Keiki Cafe (The Aloha Sisters #3)

1. Akemi

Akemi

It was a steamy morning in Thailand, and Akemi breathed deep when she stepped into the air-conditioned sanctuary of her little rented apartment. She’d taken Kaleo to the nearest park before the sun got too high, but the walk home had been long and hot.

For most of her life, Akemi had been a tireless traveler. Lately, though, she was gritty-eyed with exhaustion.

They’d had a rough night – teething again – and as much as she wanted to collapse onto the bed and fall asleep, her gnawing hunger was an even stronger force than her exhaustion.

The kitchen was not at all childproofed, so cooking felt out of the question – but luckily, the fridge contained more than enough leftovers to keep herself fed.

Travel blog research on a tight schedule often meant ordering half the menu whenever she went someplace new and then boxing up most of the food to take home.

‘Home’ being wherever they were sleeping that night.

Lately, she woke up not even knowing what country she was in.

Each morning, it took a minute to reorient herself.

That never used to happen before.

She cobbled together a meal with Kaleo on her hip, then ate on the bathroom floor while he splashed himself clean in the tub. The fish and rice was cold and congealed, but there were so many hot peppers in the dish that she hardly noticed. Her mouth was on fire by the time she finished.

They were in Bangkok for the week, researching an article on the best spots in the city to visit with a toddler.

Her list was made up of indoor playgrounds, mostly, to take advantage of the air conditioning.

She was pulling together a list of parks, too; she liked to start their days outside while the city was relatively cool.

And Kaleo had loved the aquarium so much that she might try to fit in a second visit.

It was fun, exploring with her little sidekick.

Or… it would be, if she weren’t so exhausted.

Parenting was the same wherever she went, but navigating new neighborhoods on top of the daily demands of motherhood was turning out to be more difficult than she had anticipated.

Akemi was in desperate need of a break. If she could just hand her baby off to his dad for a few minutes… but no. She had to go it alone, and not even due to circumstances beyond her control.

She was alone in Bangkok with her toddler thanks to her own stubbornness… and the insatiable wanderlust that always crept up on her sooner or later.

For her entire fourth trimester, Akemi had lived at home with her mother. She took it slow, adjusted to motherhood, and enjoyed spending time in Pualena with her family. Between the support of her sisters and their idyllic island home, taking care of Kaleo had felt as easy as breathing.

After those first three months, she started to feel restless again. Her mother’s constant suggestions started to feel more suffocating than helpful, and her Hawaii content was getting stale. She needed to switch it up.

They had started with a trip to Italy, and the long travel day they spent getting to the other side of the world was amazingly smooth and easy. It had been the same cycle of nursing and sleeping as usual, just on a plane.

Then, Italy had felt much the same as Hawaii in the sense that she was surrounded by family support and good food, a combo that made motherhood feel easy.

She had a village in both places… and parenting with that degree of support had pumped up her ego.

She read all the books, had all the answers, and after a while – just like back home in Pualena – the family compound (and strong opinions from Lorenzo’s mother) started to feel more like a cage than a support system.

Akemi and Kaleo stayed in Tuscany for three full months – which, for her, was a very long time to stay anywhere.

She created content for her social media by wandering the streets of Florence with her baby napping in a sling, and she took more and more day trips to other Italian towns to write more articles for her travel blog.

Throughout those months, her relationship with Lorenzo had felt more like coparenting than romance – which was fine, because parenting and work was all she had energy for anyhow.

All of their conversations revolved around Kaleo. Lorenzo had given Akemi her own bedroom, and they traded off with the baby so that they could both get uninterrupted sleep.

Their romantic relationship – or lack thereof – puzzled both sides of the family, but Akemi was content with it.

Mostly.

If there was an occasional niggling worry – or a desire for more lurking somewhere beneath the surface of their everyday conversations – she was quick to put it out of her mind.

Their coparenting relationship was so placid and peaceful that she didn’t want to rock the boat. Maybe Lorenzo felt the same way… or maybe he had just lost interest in her when her belly ballooned past watermelon size and she became a perpetual milk machine.

She tried not to dwell on it.

