3. Lani
3
Lani
“ R eady to go?” Lani asked, poking her head into the girls’ room.
“Ready!” Olivia chirped. She spun in a circle, making her blue dress twirl. The cast on her arm was a riot of rainbow color; Lani had covered it from top to bottom in art.
“Great! Where’s Rory?”
“It’s still nighttime,” groaned the five year old. Lani followed the sound of her voice and spotted a lump beneath the covers. She went to the bed and pulled back the quilts.
“Time to get up and dressed.”
“But why?” Rory moaned, drawing out the second word. “This is torture.”
“We’re going to see the sunrise!”
She scrunched her eyes closed. “I don’t care.”
Lani sighed. “And then we’ll go get malasadas.”
“Malasadas?” Rory perked up. The sugary pastries were a rare treat in a household where Tenn made amazing food from scratch every day.
“But you have to get dressed right this second.”
“Okay, okay!” Rory hurried to swap her pajamas out for the cotton dress Lani held out.
By the time she’d managed to run a brush through Rory’s hair, Tenn and Olivia were already in the truck.
“Sorry,” Lani said as she slipped into the passenger seat. “Here we are.”
“Right on time.” Tenn pulled her hand up to kiss her knuckles, then released it to start the engine.
“Are you hungry?” Olivia asked from the back seat. She held a box of her dad’s homemade protein bars out to Rory, who gave Lani a stricken look.
“You said we’d get malasadas!”
“We will,” Lani said. “After sunrise.”
Rory slumped back in her seat with a dramatic sigh.
“It’s picture day, remember?” Olivia said. “We’re taking family photos.”
“Oh yeah.” Rory perked up again and found Lani’s eyes in the mirror. “Will Babbo be there?”
Lani’s mouth dropped open in surprise. Rory’s biological father was still in Pualena, and she saw him almost every day.
After Lani had decided that he was a safe person for Rory to spend time with, she hadn’t given him much thought. He had sort of faded into the background for Lani, like a convenient babysitter, and she wondered now if she was doing her daughter a disservice by not treating him like part of the family.
“It’s just the four of us today,” Tenn answered.
“But why?” Rory demanded.
“Just the family that lives in our house. No grandparents or aunties or babbos. They’re important too, but today is just about the four of us.”
“Oh. Okay.” Appeased, Rory looked out the window.
Tenn reached for Lani’s hand, and she gave his fingers a grateful squeeze.
The sky had brightened to a dusky blue by the time they parked down by the cliffs, but they still had time before the sun crested the horizon.
Alohi was there already, waiting for them near the start of the trail with a camera hanging around her neck and her baby sleeping on her back. She was a friend of Nell’s; Lani met her when she brought an art class to the local women’s shelter. Alohi had managed to scrape together enough money for an old beater of a car, but finding affordable housing that was safe for her and her baby had proved more difficult.
“Aloha!” she greeted them, rushing forward to hug Lani.
“Good morning!” Lani returned the hug gingerly, careful not to crush Alohi’s camera or wake her baby. “Thanks for meeting us so early.”
“My pleasure! You’ve got to get up early to catch the light. It’s easier than driving to Kona for sunset photoshoots, though I do plenty of that too. Golden hour comes but twice a day.”
“This is my husband, Tenn,” she introduced him. “This is Alohi.”
The other woman shook his hand, suddenly shy and quiet.
“And these are our daughters, Rory and Olivia.”
“Hello,” Alohi said. “You look so pretty today!” she told Olivia. And then, to Rory, “And you are so cute!” She looked at Tenn and added, “She looks just like you!”
“She looks like her beautiful mother,” he deflected gracefully.
“We should go if we’re going to catch the sunrise,” Lani said.
“Right!” Alohi turned and charged down the lava-rock path through grass and greenery. Lani took Rory’s hand and followed.
“But I’m your daughter,” she heard Olivia say behind them.
“You both are now,” Tenn said gently.
“I know, but she already has a dad. She has three dads!”
“The first one doesn’t count,” Rory said over her shoulder, her tone matter of fact. “He’s in jail.”
Lani sighed and pulled her along, trying to give Tenn and Olivia a bit of space.
