to be a chuckle. “That was fun.”

Zane laughed out loud.

“Oh my,” I said, offering Emilio another drink of water. “Looks like you and your son are going to get along just fine.”

“My son,” he repeated, his eyes sparkling. “My son… Mitchell.”

Chapter 23

I wanted, really badly, to jump back into Zane’s car and escape with him to the North Shore, feeling free to do nothing but drink in the soul-restoring sights, sounds, and smells of the wild ocean… to relax and enjoy just being on the islands and being alive… to take a walk with him on the beach at sunset…

But none of
that
was happening. What was happening was that I was about to face the Colonel. And not only him, but his very unhappy soul mate, whom I had hoped to appease with periodic texts throughout the afternoon assuring that my dad was not in any danger. But that hadn’t been good enough. My mother’s last text had made clear that if I did not return home ASAP and start answering some questions, I was not going to live long enough to vote.

By the time Zane and I pulled up at my house, I was tight as a drum. The hospital had begun treatment on Emilio immediately after he signed the consent, and the smiling, excited man we left looked nothing like the resigned, hopeless one we had first met. But he was not yet out of the woods.

And my father still didn’t have the faintest idea about his true paternity.

Nor did he believe in ghosts.

Nor did he like surprises.

“It’s going to be fine, Kali,” Zane encouraged as I sat unmoving, my hand hovering over my still-fastened seatbelt. “I know it’s going to be a lot to take in, but the man flew fighter jets. He’s tough.”

I nodded mutely. Mitch Thompson was tough, all right. Tough in a lot of ways. Like refusing to believe things he didn’t want to believe. Which was pretty much anything that couldn’t be proven in a court of law.

What if he rejected Emilio altogether? Could the older man take yet another disappointment?

Had
I
unwittingly
set him up for it?

“You want me to go in?”

My head whipped up. “Don’t even
think
about leaving me to explain all this alone!”

Zane chuckled. “I wasn’t planning on it. Just checking. But you really don’t need me, you know. When it comes to handling delicate situations, you’re a crack shot.”

I had a sudden flashback to a similar statement he’d made as a wraith, after I had helped Matt get out of a potentially nasty scrape with a school rival. He wouldn’t remember that. But had it left some impression?

“All I ever do is cut through the nonsense and tell it straight,” I insisted.

He unbuckled my seatbelt for me. “Then let’s go do that.”

Five minutes later, I was facing both my parents across the round metal picnic table on our deck. My mother had grilled burgers, but nobody was eating. The neighbor’s children were playing a noisy game in their backyard and ours. Birds chattered in the trees; a fruit fly landed on my dish of banana and pineapple slices. I was trying to decide the best place to begin when my father made his announcement.

“Look here, Kali,” he began. “I don’t understand a thing your mother’s been trying to tell me about where you’ve been all day, or why it’s got her so upset. But I do want you to know that I… uh… I believe that these things you’re sensing actually exist. Not your imagination, I mean, but a real physical phenomenon. No reason to think they aren’t… just because technology doesn’t have the right tools to measure such things yet.” He looked at my mother. “You know, two hundred years ago, people would have thought electromagnetic energy sounded pretty fishy, too.”

My mouth dropped open. I couldn’t believe such words were coming out of his mouth. I also couldn’t believe how familiar they sounded. “Wait,” I rasped, “What made you… have you been—”

He interrupted me. “Got a call from your friend Tara this afternoon. At my desk on the base, no less. Sharp girl. Always knew she was. Said she had problems with all this business too, at first, but then she started looking at it scientifically, and that made all the difference. Told me to grow a spine and face the facts.” He grinned at me lopsidedly. “She’s got the cojones, that one. She ever thought about the Academy?”

“Oh for heaven’s sake, Mitch!” my mother broke in, exasperated. She turned to me. “Kali, just tell us what’s been happening. Please. Your father says he’s fine with it, so just go on.”

I love you, Tara.

I stopped thinking about where to start, and just started. “Dad, the same day we moved into this house, something else happened here on the island. A man that Kalia was once very close to tried to commit suicide. His only son had just died unexpectedly of a heart attack, he’d recently lost his only other relative, he felt alone and hopeless, and depression hit him like a ton of bricks. They stabilized him in the ER, but as soon as he was able, he refused treatment, because he still had no will to live. They couldn’t make him change his mind, and unless he did, he was going to die.”

I paused. So far, so good. “Dad, the reason you’ve been seeing Kalia in your dreams is because her spirit has been making an incredible effort to save this man’s life.” I explained how difficult it was for her to communicate, but how she had managed to appear to Zane, and to me in a lesser way, and how she had led us to places where I could see particular shadows. Then I got to the hard part.

