3. Lani
Lani
“Mommy, look!” Rory held up her drawing, and Lani gave it a cursory glance. It was a riot of color, cartoonish flowers with butterflies and bees floating above them.
What really held her attention was her daughter’s face, beaming with joy. She was giving Rory the exact childhood that she had dreamed of, a level of joy and security that had felt impossible just a couple of years prior. The sheer relief of that brought tears to her eyes.
“It’s beautiful,” she said, her voice thick with emotion.
Satisfied, Rory grabbed a fresh piece of paper and started another drawing.
Olivia’s blond head was down, her full focus on the ocean scene that she was coloring. Music floated out from the kitchen, where Tenn was cooking dinner.
It was a quiet Sunday afternoon, a respite from soccer practice and birthday parties, and Lani’s heart was full. This life was everything that she had ever wanted for her daughter, and she was deeply grateful for that.
At the same time, there was a niggling restlessness in her chest. Not discontentment, exactly, because she loved her life. But still, she wanted more for herself. Opportunities for murals had dried up, and she didn’t want to work at Kekoa’s shave ice place forever.
She had started designing coloring books over a year ago, a group of projects that ranged from cartoonish sea creatures for littles to more intricate designs that she’d hoped to market as zen coloring books for older kids and adults.
Tenn had even given her a special tablet for sketching and designing, but the projects kept getting pushed to the back burner as other things demanded her immediate attention.
On New Year’s Eve, she’d resolved to take her creative work more seriously. The commercial side of publishing and marketing coloring books was daunting, but she’d laid out a plan to study and tackle every side of the business.
Of course, the first order of business was to actually finish the books.
She had finished her first book of Hawai‘i-themed coloring pages for little kids, and she was researching various printers. Hopefully, some local stores would be interested in selling the Big Island coloring books.
What she really wanted to finish was her collection of more complex designs. Each one was a visual scavenger hunt with dozens of small treasures hidden within the larger design.
That day, she was working on an intricately detailed parrotfish, zooming in to draw other fish and flowers and sea stars hidden in its scales and in the coral that branched out below. The world around her faded away as she drew tiny crabs crawling between the lines on the tail fin.
“Dinner’s ready,” Tenn called from the doorway.
Lani looked up, blinking herself out of a daze. She was shocked to see that the sun had gone; outside, the sky was dark. It was doubly easy to lose track of time when she worked on a tablet rather than relying on sunlight coming in through the living room windows.
“I’m starving!” Rory declared, hopping to her feet.
“Did you make chicken?” Olivia asked hopefully.
“Yes ma’am, as requested,” Tenn confirmed.
“Huzzah!” Rory threw her arms up in celebration, but she didn’t hurry to the dinner table. “Mommy, wait! Would you take a picture of this and send it to Babbo?”
“Sure,” Lani said. Olivia sighed and walked into the kitchen.
Rory held up her drawing – this one showed some sort of four-legged animal in a field of flowers – and gave a big cheesy smile that showed off her missing teeth. Lani held up her phone and snapped a picture.
“Can I see?” she asked, dropping the photo smile.
“Here.” Lani showed her the screen, and Rory grinned for real.
“Thanks!” She skipped off into the kitchen, still holding her drawing. Lani followed, sending the photo as she went and then setting her phone aside in favor of a dish. She loaded up on fried chicken, white rice, and cabbage slaw with a dressing that smelled of orange and ginger.
When she took her seat at the kitchen table with her little family, Lani felt settled and uplifted, both at once.
Even after a year together – had it only been a year?
– the sight of Tenn’s face across the table never failed to make her heart do a somersault.
Her husband was gorgeous, inside and out, and she still couldn’t believe her luck.
“This is delicious,” she said after her first bite of the sweet and spicy coleslaw. “Thank you.”
“Just something I threw together with what we had in the fridge,” he said modestly.
“I don’t know anyone else who thinks that a whole balanced meal centering on fried chicken is just throwing something together,” she teased. He just smiled.
“Hey Mommy?” Rory asked. She was poking at the pile of rice on her plate without eating it.
“Yeah, baby?”
“When are we going to Italy?”
All action at the table stilled. Olivia looked up with worried blue eyes. Tenn was looking down at his plate, but his smile dimmed.
“I’m not sure yet,” Lani said. “We have to keep saving up.”
Rory scowled. “You said we would go this summer.”
“Did I?” she thought that maybe she had mentioned it as a possibility; she was sure she hadn’t promised any particular timeline.
“This summer, when school is closed,” Rory said firmly.
“We’ll do our best. Plane tickets cost a lot of money, and so do hotels.”
“But we don’t need a hotel! We can stay with Nonna!”
“I don’t know about that.”
“We can! She said!”
“I said we’ll try, Rory. I’m doing my best to save up.”
“How many coloring books do you have to sell to buy tickets to Italy?”
“Thousands,” Lani answered truthfully.
Rory’s eyes went wide. “Can you do that?”
“I don’t know yet.”
She frowned and looked to Tenn. “How many hamburgers do you have to sell?”
“That money’s not for Italy,” Olivia said. “It’s for rent and school and all the people who work at the cafe.”
“Well how many extra hamburgers do we have to sell?”
Olivia glared at her. “Maybe you should earn the money, if you want to leave so bad!”
“How am I supposed to do that?” Rory demanded. I’m just a kid!”
“Make a lemonade stand or something!”
“Maybe I will!” Rory shouted back.
“Hush,” Lani soothed. “We’ll figure it out.”
She wilted in her seat. “I want to see my nonna and my babbo.”
“You see them practically every day!” Olivia said.
“On a phone! It’s not the same! I’ve never even seen my nonna.”
“Rory.” Lani’s tone pulled her daughter’s wide brown eyes back towards her. “We’ll figure it out. I promise. I just don’t know the dates yet. Okay?”
“Okay,” Rory sighed. She went back to picking at her rice.
Lani looked at Tenn, searching for the comfort and encouragement that she usually found in his eyes. But like their daughters, her husband’s eyes were on his plate.
He had been a remarkably good sport when Lorenzo appeared in their lives – had even allowed the man a seat at their dinner table – but whenever the subject of a trip to Italy came up, Tenn seemed to shut down.
She was starting to think that when it came time to take Rory to meet her grandparents, the financial side of things would be the least of their worries.