Thin Love (54 page)

He doesn’t answer. Kona moves his chin, motions for his mother to sit across from him. She is tiny now; grown so thin and he worries about her. The professor is nearing her mid-sixties and she doesn’t cook for herself, doesn’t do more than shop and putter around in her garden.

Her back is straight as she sits on the glass coffee table, gazing over his face, looking, Kona suspects, for any hint of what has him so sullen, so quiet. “Yesterday in the Market,” he says, eyes lowered, glaring at her, “I saw Keira.”

The worry disappears and his mother’s posture becomes less rigid. “And?”

Kona dismisses the curiosity. He wants to measure her reaction, to see if a confession will come. “I spoke to her.”

“Kona, no.” She’s already abandoned her worry. She’s always hated Keira, even before the wreck, before Luka. He’d never known why and this flippant attitude that has her standing, has her picking her purse up from the floor and lifting her wide hat from her head, only confirms that her opinion has not changed. “It’s best you stay away from her. After all she did…”

“What do think she did, Mom?” His mother snaps her attention to him, a snarl curling her top lip, but Kona ignores it. “You think she’s responsible? Still? After all these years?”

“If she’d minded her own business…”

“She wanted to protect me. So… so did Luka.” He leans up, rests his elbows on his knees. “It was my fault. You never understood that. I led them there.”

“Don’t say that, son. No.” His mother comes next to him, takes his hands and some of his irritation is replaced with gratitude. She never thought he’d done anything wrong. His sins, his crimes, she always excused away as though they were the stupid behavior of a misguided kid, not felonies he’d willingly jumped into.

Then the flash of that boy in the Market returns to him and Kona pulls his hands away from his mother, stares over her head to the window and the fat blooms of hydrangea and roses lining the walkway outside. “It’s a funny thing; the women in my life getting into my business.” He looks back at her. “You’ve always messed with my business.”

She sits up straighter. “What are you saying?”

“You knew. You’ve known this whole time and you never told me.” They stare at each other, his mother’s eyes narrowing, playing a game, seeing whose tells will give away their hands. “He looks just like me, Mom. He’s me exactly.”

She stands, walks to the vase near the window, fiddles with the arrangement of magnolias and hydrangeas. “If he looks like you, it’s because you and your brother were so similar.”

His mother hated his anger, always said it was his father’s bad blood that had him lashing out. She’d never blame that defect on her family. And so she busies herself with the flowers, pulling out the stems, adjusting their height as though he hadn’t just accused her of lying to him for nearly sixteen years.

He couldn’t wait, felt his patience sliding through him. “Mom?” His tone is harsh, sharp and his mother jerks at the sound.

Finally she looks over her shoulder, and when she speaks her voice shakes. “I knew Keira was pregnant, son. Her mother told me the day after Luka…” She turns back to the flowers and the petals fall around the vase as her hands shake. “I didn’t want to hurt you.”

“By keeping my son from me?” Kona darts from the couch and in three strides, he’s behind her, fighting against himself to lower his voice to keep from punching something.

His mother faces him, twisting a dead flower in her hand. She stares at Kona’s collar, to the V-neck of his shirt and the silver chain that disappears underneath it. Then her eyes lift, are glassy. “By never telling you that the girl you thought you loved was carrying your brother’s child.”

“That’s not true.” Kona twists out of his mother’s touch, stepping back. He can’t breathe, can’t make his lungs inflate enough to catch a deep breath. “That can’t be true.” Luka and Keira? No. That just didn’t make sense. He glares at his mother, knees wobbling when he sees her tears. She’d told him her suspicions years ago; it had led to the biggest fight he and his twin had ever had. He’d bloodied Luka’s bottom lip and his brother had returned the favor by bruising his eye.

Keira had sworn she didn’t want Luka and then later, his twin told him what a jackass he was for even thinking he’d touch Kona’s girl.

They couldn’t have lied that well. They couldn’t have been together without Kona knowing.