“She had a tough time figuring out how to get through to us,” I continued more slowly. “Because the background to her message was really complicated. And I don’t know that she would have succeeded if it hadn’t been for that DNA ancestry project I did back in Cheyenne.”

My parents’ eyes widened.

“You got the results?” my dad asked.

“I got them the last day of school,” I admitted. “I didn’t tell you because they weren’t what we expected.”

I glanced toward Zane. His eyes smiled at me encouragingly.
Doing great.

“That kind of DNA testing is new, and it isn’t a sure thing,” I plowed on. “But it seemed pretty clear that Albin Thompson couldn’t have been my biological grandfather… or your biological father.”

My dad’s face paled. I charged ahead. “We know now exactly what happened, Dad, because Kalia showed us… I’ve seen some of it reenacted by the shadows. When Kalia and Albin met, she was in love with a classmate named Emilio. Albin knew that; he and Kalia started out as just friends. Emilio was drafted right after graduation, and before he shipped out, he and Kalia got engaged. But just a few weeks later he was reported killed in action, leaving Kalia pregnant without any family support — her mother was dying and his mother wanted nothing to do with her.”

I took a breath. I wished my dad would. He looked like a wax figure.

“Albin was already in love with Kalia, and he begged her to marry him. She was reluctant at first, because she didn’t think it would be fair to him, but she did agree.”

All at once I saw in my mind the picture of Kalia holding my father as a toddler: the last picture that was ever taken of her. She had been pregnant with her second child.
Albin’s
child. The sparkle in her dark eyes had left no room for doubt. She had been happy.

“She came to love grandfather Albin,” I finished. “And in what short time they had together I believe they were happy. As far as he was concerned, you were his son. With Emilio gone, he had no reason to ever tell you otherwise.”

My father’s color was returning. Slowly. He and my mother exchanged dazed glances. I noticed she was holding his hand under the table.

“I don’t suppose he would tell me,” my dad said finally, his voice sounding surprisingly steady. “Back then, everyone thought it best that way. I wonder if my grandparents knew.” He thought a moment. “Probably not. He would have thought it better for my mother if no one did.”

We all sat in silence for a moment. Then my father faced me squarely.

“What does all this have to do with the man who tried to kill himself? Is he a relative of Kalia’s? Of ours?”

Zane’s hand found mine. A wave of soothing warmth moved up my arm.

“Yes, Dad,” I answered, meeting his eyes. “He is a relative. Emilio Lam wasn’t killed in action. He was captured and held as a POW in China even after the war ended. But no one knew that until he made his way back to Hawaii more than three years later. Kalia never knew, and Albin had left Hawaii and never did find out. Emilio returned home having no idea that Kalia’s first child was actually his own son.”

I paused. “Until today, that is. He knows because I just told him. Dad… the man we visited in the hospital
is
Emilio Lam. Your biological father.”

Silence. For a long moment, my dad’s face seemed frozen, unblinking. I really had no idea what kind of reaction to expect from him.

I did not expect anything close to what I got.

He stood up. “Diane, will these burgers keep?”

“Um… well,” she sputtered, watching him. “I—”

He grabbed up his and her dishes of fruit and started toward the kitchen. “Which hospital, Kali?” he asked as he moved.

“It’s Queens, the one near the Punchbowl, but—”

“But nothing! Time’s wasting.” He put the fruit in the refrigerator. Or at least, I think that’s what he meant to do. He actually put it in the freezer. “You coming, Diane? Just let me find my keys…”

Zane rose. “I can drive, if you want,” he offered. “We were just there, and my car’s parked right out — ”

“Sounds good,” my father agreed. He patted his pockets and then drifted off into the living room. “Let me get my…”

“Kali, help me get the rest of this food in the fridge,” my mother ordered. “Leave everything else. He won’t wait that long.”

I blinked at her, still trying to absorb the whirlwind. “I thought he would need some time… that he would ask a million questions… and then maybe tomorrow—”

My mom gave a wry laugh. “Kali, please. When has your father ever wanted to sit around and talk when he could get up and
do
something?”

I thought a moment.

“Good point.”

Almost before I was ready, we found ourselves right back at Emilio’s door. Only two visitors were allowed in the room at a time, so my dad and I prepared to go in together. He seemed tense, but as I was coming to realize, “tense” situations were the Colonel’s forte. Confronting another man, for any reason and under any circumstances, was doable. It was dealing with a teenaged daughter who saw dead people that was a freakin’ nightmare.