22. Emma
22
Emma
E mma lay wide awake beneath her quilts as the storm beat against her windows. The rain seemed to be falling sideways, driven by a fierce wind.
Toni was gone, back to her life in California. Emma felt relieved to be free of the extra houseguest… and guilty for feeling relieved. Her sister meant well, and she had been a big help to Jun at the markets. But her being there had only further inflamed the situation with Ethan, which had eased up again after she went home.
He seemed to be adjusting to the idea of becoming a grandfather, albeit reluctantly. Still, he had reacted better than their own parents. Emma could see how hard he tried. She respected him for showing up for Juniper again and again, even as he flailed and fumbled.
The wind picked up even more, howling like a pack of wolves.
Storms were different there, with so many living things to worry about. The dog and cat were safe, both curled up on Kai’s bed as he slept through the wailing wind and the cracking of limbs outside. The goats had a decent shelter, and the birds always seemed to come through okay.
She was more worried about her plants, all the seedlings and tiny tomatoes that would get pummeled and drowned by the pouring rain.
Eventually, she gave up on sleep.
She wandered downstairs into the kitchen, where the clock on the stove read 3:03. She stepped onto the lanai and flicked the porch light on, but all she could see was a small river rushing past the house. Sheets of rain obscured the rest of the property from view; she would have to wait until the sun rose and the storm calmed before she could inspect the damage.
Back in the kitchen, she put a few mamaki leaves into a small pot and filled it with water. While the water simmered, she paced the kitchen restlessly.
She used to love storms. Back home in the California redwoods, she loved to curl up with a book while the rain fell outside. There was no danger that those giants would fall; they stood guard and soaked up the water, drinking their fill before the long dry summer.
The tropics were something else entirely.
In Pualena, the albizia trees grew as tall as redwoods in just a few decades. But they had none of the same strength. The widow-makers dropped branches with reckless abandon. There were no towering albizia trees directly adjacent to the Kealoha place, but she worried for her friends and neighbors.
As the house groaned and creaked around her, she worried about her own patched-up roof and the questionably security of the goat shed. Those desert animals were never meant for the tropics. What were they even doing here?
She turned off the burner on the stove and poured herself a cup of tea, taking long breaths all the while to try and calm her nerves.
There was nothing for her to do but wait out the storm.
Worrying wouldn’t help anything. Plants could be replaced. Roofs could be patched.
The backyard stream that had popped up overnight would disappear within a day. Their home was built a few feet off the ground for just that reason, and the volcanic rock below them allowed the water to drain quickly. There was no real danger.
“Auntie Em?” Juniper came into the kitchen and frowned at her through the gloom; Emma hadn’t bothered turning on a light. “What are you doing up?”
“Couldn’t sleep. You too?”
“The rain on the tin roof is so loud I can’t even hear myself think.” Jun’s tower room was the loudest in the house on stormy nights, fully exposed to the driving rain on all sides. “Anyway, I need to eat.”
“Let me make you something. Here, have a cup of tea.” Emma poured her a cup of the golden mamaki tea that she had brewed and then cut off a big piece of sourdough bread.
Juniper accepted the tea with a word of thanks and settled onto the couch in the living room. She turned on an old table lamp that gave off a calm golden glow.
When Emma brought her niece the piece of toast with lilikoi butter, she found her knitting round and round the edge of a flat circle. The yarn was a mix of different shades of green, much like the world outside the door when the sun was shining.
“A baby blanket?” she guessed, setting the plate down on the coffee table.
Jun gave her a shy sideways smile and nodded.
“It’s beautiful.” She reached out to touch the fabric, which was silky soft against her hands. It was a fine yarn, both in terms of thickness and quality.
“Remember Beth from the yarn shop in Redwood Grove?” Jun asked.
Emma nodded. She tried not to let the pain that shot through her show on her face.
She and Adam had taken knitting classes together after Juniper had begged them for weeks to join her at the yarn shop. First the other firefighters had teased Adam for taking on such a granny-like hobby… and then, within a few weeks, they were all knitting too.
Emma hadn’t touched needles or yarn since Adam died. Somewhere in Redwood Grove was a half-finished sweater that she had been making him for Christmas.
The anniversary of his death loomed a few weeks away. She tried not to think about it. So much had happened since then; it felt like decades, sometimes, since she had lost him.
…and at other times, when the memories popped up clear and bright, it felt like days.
“She sent me a box of yarn when I told her I was pregnant,” Juniper continued. Emma wrenched her attention back to the present moment, feeling dizzy and distraught. Luckily Juniper’s attention was on her knitting. “This one is merino wool mixed with silk.”
“It’s lovely,” Emma said, refocusing on the growing circle of a blanket.
“You never knit anymore,” Jun said, looking up.
Emma acknowledged her words with a tiny nod.
“Want to do a few rounds while I eat my toast?” She offered her the work in progress. “It’s really easy. Just a knit stitch until you get to the markers, and then you increase like this, watch.”
Juniper worked her way around to the next plastic circle and then showed her how to add another stitch on either side.
Emma accepted the project and began to knit while Juniper ate.
It had been a year since she had last held a pair of needles, but she was surprised by how quickly it came back to her. Almost immediately, she fell into a rhythm. It soothed the ragged edges of her soul almost as well as gardening did, which made it an excellent stand-in for stormy nights when her transplants were drowning.
She tried to hand the blanket back to her niece when she’d finished eating, but Jun encouraged her to keep going. While Emma went round and round the growing circle of the blanket, Jun produced another pair of needles and started a much more finicky project: tiny baby booties. They sat there for a long time, knitting in the mellow light of the lamp while the storm raged outside.