And then her ninety days in the Schengen Area were up, and she had to move on.

Lorenzo had floated the idea of marrying him in order to stay longer, but offering marriage as a casual suggestion over breakfast – prompted by a long rant of demanding Italian from his mother – wasn’t exactly Akemi’s idea of a dream proposal.

And anyway – the world was calling.

Wanderlust had set in again.

With a confidence born of limited experience and immense amounts of support, she set off to travel the globe with her six-month-old baby.

For a while, it was everything that she had dreamed it would be.

She got back into her old rhythms of wandering new places, and Kaleo was content to ride along in his carrier.

Wherever they went, people doted on him. All throughout Asia, waitresses were quick to pick him up and walk laps around the room so that Akemi could enjoy her food in peace.

Her business was more successful than ever. Kaleo’s sweet little face brought in millions more views on her videos, and she was able to leverage the increased visibility into fantastic brand deals and free places to stay.

Everything was smooth and easy.

…until he started crawling.

Suddenly her travel buddy no longer stayed put when she set him down.

She bought a travel crib so that she could put him somewhere safe long enough to shower or do a bit of work, and life was still manageable.

For a while.

And then he took his first steps.

At eight months old – far earlier than the baby books told her to be ready for such a thing – her hypermobile child was already cruising along furniture and even taking steps unassisted. Now, at nine months old, he was basically running.

The ability to walk in and of itself wasn’t the problem. The problem was that Kaleo loved his newfound mobility so much, he now refused to be carried.

He arched his back and screamed when she tried to put him into his carrier.

She bought a stroller, and he hated that too.

Busy city streets with trucks roaring by? He wanted to walk.

Crowded sidewalks where everyone towered over him and moved at ten times the top speed that his tiny little legs could manage? No matter. Kaleo Kalama Lazzeri was determined to make his way through the world on his own two feet.

Through an airport, racing the deadline of a closing gate? Go ahead and pick him up, but he’s going to scream about it all the way there – and then continue to scream when you don’t let him race up and down the aisle during takeoff.

To add insult to injury, he was sleeping less and less.

He was down to one good nap a day, which meant that Akemi had maybe two hours a day to get any real work done. She always intended to work after he fell asleep at night too, but mostly she was so tired that she just crashed right alongside him.

Trying to manage him all on her own just kept getting harder.

Akemi had related all of this to Lorenzo the day before, talking to him while she trailed their toddler around a park all morning.

“He is like his mother.” There was a wry twist to his voice, layered over his musical Italian accent.

“How’s that?” she asked.

“He does not like to stay in one place too long.”

…not exactly the empathy that she had been hoping for.

Once Akemi had bolted down some lunch, she dried Kaleo off and put a fresh diaper on him, then nursed him to sleep.

She successfully transferred him into his travel crib just in time for a business meeting, even though all she really wanted to do was get some sleep herself.

But she had worked hard to get this company’s attention. If she landed this deal, she could earn enough money for a flight to Hawaii with a one-minute video.

She bolted down the leftovers that she had cobbled together, then quickly wiped her face when the call came through.

“Akemi! Hi!” The woman on the other end looked pristine and polished.

Akemi tried to remember the last time she had washed her hair. It was hard to get a full shower in when Kaleo was wailing at the injustice of being imprisoned in his crib in the next room.

Two more people blinked into the virtual meeting room, and Akemi focused on showing up to the call as her brightest self.

She talked about how much she loved their carrier – and chose not to mention how Kaleo had absolutely refused to be strapped into it for the past three weeks.

The suits on the other end of the call were equally complementary about her latest reels.

Akemi had just about closed the deal when a shattering crash resounded from the kitchen.

She jumped up without even excusing herself and raced to see what had happened.

A belated wail from Kaleo filled the silence as she rounded the corner to a horrifying scene: her baby sitting in the middle of the small kitchen, surrounded by broken glass.

Akemi hurried to scoop him up and hissed with pain when a small shard bit into her bare foot.

She stood in one place as she inspected her wailing, frightened baby. Miraculously, he was unharmed.

It looked like he’d pulled a glass pitcher down from a low shelf, and it had shattered.