Return to Me (23 page)

His response was a wicked cackle. Not comforting.

Before long we reached the sanctuary’s parking lot. As we strolled toward the visitor center, Grandma caught my hand just as she stumbled on the uneven asphalt. I grabbed her around the waist to stop her fall.

“Grandma, you okay?” I asked anxiously as Grandpa ran to her side, concerned. No wonder Grandpa was anxious. Regardless of how limber Grandma Stesha was for a woman her age, she really was getting older, and she really was slowing down. How was she going to manage her overseas tours two years from now? Five?

At the stone altar laden with fragrant plumeria and smooth stones, Mom and Reid decided to stay with Grandma when she declared, “I’m sitting down here.” Grandpa nodded approvingly.

So it was just my grandfather and I who trekked across the lava rock toward the ocean, as if we were both on a mission for forgiveness.

“Are you sure we’re allowed to do this?” I asked, looking around nervously, since I could almost imagine security guards and ghosts of Hawaiians past hauling us to our immediate death. “I feel like we’re breaking a hundred taboos.”

“Respect this place. That’s the only rule that counts,” Grandpa answered over his shoulder. “So this particular refuge happened to be reachable only by swimming.” He pointed at the bay. “That used to be called the sharks’ den.”

I shivered, imagining these dark waters infested with all kinds of lurking dangers: man-eating sharks, tentacled jellies, and who knew what other beasties that could bite, attack, and drown a girl. Making my way to the water’s edge required my full attention, the black rock was that uneven. I didn’t want another lava scrape as a souvenir of my time here.

Up ahead at the point, whitecapped waves crashed over rocks. The water swirled violently below us, and I grabbed Grandpa’s hand. He was our family’s guardian, who’d brave even the most threatening tsunami waves for any of us. What would compel me to paddle through waves, risk being capsized, flirt a second time with death by drowning?

I knew who I’d risk my life for: my family. My friends. My Jackson.

Boyfriend or friend, I knew I would be Jackson’s personal Place of Refuge whenever he needed. There was comfort in owning that. And even more comfort in acknowledging that Jackson would be the same for me. No matter what happened, he would be at my side, supporting me, even at three in the morning. With a hundred percent certainty, I was confident of that.

If only I could say the same about my father, but my emotions swirling around him were chaotic, a deadly whirlpool.

“I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to forgive Dad,” I said, feeling guilty and disappointed in myself at the same time.

“Forgiveness is a process, and sometimes it’s an entire life’s work. What we can aim for is understanding and peace,” Grandpa said, gazing over my shoulder. I knew who he was studying: Grandma Stesha.

“How can you even get to peace?” I asked. The surf crashed hard, spraying me with droplets of salt water. I wouldn’t have been surprised if the waves had gouged a chunk out of the rock. “Half of the time I’m so mad at Dad for leaving us… and right after moving us, too! And what about college? What about Mom and Reid now? And then, other times, I miss him so much.”

“We’ll figure the college part out, darling. And don’t you worry about your mom and Reid. What’s more important is that you don’t let what your father did eat you forever. I’ve seen what happens when people let themselves marinate in bitterness.”

True, I didn’t want to drown in my anger at Dad any more than I wanted my joy to wither because I was so mired in the past: past hurts, past roadblocks, past betrayals. The wind picked up. I shivered but shook my head when Grandpa asked if I wanted to leave. Not yet. I had more questions.

“But what are the steps? How do you get to forgiveness?” I asked, knowing that I sounded like Mom, charting our cross-country move down to the last detail. Look how well those plans had turned out; life and Dad had thwarted her.

Grandpa spread his arms out. “You’re already here.”

“Here?”

He grinned as though he had eavesdropped on my doubt and skepticism.