“Luka told me, son,” he mother says, leading him into a chair near the window. She sits next to him, takes his hand and as a distraction, Kona wipes her face dry. “He told me he loved her, but he didn’t want to betray you any more than he already had.”

He refuses to believe her, brushes her hand from his arm when she touches him. His gut tells him that this is wrong, that it just can’t be true. But his mother was a good woman; she was a little overbearing, a little protective of him even now, but she would never lie about something like this. She would never taint Luka’s memory.

When she stands, steps back and stares down at Kona, he glances up at her, waiting for an explanation he’s not sure he wants to hear. “She named the boy Luka, didn’t she?” Kona opens his mouth, a question tipping his tongue, but she waves him off. “I kept tabs. He’s my grandson, after all, but I knew she’d never let us in their lives and I just couldn’t bring myself to tell you. I knew how badly it would hurt.”

His head feels so heavy, like he’d had too much to drink and Kona leans forward, elbows on his knees and his hands covering his face. “Keira would have never, and Luka…” The thought of his twin is like a splinter in his chest; it always had been. Most days Kona could bury his memory, his face, so deep that he often forgets the sound of Luka’s voice. He doesn’t want this to be true. It is hard enough forgetting what Luka’s death had done to their family, what his loss had cost Kona; he couldn’t have this betrayal added to that pain.

It just can’t be true.

“Ask for a test. You’ll see for yourself.” Kona recognizes that tone; it’s the same one his mother has always used to end most arguments. She stands, walks away from him and lingers by the door. He can feel the weight of her revelation and the subtle joy he knows she gets now that she’s told Kona what kind of person Keira had been. “I’m sorry you had to find out like this, son. I know how much you loved them both.”

He thought he did, he thought, one day, he still could. Now, he just didn’t know.

Seething. It’s the only word Keira can think of to define the bubble of rage pounding in her mind. She can’t even look at Kona, but she feels his eyes on her, that steady glare she knows is in his gaze as they sit across a long conference table in his lawyer’s office.

The battle ax at Kona’s side is smiling.

Keira has suspicions. She knows how the old professor works. She was always Kona’s one flaw—the thing that annoyed Keira the most about him when they were together. He’d believe anything that mean bitch told him. A slip of her gaze at that wide, phony smile and Keira knows it was her idea to ask for a DNA test.

Kona, at least, seems to feel the awkward air of anger in the room. Keira glances at him, catches his frown, that simmering calm she knows is forced and then looks away.

“Okay,” the chubby lawyer with the ridiculous name, Martin Martin says, coming through the door to sit at the head of the table. In his hand is a manila envelope and he waves it around like it’s a winning Lotto ticket and not the results that Keira knows have been forged. “We have the tests results, Ms. Riley.” The man looks to be in his mid-fifties with gray hair above his ears and at his temples. The smile is professional, friendly, but too polished, teeth too white. He would have fit into her mother’s social circle with little difficulty. “Keep in mind, Ms. Riley that since Mr. Hale and his deceased brother were twins, the lab expanded the testing to thirty-two loci instead of the usual fifteen. B
rothers will typically match and so the lab tested Mr. Hale’s sample as well as Luka’s.”

“How?” Keira asks, wondering what lengths Kona’s mother had gone to, to make sure Keira looked like an idiot.

“The autopsy. Professor Alana had the samples stored.”

Of course she did,
Keira thinks, suddenly realizing that the woman had likely planned this. She’d known Keira didn’t go through with the abortion. It was something a woman like her would have checked up on. Storing Luka’s DNA was her insurance.

The lawyer clears his throat, bringing Keira’s attention back to the head of the table. “In this case Luka Hale’s DNA and Mr. Hale’s were tested as the potential fathers of the child.” Keira hates the way the man calls Ransom a child. She hates the way he speaks Luka’s name as though he is a footnote, the unlucky pawn that got blamed for Ransom’s existence.

