Epilogue
(Seven months later)
Nina
I t’s Tuesday night—Tuesday afternoon in Hawai’i—and Helen and I sit patiently with our take-home Pizookie in front of us, waiting for Matilda to join the video call. Thad is out doing bounty hunting stuff, and Grady caught a cold, so it’s just the three of us tonight—the OG ex-nun club.
That means half a Pizookie for me, if Helen and I split things evenly. I already know I’ll be lying about that in the food diary I give to my aunt at the end of the week. Even though it’s only a small sin, I feel my stomach churning at the thought.
But I won’t focus on that now. I’m too excited to see Matilda. She’s been busy with the kids’ school stuff for the past couple weeks, so she’s missed our regular Tuesday meetings. I’m sure their PTA was not ready for Matilda when she arrived, but she’s already managed to run two major fundraisers that have doubled the amount of money going toward art and aftercare programs, on top of the work she’s been doing to get her foundation off the ground.
“Should we try again?” I start to suggest to Helen, when all at once the screen switches and Matilda peers in at us from the other side.
“Sorry I’m late! I was trying to find a quiet room. Kimo’s cousins from Oahu showed up unannounced, so he’s trying to get a barbecue going, and Makoa’s practicing his drums upstairs. Hopefully we’ll get some peace here in the bedroom.”
Despite all this, Matilda is grinning. She looks frazzled but happy by all the craziness surrounding her. Her hair has grown out quite a bit since the last time we saw her in person, and even though it’s March and still freezing (at least, here in Chicago), her usually dark blonde hair has brightened with the warm, sun-kissed streaks that come from spending lots of time outside.
I can’t help but smile in response to her obvious, contagious happiness. Matilda was always a beautiful woman, but there was something stern and foreboding about her before. She looks softer now, more approachable—though there’s no doubt it’s a hundred-percent Matilda when she opens her mouth again.
“Oh, дерьмо , that’s my vibrator.” She tosses something off the bed that we couldn’t see anyway.
I feel myself blushing, and I can tell Helen is stifling a laugh, though she quickly changes the subject. “Matilda, we’ve missed you! What’s new? Anything exciting?”
Matilda rolls her eyes. “You won’t believe the idiots I have to deal with down at Makoa’s school. They’re making my life a nightmare?—”
The door opens in the background and Kimo enters, seemingly oblivious to the video call—or at least, I assume so, since he immediately rips off his shirt and throws it onto the bed. My eyes widen. “Uh, Matilda...?” I say in warning as he shucks off his pants, leaving him in only his briefs.
Matilda glances behind her, then does a double take. “Kimo! I’m on a video call.”
“With who?” Completely unabashed about his partial nudity, Kimo gets closer to the screen, squinting at us before grinning in recognition. “Oh, hey, ladies! Good to see you! That’s right, it’s Tuesday.”
He’s grinning at us so easily that I feel guilty at my instinct to avert my gaze, seeing as he’s standing in front of us in only his underpants. (Another thing I won’t be writing about in my sin journal this week.) “Hi, Kimo!” I do my best to wave and smile, reminding myself that he’s not wearing less clothing than if he were in his bathing suit. Even though it’s his underwear. And he’s standing in his bedroom. Where there was just a vibrator on the bed.
Don’t be weird , I tell myself vehemently. It’s fine. Everything is fine.
Luckily, from somewhere in the Kapono household, a dog barks. “Kimo, you let the dog in!” Matilda scolds.
“Whoops! Come here, Comet...” With that, Kimo disappears offscreen.
Helen looks at me with wide eyes, and I’m relieved to find I’m not the only one taken aback by the sheer chaos of this call. “Matilda—did you get a dog?” she asks.
We exchange a quick, amused glance. The last time we had a video chat, Matilda was adamant that no way, never, under no circumstances, would she ever allow Kimo to get the dog he and the kids had been begging for.
Now Matilda’s thunderous gaze suggests that “never” ended up only being about two weeks or less. “It’s not my dog, it’s Kimo’s dog.”
“Don’t listen to her!” Kimo calls from offscreen. “She loves him more than any of us. She bought him a doggie coat?—”
Matilda stands up and disappears from view, though we can hear the sound of a door being shut, firmly . When she sits back down, her glare dares either one of us to challenge her. “It gets cold at night and I didn’t want the dog to get sick. That’s all.”
I refrain from exchanging another look with Helen, even though I’d bet my whole sugar allowance for a week that she’s also fighting a smile.
“Enough about me—my life is obviously in shambles right now.” Matilda waves her hands dramatically, though it sounds more like her old bark than actual bite. “What’s new with the two of you?”
Helen shrugs. “Not much here. Just getting ready for a weekend trip. We’ll go back to Boston for Easter with my parents. Thad has a plan to finally win over my mom so”—she holds up her crossed fingers—“thoughts and prayers, please! He’ll need all the luck he can get.”
