Chapter 4 Halia
Halia
Halia’s mind was busy with work as she drove through town.
That was often the case; scenes from her day and week crowded her thoughts long after she had gone home for the day. The women’s lives and stories stayed with her, often forever.
The few romantic relationships she’d had in her life had been brief, with each of them making the same complaint: her work-life balance was wrecked. They’d been right, in a way… though Halia might go a step further and say that there was no balance to be had. Her work was her life. Simple as that.
That day’s arrival was a rough one.
Two black eyes, arm in a sling, her young son a nervous wreck.
Even after all these years, the sight of a bruised and swollen face could hurl Halia right back into her childhood, old images of her mother crowding her mind before she could stop them.
They hardly gave her pause anymore, disturbing as they were. She was so practiced at putting them away again that it was the work of a millisecond, and then she could move on with her day.
The creeping anxiety that came along with the memories was harder to shake.
Most of the women who came through A Place of Refuge just needed a safe place to sleep. They were struggling financially, that was it. Housing was scarce on the Big Island, and Hawaii was a brutal place to try to scrape by as a single mother with no family support.
Often, though, women needed shelter from far worse than the wind and rain.
A Place of Refuge provided that, too.
Halia pulled up to the curb in front of the local Thai place. She’d texted them her order already, a list of all of the Kalama family favorites: green curry, thom ka gai, pad thai, and spring rolls.
The woman who owned the restaurant was one of Halia’s favorite success stories. She and her children had been one of the first families to stay at A Place of Refuge, just a few months after Kimo and his buddies helped Halia to build the tiny houses and community kitchen that made up the complex.
She had gotten back on her feet, found an investor, and opened her restaurant just a year after she’d been sleeping in her car with two kids. The business had prospered, becoming popular with locals and tourists alike. Too busy to cook much, Halia ate there multiple times per week.
“Aloha, Auntie! Good to see you!” The owner’s son, now grown, waved at her through the window to the kitchen. “We threw in some mango sticky rice!”
“Mahalo, Jason,” Halia called back. She handed a bag full of empty containers and accepted two canvas bags brimming with warm containers of food.
That was Jason’s doing. They still had disposable containers for tourists, but locals got reusable containers that they traded in the next time.
It was working so well that Pualena Cafe (the only other restaurant in town) had also started offering takeout in reusable containers.
People liked to talk trash about the next generation – but overall, Halia liked what she saw.
The newest residents of A Place of Refuge were still on her mind as she drove from main street down towards the cliffs, but she did her best to set work to one side for the day. The sun had slipped behind the mountains, and the sky over Pualena was a deep twilight blue.
Pete was out front, and the sight of the sandy-haired boy playing with his cousins made Halia smile. From her first visit to the Kalama place, forty-plus years ago now, the house and yard were full of kids.
The relative emptiness this past year had made the place feel grim and desolate. Kimo’s death had compounded that feeling tenfold.
It was a relief to see the grandkids breathe life into the place again.
“Auntie Halia!” Harper shouted. She ran towards the car with Hayden and Pete just behind her. Halia stood, then let out an oof and a burst of laughter when Harper barrelled into her.
“Hi Auntie!” Hayden ran to her side and hugged her tight.
Pete stopped a few feet away and greeted her with a shy wave. “Um, aloha.”
“Good to see you, Pete,” Halia said with a grin. “Do you like Thai food?”
“Like pad thai?”
“Yep.”
“Sure!”
“Want to help me carry it in? I’m starved.”
“Me too!” Harper shouted. “I’m starved too!”
“Come on, let’s go in and eat.”
Halia lifted the heavier bag and strode towards the house, leaving the kids to follow with the second one.
She was selfishly elated to get Anne back from the mainland. If she had her way, she would gather the whole family on one big property to live communally, village style.
Her heart was light at the prospect of having most of her sisters all in one place again. They were just missing Akemi. If they could coax their youngest sister to come home for a while, the family would be complete again… as complete as it could ever be now, anyhow.
In many ways, Kimo had been the center of their family, possessed of the kind of warmth and gravity that could keep the whole disparate group of them together. Their first summer without him felt cold.
“Dinner!” she called as she walked through the living room to the kitchen.
Feet thundered down the stairs as Annie Oakley ran down to attack her with a double hug. They were each as tall as she was, though neither one was as sturdy. Teaching Pilates had given Oakley a lean sort of strength, but Anne was skinny in the sort of way that came from years of chronic stress.
