3. Oakley
Oakley
Oakley blasted classic rock in her empty car as she drove through Waimea. It was a gorgeous blue-sky day, and she was on her way to pick her girls up after two days without them.
Trent had the girls on Saturdays and Sundays, and Oakley homeschooled them during the week to maximize their time together.
Hayden and Harper still saw their friends in Waimea every weekend. Their father took them to soccer, capoeira, and piano – which was more than he had ever done when he and Oakley were still together – and she took them to karate on Friday evenings before dropping them off at their dad’s place.
Overall, they were kind of crushing this whole coparenting thing. They were giving their girls the best of both worlds: all the highlights of Waimea life on the weekends, and plenty of family time in Pualena during the week.
Pulling up to her old house still felt odd. It was Trent’s house now. He’d bought her out of it as part of their divorce settlement. Months had passed since she moved out – but before that, it had been her home for over a decade.
So many of her hardest moments had happened between those walls… and many of her best memories, too. Harper’s first steps. The first time they called her Mama. It had all happened right there.
The street she had chosen so carefully, the paint color that she had mixed up just for them… everything was the same. Except for her.
Trent’s new girlfriend – or not so new, considering how there had been a significant overlap between their relationship and Oakley’s marriage – was out front, washing a red convertible that screamed midlife crisis.
Trent had it shipped over from the mainland right around the time he filed for divorce.
“Hi Oakley!” Jennifer greeted her with a bubbly smile and a wave.
She was twenty-eight, the same age as Oakley’s niece. The age difference between her and Trent was a full generation.
The whole thing made Oakley feel vaguely ill.
She returned the wave in a halfhearted way and walked up the front path in search of her daughters.
“They’re in the backyard,” Jennifer chirped helpfully. “We got them a slip’n’slide!”
Oakley veered right and circled around to the back of the house. She could hear the girls squealing and giggling, and her mood lifted again.
It was a good thing that they enjoyed their weekends in Waimea, she reminded herself. Anything that contributed to their happiness was a good thing.
…even if that thing had been provided by Jennifer.
Oakley hadn’t expected Trent’s affair to turn into a long-term relationship. Sure, Jennifer had moved to Hawaii to be with him, but who didn’t want to move to Hawaii?
She’d thought that they would have lost interest in each other by now, because what could they possibly have in common? The girl had been in kindergarten when Trent and Oakley were traveling the world on their post-college gap year.
But there she was, week after week.
“Mom!” Harper shouted as soon as she rounded the corner. “Watch this!”
Her nine year old ran at the wet strip of plastic that ran across the backyard and dove for it, sliding into a puddle of water at the end.
“Awesome, Harper! One more time, and then we’ve gotta go!”
“Aw man! Ten more minutes?”
“Sorry, kiddo. We need to get on the road.”
“What if we don’t want to go?” Hayden asked from the back steps. She stood in the shade, studying her mom with crossed arms and a pinched expression.
Oakley pressed her teeth together.
Was it too much to ask that Trent had them ready to go at pickup time? She did all of the driving. Even metaphorically, he refused to meet her halfway.
“We need to,” she said. “It’s a long drive south.”
“I want to stay with dad.”
Oakley took a deep breath.
He got to be the fun weekend dad, aided by his bubbly girlfriend who probably functioned like a live-in nanny.
And Oakley was the schoolmarm who sat them down for their math lessons and took them to their dentist appointments and just generally schlepped them around the island without a word of thanks.
She paused and took a moment to get her head right.
They were just kids. It wasn’t their fault.
“I need you to get changed into some dry clothes so we can go.”
“Fine!” Hayden turned and stormed into the house. Harper followed.
Oakley walked around to the front of the house and climbed immediately into her car so that Jennifer wouldn’t try to approach her with small talk.
It was crazy to her how hard the younger woman tried to be her friend.
She may have only been the straw that broke the back of Trent and Oakley’s marriage, but still.
She acted completely innocent, as if she hadn’t been carrying on with a married man for countless months, and it drove Oakley up a wall.
It was nearly fifteen minutes before the girls finally emerged, dark hair dripping, their favorite stuffed animals clutched in front of them like shields.
Some days – usually when they had something to look forward to – the transition was easy. This was not one of those days.