It’s hard for me to imagine anyone not liking Thad. I knew from the moment Helen showed me the picture she’d taken of him at the library and told me about the “Red Unicorn” that he was going to be the one for her. And he’s so in love with her he can barely think straight. I actually saw him walk into a wall once because he was so distracted by staring at her.
I knew Kimo was the one for Matilda, too, the first time she brought him to book club. Well, the first time he made it to book club, that is. It was the way he looked at her, like he’d found something rare and precious.
Then again, I tend to be a bit of a romantic. Uncle Aaron says I need to set more realistic expectations. There are some people, I suppose, who get big epic love stories, and others who would probably do better with quiet companionship.
I think you can probably guess which category I’m in.
“What about you, Nina?” Helen asks me, pulling me back into the conversation. “Any special Easter plans?”
I’ll be spending most of the day either helping with the cooking and cleaning, or minding my younger cousins. I’ve learned not to say things like that too often, though, because of those looks that Matilda and Helen always exchange when I do, thinking I don’t notice. But I do. There’s not a lot I don’t notice. It’s one of the benefits of being quiet and forgettable. I see things, even things that other people don’t mean for me to see.
“Just time with family,” I say vaguely, hoping that will be enough to throw them off the scent.
“What about Grady? Will he be alone for Easter?” Matilda worries out loud. I can tell from the look on her face that she doesn’t like the thought of anyone being on their own.
For the first time, it strikes me that she has probably often been on her own these past few years, since Helen and I both usually spend holidays with our families. The thought honestly never crossed my mind before, but now that it has, I feel sick with guilt. She must have been so lonely. She never said she would be on her own, but I should have guessed it—knowing how proud Matilda is, was , and how much she hated asking for help. If I’d been a better friend, I would have anticipated it. I don’t know that inviting her to spend the holidays with my family would have been much fun for her, but at least she wouldn’t have been alone.
There’s no point in spiraling about it now, though, I remind myself firmly. Matilda isn’t on her own anymore. I’m so glad that she has Kimo, and that his entire family seems to have adopted her.
Helen frowns, too, at Matilda’s question, and I can tell that she’s going through a similar thought process. “I don’t know...I’ll have to check. Maybe he can tag along to Boston?”
“Tell him Kimo will buy him a plane ticket to come out here if he wants to spend Easter in Hawai’i. You, too, Nina.”
I smile at the invitation, even though I know there’s no way my uncle would ever allow it. “Thanks anyway, but we’ll be busy here.” I steel myself for what I have to say next, knowing it will be inviting a lot of scrutiny. But I’ve put off this conversation for as long as I can. “We’re getting ready for a move, actually.”
Seeing the alarm mirrored on Helen’s and Matilda’s faces, I hasten to add, “It’s only temporary, for a few months in the spring. My cousin has been chosen to be the lead contestant on a new reality show.”
I can tell that both women are surprised by this information. I haven’t told them much about my family, beyond vague references to my aunt and uncle. I don’t know if they even know that my cousin Harmony exists. They certainly don’t know about how ambitious she is, and how certain she is that this is God’s answer to her desire for the kind of platform that will let her launch her ministry so she can be the next Paula White or Lisa Bevere. She’s so certain about this being the right path that even my uncle agreed to go along with it, even though it is television and Hollywood “always finds a way to mock the true believers.”
I can tell Helen is trying her best not to look like she’s thrown by this information, though her eyebrows are a dead giveaway. They’re up almost to the top of her forehead. And she’s blinking way too much. “That’s...okay. Wow. What’s the show?”
“It’s called Mountain Man ,” I explain in as measured a voice as I can—as though I, too, don’t find all of this to be completely bananas crazy. “I think it’s new.” I say think because I’m not really sure, since we can’t watch unapproved television. At the very least, it’s never crossed my radar before.
Matilda doesn’t bother hiding her confusion—she is giving one of her typical exaggerated frowns directly into the camera. “So what—it’s a bunch of lumberjacks vying for love?”
“Something like that,” I say vaguely. So far as I know, that’s true.
“That could be exciting.” Helen does her best to sound supportive, giving my arm a little squeeze. “And you’ll get to go somewhere new for a few months? I’ll miss you, of course, but maybe you’ll at least get to go somewhere cool.”
I shrug. It’s not like I have much of a say in it regardless, and knowing my family, I’ll mostly be there to help watch after my younger cousins, not experience a new, unique culture or see new places. But again, I don’t want to see the worried, furtively exchanged glances between my friends, so I do my best to smile. “I’m not sure, actually. It’s some place in Tennessee. I think it’s called Green Valley...?”
Want more of the Seduction in the City World? The Common Threads series begins with Ewe Complete Me by Susannah Nix. Read on for a sneak peek!