“She doesn’t even look like you!” Olivia whined.
“I do!” Rory insisted, pulling against Lani’s hand and turning to look at Olivia. “We have the same hair and dark eyes and golden arms! We’re the same!”
Olivia’s eyes filled with tears. Rory looked up at Lani in confusion, and Lani gave Tenn an apologetic glance.
“Rory,” she said, “let’s run and catch up with Alohi.”
She gave her big sister one last bewildered look, clearly aware that something was wrong but not understanding what it was or how to fix it. Then she turned and ran up the path.
Lani looked back to Tenn, who smiled and nodded for her to go ahead. As she strode after Rory, she could hear her husband and stepdaughter talking.
“I do look like you!” Olivia said, crying in earnest now. “You’re my dad!”
“I know you do, sweetheart. But your hair is golden and your eyes are blue, and sometimes that’s as far as people see. They don’t take the time to look closer.”
Olivia’s reply was lost in the distance as Lani followed a bend in the path. Rory sprinted ahead, her shiny black hair flowing behind her. It wasn’t true black anymore, not after so much Hawaiian sunshine, but the auburn undertones were only visible in direct sunlight.
She didn’t look like Tenn, not really. Lani caught glimpses of herself sometimes, and of her parents, but mostly Rory resembled Lorenzo. She could see it in the angle of her eyes and the shape of her chin. Even their smiles were the same.
Rory loved her babbo, and Lani was grateful for her daughter’s sake that she wouldn’t be estranged from that side of her family, but Tenn was her dad . He had stepped fully into that role, treating Rory just the same as he treated his own daughter. He showered them with love in the form of bedtime stories and game nights and their favorite foods.
It left Lani wondering if she had failed to do the same with Olivia.
Lani tried. She really did.
She took both girls to the beach, did art projects together, and tucked them both in at night. But as much as she loved Olivia, she didn’t know if she would ever feel the same way about her as she did the little girl she had grown in her belly and fed at her breast.
Lani and Rory had escaped domestic violence together and started a new life; it had always been them against the world.
She loved Olivia, but she loved her the way she loved her little cousins.
And suddenly she worried that wasn’t enough.
If she was being fully honest with herself, she had to admit that it still felt a bit odd hearing Olivia call her Mom. She hadn’t been ready for that when the girls decided to make the switch, and she still hadn’t gotten used to it.
What was wrong with her that she couldn’t step into the role as easily as Tenn had?
Was she failing her stepdaughter? Did Olivia feel like she had given up half of her dad’s attention without actually gaining a mom?
Lani thought of the car accident that summer and shuddered. She had collapsed, quite literally fallen to the floor in shock. And then she had picked herself back up and rushed to the hospital. It was just how she would have reacted if Rory had been hurt… right?
She chewed her lip in thought as she walked, wondering where she was falling short.
Rory burst out onto the flat black plane of the lava-rock cliffs, throwing Lani out of her ruminance and back into the present moment.
“Not too close to the edge!” she shouted, running to catch up.
“I know!” Rory shouted back, belligerent.
Waves crashed thirty feet below, filling the air with salt spray and a fine white mist.
Rory crouched about ten feet from the edge, peering into a high-rise tide pool where crabs scuttled from side to side. There were even tiny fish that had been stranded by big waves at high tide. Lani watched them swim in circles, wondering if they would ever find their way back down.
It was a testament to Olivia’s easygoing personality and Tenn’s parenting skills that when they caught up a few minutes later, the seven year old was smiling and willing to take family photos. They all stood together watching the sunrise, and then they took a wide range of photos while the girls laughed and played.
Alohi liked capturing action shots, which was one reason that Lani had hired her: there would be no standing shoulder to shoulder with forced smiles. Instead, she took pictures of the family gathered together to watch the sunrise, Tenn and Lani walking hand in hand along the cliffs, and the girls playing tag and climbing trees.
Eventually, once the sun had climbed higher and Alohi’s baby started to fuss, they called it a day.
“I still have to edit the photos I took at a wedding last weekend, I should have these ready for you in a week or so.”
“There’s no rush,” Lani said. “Thank you.”