“Here, as in this place is the destination?” I asked, crossing my arms over my chest. But then I remembered Jackson and his self-assuredness in bucking his family tradition of attending the Naval Academy, defying his father even if he didn’t have a step-by-step plan, only a destination point: the life he wanted. Maybe forgiveness was another destination point, and getting there a journey each of us had to take—each a different adventure, each coming with its own threat of shark-infested waters. Each requiring hard paddling through setbacks. And each gifting moments of unexpected beauty.

Perched at the ocean’s edge, I breathed in the sea. Here we were, on the Big Island, famous for its mystical healing, standing on top of devastation in a place called forgiveness. It was only because of the volcano’s very destructiveness that this otherworldly beauty could exist. I gulped and looked—really looked—at this austere moonscape within a tropical paradise.

Only because Dad had an affair were we here, enjoying Grandpa George’s inn.

Dad’s affair brought Grandma Stesha back to us.

And healed my relationship with Mom.

And opened the possibility of finding my true passion in life, not the one that had been prepared and handed to me on a silver platter stamped
MUIR & SONS
.

Grandpa tugged me close. “Forgiving others is easier when I remember that I’m human and stupid, too. I haven’t treated the
ones I love well all the time. I mean, look at how my revolving door of jobs has impacted your mom and your grandmother. Your mom’s so anxious about financial security because I didn’t provide that for her.”

Now I wrapped my arm around Grandpa’s waist and absolved him: “But you provided so much else. You were always there. You still are. And that counts.” Smiling up at my grandfather, I announced, as though I were an oracle, “Life is very strange.”

“Very.”

With my gaze refocused on the frothing ocean, I realized to my complete surprise that I was content. I relished watching love fill every crevice that had separated Grandma from Grandpa, Mom from her mother, and me from mine.

A sense of peace filled me as a burden I hadn’t even known I was lugging around released in an enormous wave of relief. Did it matter what had compelled Dad to do what he did? Would I ever know the truth?

Adulterer, liar, cheat.

All those labels could be applied to my father. That was true.

But he was also the father who taught me how to ride a bike after I’d fallen for the thousandth time and was scared to climb back on. Who helped me with my physics homework when no one else could explain optics and Schrödinger’s cat in a way I could understand. He threw himself into the lake without hesitation to rescue me when I was drowning, and he camped out in my treehouse every summer, my spider slayer who would sneak up the forbidden food of marshmallows and sugary cereals.

No matter what Dad had done, no matter the choices he had
made, I still loved him. He was my father, and that was a destination point I could cling to tightly.

The sun dipped behind a cloud, and the crispness in the air could no longer be called refreshing. I clasped my freezing hands together. Without my needing to ask, Grandpa George slipped his steady hand over mine. As he did, I noticed that the scrapes from my solo bike ride on the volcano were already scabbing over. Without even being aware of it, I had been healing.

A
ll of us snickered at the name of the inn where we would be staying that night: Napoopoo Plantation. Even Mom chuckled when Reid intoned the name in three different voices, none of which, I’m sure, used the correct Hawaiian pronunciation. I rolled down my window in hopes that I’d catch a whiff of coffee—after all, we were high up in Kona coffee country—but the air that blew back my hair held only a sweet floral scent.

The truck chugged up the steep, plumeria-lined driveway to the five-room inn overlooking the coastline. In advance of opening his bed-and-breakfast, Grandpa had teamed up with a few other inns, so we were able to snag the two vacant rooms at a special price.

The wraparound lanai was painted a sky blue so glossy, I was thankful I wasn’t wearing a skirt as I took the stairs. Flip-flops,
water shoes, and sandy sneakers lined the steps. A walkie-talkie was propped inside a rattan basket on the small table near the front door. A hand-printed sign leaned against the basket:
IF YOU NEED HELP, TUNE TO 2 AND SAY, “ALOHA, DAVE OR WILL.”

“Who knew the world could have so many sanctuaries?” I asked Grandpa, already in love with this inn.

Grandma nodded. “And there are so many more to find.”

