Chapter 36 The Gathering
The Gathering
Hui: to join, unite, combine, mix
Big Island, Hawai‘i
Seven months later
Coconut fronds rustled and crab feet scurried. Minnow sat at the head of the big table on the lanai at Hale Niuhi as orange
faded to blue above the horizon. She wore several lei around her neck that smelled like forest and honey and vanilla, and
she wished she could bottle the scent. It was her favorite time of day, and she glanced around at all the faces in the candlelight.
Good faces. Courageous faces. Faces of substance. Luke Greenwood, Woody and his wife, Anna—a strong woman with a radiant smile—Cliff
and his lanky new dog, Boo, Nalu and Dixie. The two had become as inseparable as Luke and Minnow. As soon as Nalu finished
his thesis, he’d be moving here.
They were gathered to celebrate Minnow’s birthday. Having a party had been all Luke’s idea. Minnow had never been big on birthdays,
never really had had a tribe of her own to celebrate with.
Woody held up a beer can. “Cheers, to one of the most fearless wahine I know.”
Everyone else raised their glasses and bottles, clinking with each and every person at the table.
“To someone who walks the walk. Or should I say, swims the swim?” Nalu said with a sly grin.
Luke didn’t say anything, but his eyes bored into her, turning up the heat. She still found it incredible how he loved her
so unflinchingly and how she felt the same way about him.
“Aw, thanks, guys. You have no idea how much it means to be back here with you all. It feels like home, really and truly.”
When Luke had come to California in April, he’d come with news of two things—ideas that had been brewing but he’d wanted to
be certain of before he shared anything with Minnow. The first was that Sawyer had hired him to manage the resort’s beach
and ocean activities, as well as to run educational whale-watching tours on the boat. While the job didn’t involve orcas,
he was where he wanted to be, and humpback whales were quickly becoming an obsession for him.
As for a place to live, Woody asked if Luke wanted to caretake Hale Niuhi in exchange for living in the small guest cabin
in the back. Woody and Cliff needed the help and it would be good to have someone there to keep an eye on things. The only
stipulation was that Luke would get to travel to Santa Barbara several months out of the year to help Minnow with her research.
That was nonnegotiable. And Minnow would spend her off months with Luke on the Big Island, tracking white sharks in the months
they migrated to the Hawaiian Islands.
So what if there might be an ocean between them? They were both committed to making it work, and that was all that mattered.
Both hearts were in it two hundred percent. And it made Minnow strangely happy to know that if they were to swim far enough,
they would meet in the middle of the deep blue abyss.
The sharks had given all this to her, and she would be forever grateful.