Was Trent even home?
“I don’t care,” Oakley muttered aloud, trying to nip those thoughts in the bud.
He was probably in his office, as usual.
“Hey kiddos!” She pitched her voice bright as they climbed into the car. “How was your weekend?”
“Fine,” Hayden muttered.
“It was okay,” Harper said as she buckled her seatbelt. “My team lost at soccer.”
“Did you try your best?” Oakley asked, already backing out of the driveway.
“Yeah.”
“That’s all that matters.”
“Okay.” Harper’s expression was doubtful, but she didn’t argue.
Hayden was staring out the window, completely checked out of the conversation.
Oakley made a mental note to give them something to look forward to every week on this transition day, to make it easier for them…
but she spent the entire day teaching back-to-back Pilates classes.
By the time she picked them up, she was exhausted.
It was difficult to rally for a fun family outing after that.
“Do you want to stop at the playground?” she offered halfheartedly.
Hayden made a face. “That park is for babies.”
Oakley sighed. So many of her happiest moments had been spent right there at that rainbow-colored playground with her two little girls. But they weren’t so little anymore.
“Can we get ice cream?” Harper asked hopefully. In the rearview mirror, Oakley saw Hayden perk up a bit.
“Sure, we could do that.”
“Could we get shave ice instead?” asked Hayden.
“We’ll stop at that place you like in Hilo,” Oakley replied. “The one that has both.”
“Thanks.” Hayden settled back in her seat, looking more peaceful now.
It took so little to make them happy.
She lost sight of that sometimes, running herself ragged to try and make sure they had every possible opportunity. In the moment, though, sometimes the answer was as simple as a pit stop for a quick treat.
The girls were mollified, but Oakley still felt out of sorts as she drove south. The jewel-green hills and pristine blue skies that had once soothed her soul now seemed to mock her with their enduring perfection.
Moving away had been harder than she expected.
She missed Waimea more than she’d thought she would.
For a town she didn’t live in anymore, she sure spent a lot of time there. She had hoped that spending weekends there might make the transition easier – for her, but especially for the girls.
Instead, it had only made it more difficult to let go of their old life.
The transition to Pualena had been more difficult than Oakley expected. Just that morning, she had thrown out a pair of her favorite leather shoes because they had been completely ruined by mold.
She had forgotten how damp it always was in Pualena.
That was one of the reasons she chose Waimea to begin with. It was gorgeous and green, particularly on the eastern side of town, but not quite as damp as her home town. Oakley’s house had been just dry enough that she wasn’t constantly battling mold the way that they did in Pualena.
It didn’t help that she was still teaching two days a week at the Pilates studio all the way up in Waimea, or that her daughters – eleven-year-old Hayden in particular – had fought her every step of the way through the changes that their parents’ divorce had brought into their lives.
She had tried to make it all as easy on them as she possibly could. They still did soccer and karate with their old friends in Waimea, but Hayden was irate that she had to give up musical theater when they left the private school.
No matter how much gas Oakley burned going back and forth or how much fun she had with her cousins in Pualena, Hayden had taken the disruption to her life hard. And that made it harder for Harper, who took things in stride and probably would have adjusted more quickly otherwise.
It would just take time, Oakley told herself.
And in the meantime, she kept driving back and forth.
She needed to find work in Pualena – or at least closer to Pualena – but there was no work to be had.
There were a couple of Pilates studios closer than the one she worked at, but neither one of them was hiring. And working more than two days a week with that long of a commute was out of the question. Spending five hours in the car was ridiculous. It was exhausting, and it was expensive.
So she worked two days a week, but it wasn’t enough.
Often it felt like she was still in limbo, living her life half in Waimea and half in Pualena. It wasn’t sustainable. But she wasn’t sure what else to do.
Pualena was paradise in so many ways, but there was a reason that so many people their age had moved away years before. It was nearly impossible to find a job that paid enough to cover the outrageous cost of rent and groceries and every other inflated cost of living on the island.
Oakley had a significant nest egg from her divorce, and so she was in no immediate danger. But every month, she had far more money going out than coming in – and that was scary. She wanted to invest that money, not watch it slowly waste away.
She needed to figure out what the next chapter of her life was going to look like.