Keira can only stare at the gold ring on the lawyer’s hand as he slides the envelope across the smooth table. She knows they watch her, take in her slow movements, the flick of her nails against the brass brads as she opens it.

She is not surprised when she reads the results:

Kona Hale: Probability of paternity: 50%

Luka Hale: Probability of paternity: 99%

Keira blinks, then closes her eyes, slipping the paper back into the envelope. “Well now,” she says, staring right at Kona’s mother. “Isn’t that convenient?”

“Excuse me, Ms. Riley?” the woman says. Her smile is so wide that her lips look thin.

The lawyer again clears his throat, perhaps sensing the build of tension in the room. “Naturally, since Mr. Hale has been ruled out as the father, he will not be making any arrangements in terms of child support or back payment for the past sixteen years.” Keira watches Kona, her anger building as she notices his posture, how he’s crossed his arms, tightened his shoulder. How he refuses to look at her.

“Money?” Keira leans on the table, slapping her hand on the surface when Kona averts his gaze. Finally he looks at her, expression tight, guarded. “You think I want your money?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Keira, really. This can all be settled.” She can’t even look at Kona’s mother when she speaks to her. That tone is too familiar and Keira leans back, forces herself to keep her eyes on the table as the woman continues. “The boy is still our blood and Kona wants to help you out. Isn’t that right, Keiki kane?”

When Kona only nods, Keira pushes back from the table. Sixteen years ago, her temper, her rage would have her wanting to crawl over the table and jump on top of that bitch. But Keira was not that angry girl anymore. Time, distance, motherhood had all calmed her, given her reflection and hindsight. So she doesn’t scream at Kona’s mother. She doesn’t call Kona a spineless asshole for letting his mother and lawyer hold his balls. Instead, Keira picks up her bag and pushes her chair back under the table, hand resting on the back.

To his lawyer, she nods. “I am not interested in any monetary arrangements.” The man’s eyebrows lift and Keira sees the question rounding his eyelids. “Mr. Martin, I’ve won a Grammy and have written a dozen platinum songs. I don’t need Mr. Hale’s money.” When the professor clicks her tongue, Keira jerks her head around. “Don’t believe me?”

“Girls like you are always calculating.” As the woman leans forward, arms on the table, she sneers at Keira, cold, pensive, as though she believes reading Keira, understanding her, is simple. “I know damn good and well that this won’t be the last we hear from you.”

“Girls like me, Professor Alana? You mean girls who take care of themselves? Or girls who make their own way?”

“Keira, don’t play the martyr.” The woman brushes off Kona’s hand on her wrist, his vain attempt to get his mother to calm down. “I know your mother left you a substantial inheritance.”

“Yes, she did and I donated every single dime to charities she would have hated; the NAACP, the American Indian College Fund, Water.org.” She tries not to let Kona’s attempts at fighting a smile dim any of her anger. “Believe me or not, but I’ve done pretty well for myself and I don’t need Kona’s money.” Keira is done with this ridiculous conversation. She’d given Kona and that bitter, hateful mother of his too much of her time. Her hand is in her purse, pulling out the envelope before either of them can argue with her.

“And while we’re talking about girls like me, girls that are calculating, why not admit a few things? Like who suggested what lab would do the testing?” She looks at Kona. “Was it her?” She nods to Alana who makes strange little noises of protest, forcing Keira to speak louder. “And why in God’s name would she have stored Luka’s autopsy samples all these years?” She walks around the table and places a small, white envelope in front of Kona. “And if she was so convinced that Luka was Ransom’s father then why the hell would she have given me this?” Keira leans down, ignores how good Kona smells as her mouth lingers near his ear. “I think you know it’s well past time for your balls to drop, asshole.” Keira backs up when he turns, eyes hard, frown severe but she isn’t threatened by him or the cold way he glares at her. “You keep away from my kid. You don’t deserve to know him.”