16. Lani
16
Lani
P ots covered the stovetop, and a fog bank of steam drifted across the room as Emma lifted their lids. The kitchen warmed with the smells of herbs and spices.
“Cup of tea?” Emma offered.
“Please.”
“What sounds good? There’s hibiscus orange spice, māmaki citrus, blue vanilla, purple dream, lemongrass with mint…”
“Is that all?” Lani tried to sound playful, but her voice came out weak and shaky.
“Juniper’s still testing blends, so we’ve got enough tea to bathe in.”
“Māmaki would be lovely.”
Emma poured out two mugs of tea and brought them to the table.
The kids were in the next room watching a movie on Uncle John’s bulky old television set. They giggled, and the sound pulled at her heart.
Lani’s love for her daughter was all mixed up in fear and grief. She didn’t know if that was her burden to bear, punishment for the choices she had made… or just an ordinary part of motherhood.
“Try not to fret.” Emma reached across the table and squeezed her hand. “You’re welcome to use my car until the truck is running again. It’s not like I drive much.”
“Thank you, but I’m not too worried. If Kekoa can’t help me fix it, I have enough saved to buy something decent. I might take you up on that, though, just to get around the next few days.”
“Of course.” She looked at her for a long moment, head tilted in concern. “If you’re not stressed about the truck, what is it? You haven’t been yourself lately.”
Lani nodded in agreement and took a breath in, trying to sort her thoughts out enough to voice them. She was tired of carrying this alone… and unsure of why she was doing that to begin with. Maybe because she had wanted to talk it through with Tenn first, but then she had failed miserably on that front as well.
Maybe it was that she had been doing life alone for so long that when something truly terrifying happened, she dealt with it by herself.
But she didn’t want to live like that anymore.
“Rory’s dad showed up,” she said, wrapping both hands around the warm mug in front of her.
Emma’s jaw dropped. She quickly snapped her mouth shut again, then opened it to ask, “Her bio dad?”
“Yeah.”
“The Italian?”
“That’s the one.”
“How?”
Lani let out a heavy sigh. “An old coworker of mine ran into him. She had been following my pictures on social media for years, apparently, and she was there the night we met. All of my friends on the ship knew what had happened. A few of them even helped me look for him once I decided to keep the baby. But with no last name, no address…” She trailed off and shrugged.
“And by ‘showed up’ you mean…”
“Here.”
“Here,” Emma repeated, wide-eyed. “On the island.”
“Just showed up at the shave ice place one day.”
“That’s wild! How long will he be here?”
“I don’t know.”
“Has he met Rory yet?”
“Yeah. She loves him. She calls him Babbo.” A smile pushed at Lani’s cheeks, because how could she not be happy about something that made her baby girl light up?
“What’s his name?”
“Lorenzo.”
“And has he met Tenn?”
Lani shook her head.
Emma went quiet for a moment, and they sipped their lukewarm tea. Then she asked, “Is he taking it hard? Is that why you had the tow truck bring your truck here?”
She swallowed and nodded.
“How did he react when you told him?”
“Rory beat me to the punch.”
“Oh no.”
“She was babbling on about it before I got the chance… or the courage.”
“And?”
“And… that’s it. We’ve barely talked about it. He’s working crazy hours when he really doesn’t need to be. His mom swooped back in and started picking Olivia up from school again, so he must have said something to her. I don’t know if he wants us to move out or if he’s so scared of the possibility that he pulled back. Both?”
“Not both,” Emma said firmly. “There’s no way he wants you to move out.”
“That’s not how he’s acting.”
“He’s scared.”
“Of what?” Lani demanded. She knew what, but that didn’t make her feel any less hurt and defensive. “He’s an adult! If he wants me there, he should say so! He should be leaning in, not away.”
“Is that what you’re doing?” Emma asked gently.
That took the wind out of her sails. Lani slumped back, breathless.
“He’s always been the one pushing in this relationship, hasn’t he? The poor guy’s probably terrified that you’ve got one foot out the door. Heck, he might be worrying that you only stayed out of guilt after he got shot.”
Lani clapped a hand over her mouth and stared at her cousin in horror.
Emma met her gaze, unrepentant.
“He doesn’t think that.” Lani lowered a shaky hand and wrapped her arms around herself. “Does he?”
“You won’t know unless you talk to him.”
“Right.” Lani slumped in her chair, holding herself tightly.
“What’s stopping you?”