When they were finally alone, with Alohi gone down the path and the girls climbing trees in the ironwood forest with its plush carpeted floor of pine needles, Tenn and Lani sat in the shade and looked out at the water. Golden morning sunlight glinted on the glassy surface of the ocean, and the black rocks beneath them vibrated as waves crashed below.
“Do you think I’m a good enough stepmother?” she asked, eyes on the ocean.
Tenn looked at her in surprise. “What? Of course you are.”
“Do I treat her differently than I treat Rory?”
He thought about that for a minute. “Every kid is different. They’re two years apart. You cuddle Rory more, but she’s always looking for that and climbing into your lap. I don’t think that you treat Olivia any worse, if that’s what you mean.”
Lani chewed at her lip again, resolving to offer Olivia more hugs.
She didn’t mean to show any favoritism; she and Rory just had so many old habits. They were two parts of a whole. The girl who had once lived beneath her ribcage felt more like a piece of Lani’s own body than a separate person, though she was asserting her independence more and more each day.
Maybe she needed to work on babying Rory less and loving on Olivia more.
“I feel like I’m doing something wrong,” she admitted, “but I can’t put my finger on it. I don’t know what she needs from me.”
“You’re not doing anything wrong.” Tenn moved his hand up and down her back, fingers working the muscles on either side of her spine. “There’s bound to be an adjustment period.”
“You make it look easy. Rory didn’t have any trouble adjusting.”
He chuckled. “She’s something else. They’re just different people, that’s all. Olivia’s always been quiet and shy. You should have seen her before she started at Pualena Playschool. She wouldn’t even talk to strangers, just hide behind me. Eventually, ‘ōlena helped her to come out of her shell. She’s always been a sensitive kid.”
Lani sighed and leaned into him.
“She loves you,” he said softly. “And so do I.”
For some reason, that made her eyes burn with tears.
Some days, she wasn’t sure that she deserved either one of them. But there they were.
“Hey Mom!” Rory ran across the forest floor, the deep pine needle bedding absorbing the sound of her footsteps. Olivia hopped down from a tree and ran to catch up. “Can we go get malasadas now?”
“Do we have to?” Lani asked, teasing her.
“You promised!” Rory shouted with a soundless stomp of her foot.
“I suppose I did.”
“Livie!” Rory turned around, then shrieked with laughter when she discovered that Olivia was standing right behind her. “It’s time for malasadas!”
“Let’s go!” The girls were off down the path before Lani was even on her feet.
Tenn stood and offered her his hand. They walked down the path to where their daughters stood waiting.
Rory was bouncing with excitement when they got to the bakery, and she hadn’t even eaten her sugar-bomb pastry yet.
“Hello!” she sang out as she opened the front door. “Aloha! Buongiorno!”
The auntie behind the counter beamed. “Hello Rory!”
Lani blinked, wondering how her daughter had come to be on a first-name basis with the malasada lady.
“Where’s your dad?” the woman asked.
Oh. Right.
“That’s my babbo,” Rory said casually. “This is my other dad.”
“Oh. Hello.” The woman faltered a bit, then regained her smile as she looked back at Rory. “We have pineapple today. Sound good?”
“Yes please!”
“And what can I get for your friend?” she asked, looking at Olivia. Lani watched her face fall.
Rory noticed too and declared, “She’s my sister!”
Tenn smiled at Rory and gave Lani a bright-eyed glance, but Olivia still looked crestfallen.
“What flavor would you like?”
Olivia mumbled something that Lani couldn’t make out.
“What was that?”
“She said she wants custard, please!” Rory said, half yelling.
“Anything for the grownups?” she asked, looking at Lani and Tenn.
“I’ll try the lilikoi,” he said, looking at Lani.
She nodded. “Me too.”
“Coming right up!” the woman said brightly.
They got their pastries and filed into a booth by the window. The malasadas were divine, crisp outside giving way to a soft center with the sweet tang of lilikoi. Olivia perked up again as they ate and chatted, but the unease in Lani’s heart didn’t fully let up.
She wanted Olivia to feel at ease in their little family of four. She wanted her to know that she belonged. Maybe Tenn was right, and it would just take time… but she promised herself to make a point of showing Olivia how much she cared.