Perhaps it was the day spent at the Place of Refuge or the early evening down at the beach, where we watched a cloud of gemstone fish flicker in the sea. Perhaps it was being full from the fresh ono we bought at the local market and Grandpa grilled for our dinner. Or perhaps it was simply relaxing in the hot tub, watching the sky blaze with stars.

Whatever it was—the sea, the food, the stars—the rest must have freed my mind to brainstorm that night in Kona. Ideas knocked around inside my head. Why not work on the Big Island during my gap year and learn about innkeeping? While these properties were much larger than a treehouse, their charm lay in the specially crafted private and public spaces for the guests: Grandpa’s small huts and yoga room, for instance. The tiny sitting area outside the room I shared with Mom and Reid in this inn, fitted with a petite lime-green armchair and a basket of sea glass–colored yarn. There was a ton to learn here about creating a feeling of aloha welcome. So why not ask Grandpa to hire me as one of his helpers? I could prepare and deliver the breakfast baskets for guests and clean their rooms. And then maybe on my days off, I could embark on my own tour of sacred spaces on the island, visiting inns and private residences, waterfalls and refuges.

The last thing I remembered wondering before I drifted off to sleep back in my bed was how I could possibly capture this soul-restorative experience within the four walls of a treehouse.

Before six the next morning, Mom roused us to drive fifteen minutes to a horseshoe bay at the bottom of the hill. There, in their historic refuge from predators, a pod of thirty-some dolphins rested and calved their babies. Across the bay, a stark white monument memorialized the spot where Captain Cook had been murdered. Even paradise and refuges had their shadows, their murky pasts, their sorrows.

Locals, dressed in ratty flip-flops and stained T-shirts, lined the edge of the tiny parking lot and nursed their coffees.

“Have you seen anything?” Mom asked, sidling up to the group as though she were part of their community. These last few weeks hadn’t stripped Mom of her ability to make friends with just about anyone. I admired that.

“They’ve been here for the past couple of days,” answered a handsome, white-haired man whose opened aloha shirt showed off some serious chest muscles. His tanned face was the perfect canvas for navy-blue eyes that crinkled appealingly. I could hear Shana as she twirled her hair around her finger while studying this man appraisingly:
You know, for an old guy, Mr. Aloha is pretty hot.

“Do you see them regularly?” Mom asked, brushing her hair off her face.

Mr. Aloha turned toward her, smiling. “I come here every day when I’m in town to check. You visiting?”

Weird doesn’t even describe how strange it was to watch a man flirt with my mother. My grandmother, I noted, didn’t find anything uncomfortable in this. She practically shoved Mom into this stranger’s muscular arms.

I thought about how unfair I’d been to Mom, accusing her of using the family curse as a lame excuse to let Dad go without a fight. Accusing her of going straight into taskmaster mode, plotting the divorce before Dad had made up his mind. But maybe he had. And maybe Mom was simply stepping aside rather than languishing in unrequited love. Now she was free to find the soul mate who would accept and celebrate her: sixth sense and detailed lists, throw pillows and manic weeding weekends, wild curls, hot temper, and all.

An hour slipped by without any sign of dolphins; it was just a peaceful morning, aside from Reid’s dramatic impatient sighs and Mr. Aloha’s lengthy conversation with Mom—he was from New York, recently retired from a thirty-year career in banking (
bor-ing!
), and was searching for his next big adventure. Most of the other locals had drifted away, some venturing to a beach farther south, where the dolphins had also been spotted in the past week.

Suddenly, Mr. Aloha leaned a mite closer than necessary to my mother to point out a dolphin surging from the water. “There!”

“What’s it doing?” Mom whispered as the dolphin spun in the air before dropping back into the sea.

Mr. Aloha grinned down at her. “Playing.”

“Playing,” she repeated slowly, as though having a good time was a long-forgotten concept. Even so, her face glowed with the rapture I felt when another dolphin took to the sky, and she missed the appraising
aloooooha!
look the man gave her. I had to glance away quickly; that look reminded me all too painfully of the caressing way Jackson studied me whenever he thought I wasn’t paying attention.