After Juniper completed the first bootie, she set her needles aside with a yawn.
“You should try to get some more sleep,” Emma told her.
“Maybe just a nap before sunrise,” Jun agreed. She looked at the blanket with a smile and gave her aunt a warm hug before heading upstairs.
By the time the sun rose up above the ohia forest that stood to their east, the rainstorm had given way to rainbows.
Typical temperamental Hawai’i , Emma thought with a reluctant sort of fondness. The youngest island was always changing, always ready to put on a show… but so spectacularly beautiful that the people who loved the Big Island were willing to put up with her tantrums.
She checked on Kai first, mostly checking to see if the storm had made it through the old roof above his bedroom. He was warm and dry and sound asleep.
Dio’s tail thumped once against the bed before he jumped up to follow her outside. Zuko just gave her a quick glare before tucking his face beneath his tail and going back to sleep.
Outside, the chickens were already up and about, searching for worms that had been driven above ground by the storm. The ducks were living their best life, enjoying the puddles and streams that had appeared in the yard.
The property was littered with fallen branches, but Emma saw nothing thicker than her arm. As far as she could see, all of their outbuildings and fences were intact. Even her garden looked alright. The raised beds had withstood the storm.
It was a constant source of surprise to her, how resilient life was.
Nell was outside already, milking the goats while Everett snoozed on her back. Emma chatted with her for a few minutes, and then she got to work moving fallen branches into her compost pile.
“Get through the storm alright?” Lani’s voice made her look up, and she found her friend watching her with a mug of coffee in each hand.
“No casualties.” Emma dropped the branch she was dragging and walked over to greet her friend. “Is one of those for me?”
“Nope, sorry, both mine. One hand for expresso, one for decaf. Gotta stay balanced, you know?”
“You’re very chipper for a dawn visitor.”
Lani laughed. “There’s a lot to be chipper about.”
Emma looked up at the brilliant blue sky. “I guess there is.”
“Here.” Lani handed her one of the travel mugs. “Don’t worry, it’s caffeinated.”
She chuckled and accepted the coffee. “Thanks.”
Emma took a break from yard work, and they settled onto the front porch to drink their coffee. Just the smell of it lifted her spirits, and the taste of cinnamon and sugar warmed her down to her soul.
When Keith’s truck pulled up to the front gate, Lani gave Emma a look that made her blush.
“Don’t start,” she warned.
“I didn’t say a word,” Lani said.
Emma set her empty coffee mug aside and went to meet Keith at the front gate. He had only been to the house once before, but that one work day had been enough for Dio to greet him as a friend instead of barking the way he did when a strange man approached the property. The big dog greeted him with a series of whines, and his whole body wriggled in delight when Keith reached through the gate to scratch his head.
“Good morning,” Emma said as she approached.
“Good morning. I hope you don’t mind me dropping by. I just wanted to see if you got through the storm alright.”
“Yeah, I think so.” She surveyed the wreckage of their front yard. “It’s a mess, but I don’t think there’s any lasting damage.”
“Plenty of material for mulch and compost,” he said cheerfully, surveying the fallen branches.
“Yeah.” Emma’s brow furrowed in worry when she thought of the tiny tree they had just planted the week before. “I haven’t been all the way back to the durian sapling, though.”
“I can go check on it, if you don’t mind.”
“Sure.” Emma opened the gate and let him through. She started to follow him around the side of the house, but he waved her off in a friendly way.
“You go ahead and visit with your friend. I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
She let him go, not sure what she felt. He was a good man, and she was glad to have him in her life… but sometimes that gladness got itself all tangled up in her grief for Adam to the point that she couldn’t tell which way was up anymore.
Filled with too much restless energy to go back and sit on the porch, she started gathering fallen branches from the front yard and consolidating them into one pile. The twigs and leaves could be clipped and used as mulch, while the bigger branches could go into the big compost pile she had going near the goat pen.
Without a word, Lani came down from the porch and helped her work.
“Our little durian tree made it through,” Keith announced with a grin as he strode back into view. “The shade cloth blew away, but the tree wasn’t harmed. I set the cloth back up again, so all’s well. Can I give you a hand up here?”
“Sure.” Emma tried to smile at him, unwilling to snub his kindness, but she was suddenly very tired. She turned and scanned the front yard, trying to figure out what was making her so uneasy.
A sick sort of feeling came over her when she saw that the blue marble tree had dropped a huge branch right where her jaboticaba sapling usually stood.
The tree that had produced flowers and fruit against all odds.
The tree that sheltered her husband’s ashes.
She couldn’t see it.
Her heart was frantic, but her movements were leaden and slow as she worked to uncover the little jaboticaba tree.
When she saw the wreckage, her heart broke in two.
The tree was completely ruined, its thin little trunk splintered beyond all hope. The falling branch had crushed it, snapping it in half.
She couldn’t breathe.
It’s just a tree, she told herself. It’s just a stupid little tree.
She could feel Keith and Lani behind her, watching her. She couldn’t look at them, couldn’t make eye contact with either of them, or she would fall to pieces right there in the front yard.
Moving in an unsteady, robotic sort of way, Emma went into the house. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Keith move to follow her — but Lani stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.
She couldn’t breathe.
Mechanically, she climbed the stairs. Her limbs ached with the effort of moving when she just wanted to collapse. Her chest felt frozen.
Finally, she reached her bedroom.
She closed the door behind her, crossed to her bed, and hid beneath the covers.
Then, finally, she sobbed.