“I don’t even know.” She wrapped both hands around her mug and took a long sip as she tried to marshal her thoughts. The māmaki and citrus grounded and uplifted her, both at the same time. “I guess I have trouble understanding why he wants me around in the first place, when he could find someone with so much less baggage. After everything that happened with Zeke, maybe I was scared that another man showing up would be too much for him. I don’t know, Em. It doesn’t make sense when I try to put it into words.”
“That’s exactly why you need to talk through it. More often than not, our fears look absurd when we finally drag them out into the light.”
Lani nodded and took a shaky breath. She finished her tea in silence, and Emma refilled the mug with another brew; this one was a deep royal purple.
“Hibiscus and butterfly pea?” she guessed.
“And a bunch of other things for flavor,” Emma said.
Lani took a sip. The tang of hibiscus was balanced out with smooth honey and delicate spices she couldn’t quite place. Licorice maybe, or star anise. “That’s delicious.”
“The girl’s a mad genius.”
“When does she start selling these at the markets?”
“Later this week, I think. There’s a lot of red tape making it nearly impossible for her to get a learner’s permit, so she’s teaming up with Cody.”
“Weren’t you going to drive her?”
“I’m willing, but I guess that feels a bit too much like being driven around by mommy. Partnering with someone her own age lets her feel independent.”
“What other teas did you say you have over there?”
“You’re stalling.”
Lani’s spine straightened at Emma’s tone, and she met her fierce green gaze across the table.
“Go put that poor man out of his misery. Tell him you’re not moving to Italy.”
A disbelieving laugh escaped with a splutter. “He doesn’t think–”
“Are you sure about that?” Emma interrupted.
Lani opened her mouth and closed it again. She wasn’t really. She didn’t know what was going on in his head. They’d had one angry conversation – not even a fight, at least not the way she understood them – and then he had frozen her out.
No, that was unfair.
They had just… retreated. She hadn’t made any more effort than he had.
Maybe they were both afraid to break the fragile peace, scared of what lay on the other side of their next serious conversation.
“Rory can stay with me,” Emma told her.
“Okay.” Lani stood before her thoughts could tie themselves in knots again. “Thank you.”
“What you and Tenn have is precious.” In those words she could hear the depth of Emma’s grief, the soul-shredding loss that she still carried with her every day, even as she mothered and weeded and acted as though all was well. “Don’t let it go without a fight.”
Lani swallowed, nodded, and walked through to the living room. She kissed the top of her daughter’s head and told her that she was running out on an errand; Rory waved her off without looking away from the screen.
The warm afternoon air caressed Lani’s face as she stepped outside.
She didn’t know where Tenn was. After the week they’d had, she didn’t expect to find him at home. But that was closest, and so she set off at a brisk walk.
Dio and Zuko both followed her until she slipped through the front gate, and then Dio raced back to the kids while Zuko sauntered off, pretending that he hadn’t been following her at all.
A hurricane of fear and memory swirled through her mind as she walked, but she let the thoughts pass through her without grabbing hold of them. The day was bright and beautiful, with a clear blue sky stretching above the corridor of greenery that lined the road.
She stayed firmly in the present moment, in that liminal space of uncertainty, and thought of all the things that she was grateful for.
Rory was thriving. Lani too was healthy, and well rooted in her extended family and the community of Pualena. They didn’t need Tenn, not really.
But she wanted him. She wanted a life with him more than she had admitted to herself.
When she’d nearly lost him, when he had been injured just recently, she had been confronted by the enormity of her love for him. But all it had taken was a few cross words and a brief silence for her to retreat into herself.
If Tenn was unsure of her devotion, she could hardly blame him. What, after all, had she done to prove it to him? Sure, she had been with him through his surgeries. But that could be construed as guilt as easily as love.
The moment Lorenzo appeared, she had withdrawn. She had kept it a secret for reasons that she didn’t fully understand, so how could she possibly expect him to understand?
They were practically a family already. Their kids called them Mom and Dad. Maybe they had jumped the gun on that one – or the kids had – but it was done. And Lani wanted them to be a family. But did he? Was Tenn still all in? She didn’t know anymore.
Lani was so deep in thought that she was almost surprised to find herself at Tenn’s front door; her feet had taken her there with no conscious direction. She turned and registered his truck in the driveway. He was home.
With no plan in mind, no idea of the right words to start with, she opened the door.
The living room was quiet and empty – no Olivia doing arts and crafts at the oversized coffee table. She found Tenn in the kitchen, slicing and dicing vegetables. He paused when she walked in but didn’t turn.