Oakley released her quickly and set about pulling food out of the twin canvas bags, but Anne stayed glued to her side.
“Auntie Halia!” Claire appeared in the kitchen and shouldered her mom to one side so that she could get in for a hug. “Hi!”
“Hey, kiddo.” Halia grinned at Anne over her daughter’s head. “It’s good to see you.”
“It’s good to be seen,” Anne quipped, but there was an earnestness beneath her chipper tone. “Thanks for getting dinner.”
“My pleasure.” Halia looked around as Claire spun off towards the food. They were missing a few faces. Dawn and Zoe were hiding out, no surprise there. But… “Where are Mia and Laurie?”
Anne’s smile fell. “They went home.”
“Already?” Her heart sank. Laurie hardly ever made the drive down from Hawi, and Halia was too busy with work to get up there as often as she might like. She’d been looking forward to seeing her.
“Is she okay?” Anne asked quietly, speaking below the happy chatter of Oakley and the kids.
Halia shrugged and turned away. She opened a kitchen cabinet and pulled down a stack of bowls for the soup. Anne followed her, not about to let the matter drop, but she was diverted by a question from Pete.
Laurie wasn’t okay, not really. Chris had circled her like a snake, slowly constricting the borders of where she was allowed to go and what she was permitted to do.
Halia had watched helplessly for the past decade as her little sister’s life got smaller and smaller, but Laurie just put on a brave face and kept trudging forward.
Halia gritted her teeth and shunted Laurie’s home life to the back of her mind. People accepted help when they were ready to admit that they needed it, and not a moment sooner.
Oakley wasn’t so different, Halia mused as she took down a stack of plates.
Her home life was better than Laurie’s, certainly, but not nearly as picture-perfect as she liked to pretend.
The similarity was that she was pretending, even to herself.
Oakley’s facade was sunshine-bright, but Halia could see the cracks that ran beneath the surface.
And then there was Anne, finally free of the marriage she’d tethered herself with.
It was a rare man who could lift a woman up; most of them were a terrible burden. Seeing the relationships that dragged her sisters down made Halia grateful that no man had ever been her cross to bear.
Soup’s on, she texted Zoe. The youngest of the Kalama girls was out in the shed that she’d converted into an ‘ohana unit.
Thanks Auntie. I’ll eat later.
Halia let out a huff of frustration and pocketed her phone.
This family would be a whole lot better off if more of them would just confront things head-on instead of sulking and skulking around.
And on that note, she stomped up the stairs in search of Dawn.
She found her adoptive mother right where she thought she’d be: curled up in the armchair in the corner of her bedroom, huddled over the screen, windows shut.
Halia yanked the drapes open. Dawn flinched and hissed like a vampire.
“Blue light is basically a carcinogen,” she said, plucking the tablet out of Dawn’s hands. “You know that, right?”
Dawn just rubbed her eyes, silent as a stubborn child. An inch of silver shone at the roots of her blond hair, as if she’d gone too long without dying it. But Dawn had never dyed her hair. Stress had turned it gray almost overnight.
Halia hated to see her hollow cheeks and dull eyes, but whatever pity she’d felt had long since given way to irritation. Dawn was doing this to herself, and there was no excuse for that.
Yes, she had lost her husband. Yes, Kimo was the best of men.
But he was still just a man. Just one person.
Dawn had a whole family of people who loved her, an entire community out there ready to care for her, and yet she was choosing to cut herself off from all of it.
“You can’t just hide out in your room forever. You’ve got grandkids downstairs.”
Dawn blinked up at her, a look of annoyance flickering through her eyes. Good. Anger was good – or at least it was better than the lifeless lump that she had converted to these past few months.
“Go take a shower,” Halia ordered. “You’ll feel better. Then come down and get some food. I’ll save you a bowl of coconut soup.”
Slowly, Dawn uncurled herself from the chair. Moving with the pained frailty of a much older woman, she shuffled off towards the master bathroom.
Carrying a strange mixture of satisfaction and guilt, Halia headed back downstairs.
She had indulged Dawn’s grief for a long time, just like everyone else. Kimo had been taken from them far too young. It was a harsh blow, and a hard loss.
But she still had so much to live for, and Dawn was done watching her waste away.
A man had killed her first mother.
She’d be damned if she let the lack of one kill her second.