Acting purely on instinct, she crossed the room and wrapped her arms around his chest. Her forehead rested between his shoulder blades. Slowly, the tension went out of his muscles. He set down his knife and braced his hands on the counter.
“Hi.” His voice was soft.
“Hi.”
“Where’s Rory?”
“She’s with Emma. Is Olivia with your parents?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“They missed spending time with her.”
“Is that all?”
He turned slowly within the circle of her arms so that they stood face to face.
“It feels like we’re back to living two separate lives,” she said. “I’ve been wondering if you even want us living here anymore.”
He looked as shocked as if she had stuck him. “Of course I want you here!”
“Then why are you changing everything up without even talking to me about it?”
“You’re the one who didn’t talk to me,” he said, his voice low.
“It’s felt like you’ve been pulling away.”
“I haven’t. Not on purpose, at least.”
“You’ve hardly been home.”
“I’ve been working!”
“Since when do you work such long hours?”
“Since my head chef went back to the mainland!”
Lani paused and stared up at him. “Marco left?”
“He had a family emergency. I’ve been covering for him.”
“You didn’t tell me.”
“I was just trying to give you space. I didn’t want you to feel like you had to take care of Olivia while I was working. You’re not my nanny.”
“What am I?”
He looked at her with a helpless intensity. “You’re my person.”
She stepped forward and rested her head against his chest. “We need to talk.” Then, realizing that she had just parroted a phrase loaded with all sorts of meaning that she wanted nothing to do with, she hurried to add, “In general. We need to get better at talking to each other. We need to communicate more.”
“I didn’t want to assume that you’d take care of Olivia with… everything else going on.” He glanced out the window and frowned. “Did you walk here?”
“The truck broke down.”
He took a step back. “And you didn’t call me?”
“I wasn’t sure where we stood. You’ve been working so much…”
“I’m here for you. Always.”
“I’m here for you too. If you’ll let me be.”
His dark eyes were thoughtful as he reached up and brushed a strand of hair away from her face. Then he took her hand and led her through to the living room, where they settled onto the deep blue couch.
“I’m sorry,” she said as soon as they sat down. “I should have started with that. I’m just… my head is all scrambled lately. I’m sorry for not telling you as soon as Rory’s dad showed up.”
He reached out and took her hand again, waiting for her to say more.
“When I first met Zeke,” she told him, “when we worked together on the cruise ships, he seemed like a nice guy.”
Tenn’s expression darkened at the mention of her ex-husband, but he didn’t interrupt.
“I had already been living with him for months when he started drinking too much, and it was years before things got really bad. And now, with Lorenzo, he seems like a good person… but I just keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. It’s hard for me to trust that anyone is who they seem to be. Especially men.”
She paused, struggling to find the right words. A terror that she didn’t fully understand clawed at her chest.
“I think… I didn’t want him to know what you look like.”
“You would let him around Rory, but not me?”
“Rory didn’t get hurt last time,” she said, her expression pleading. “You did!”
“It’s not your job to protect me.”
“Why?” She yanked her hand away. “Why not, when you protect me?”
Tenn looked at her for a long moment, his expression intense and unfathomable. Then he slid off the couch and onto the floor. For a confused moment, Lani thought that he was kneeling to propose. Instead, he laid his head in her lap and put his arms around her. Confused, she put one hand on his head and another on his arm.
His shoulders shook, just once, and she was shocked to realize that it was a sob. When he lifted his head to look at her, though, there was no grief in his eyes. He looked up at her with immense relief.
“I thought that you were going to leave.” His voice was ragged.
Lani slid off of the couch and into his arms. He shifted on the floor until he sat with his back to the couch, cradling her against his chest.
“I saw him,” he said, speaking into her hair, “before Rory even told us about him.”
“You saw Lorenzo?” She shifted to peer up at him.
“Not a lot of Italians in Pualena,” he said wryly. “And he’s… friendly. Talkative.” His expression clouded. “Handsome.”
She took his face in both hands and kissed him. “I don’t want him,” she said against his lips. “I want you.”
“Say it again.”
“I want you. Only you. Forever.” She leaned back just enough to see him properly. “I want to be a family. You and me and our girls.”
“I want that too.”
“Well then.” She burrowed back into his embrace, threading her arms under his and resting her face in the crook of his neck. “The rest is just details. We’ll figure it out together.”