5. Anne
Anne
The sun was low and bright over the horizon as Anne worked her way through the last stages of breakfast prep.
She carried a massive tray of local fruit to the table, letting her guests start with that while she finished cooking the rest. Pete was the first to dive in, filling his plate with white pineapple and red bananas.
“Does this make a full year of your bed and breakfast?” Zoe asked her mother.
“It’s been fourteen months,” Dawn said, eyes down as she poured herself a glass of iced mamaki tea.
“Wasn’t it just supposed to be for the summer?” Zoe teased. “One summer?”
“It has gone on longer than expected,” Anne admitted. She glanced at her mom, but Dawn was still looking down, now reading something on her phone.
“It’s just as well,” Zoe said with a grin. “I’ve gotten used to the breakfast buffet.”
Anne gave her a grateful smile, then walked back into the kitchen to start making waffles.
Zoe’s attitude towards her mother had softened considerably since Anne moved home to Pualena. The change had been very gradual, almost imperceptible as it was happening – but after a year, the transformation was undeniable.
Not only that, but Zoe herself had changed. She had softened in a way that Anne couldn’t quite figure out, but it was there.
Instead of bleaching her hair and dying it garish colors, as she had for so many years, Zoe had shaved it off entirely. After that, though, she had let her natural hair grow back in. The spiky haircut had grown into something soft and shaggy.
Zoe’s hair was an extraordinary shade of auburn, so dark that it looked almost black until she was in direct sunlight, where it shone a deep shade of red.
When she took her place at the massive wooden dining table with their family and that morning’s guests, she interacted with everyone with an ease that Anne hadn’t seen since she was a small child.
In the beginning, she had rebuffed all of the guests with a spiky attitude that screamed, Don’t talk to me. Now, she engaged with them willingly, even going so far as to help them with recommendations of places to visit during their stay.
The house was full, Anne was surprised to find that she liked it that way.
When she first started running a bed and breakfast out of her family home, it was out of necessity. At the time, it had felt like the only possible way forward.
It allowed her time to recover, reconnect with her family, and grow a savings account that could fuel her next chapter – whatever that might be.
She had always been grateful for the opportunity to generate income in her mother’s ocean-view home. But she hadn’t expected to love it as much as she did.
As a child, and especially as a teen, a full house had been a source of stress. With so many foster kids constantly coming and going, kids screaming and babies crying, she had been desperate to escape.
More often than not, the Aloha sisters took to the woods and left their mother to deal with whatever little guests filled the house that week.
It was different with tourists.
Almost without exception, her guests were lovely. She fed them a hearty breakfast, and then they set off to make the most of their Hawaiian vacation.
A quiet few stayed to enjoy the house, content to simply sit on the back porch and gaze out at the horizon like retired sea captains; she didn’t mind them either.
The house was full, but it was full in a way that felt peaceful and easy.
In addition to her guests, the long table included her mother and all three of her children. There were two additional teens at the table too: Noah’s foster kids, Jasmine and Jayce. They had biked over first thing that morning, drawn by the promise of mango waffles.
Claire had become very close with the twins over the past year. They were a grade above her, but Claire was closer to Jasmine than she was to anyone else she had met since moving to Hawaii. Or anyone she had met before, for that matter.
Anne wasn’t sad to see her daughter’s shallow friendships from California fall away. She had fallen in with a shallow crowd there, obsessed with shopping and boys. They wore heavy makeup and not much else.
Jasmine, on the other hand, was generally found in her vegetable garden wearing an oversized pair of overalls. Newly sixteen and in possession of a reliable old beater of a car, Jasmine had spent most of the summer exploring the island’s hiking trails with Claire in tow.
That morning, they sat shoulder to shoulder, fixated on Jasmine’s phone. When Anne came up behind them to deliver two plates of mango waffles, she saw that they were examining a long hike up in Volcanoes National Park.
Anne grinned. This was exactly the effect that she had hoped a move to Hawaii would have on Claire, and she was grateful that Jasmine had helped her to embrace everything that the Big Island had to offer.
“Thanks, Auntie,” Jasmine said, digging into her plate of waffles.
“Of course.” Anne squeezed Jayce’s shoulder. “There are more in the waffle maker. They’ll be out in a sec.”
“No worries.” Jasmine’s twin helped himself to another plate of fruit.
After breakfast, the guests left for the day and the family drifted into the living room, but the teens lingered at the table even as Anne began to clear it. Jayce stood to help Anne carry plates into the kitchen, but the girls stayed put.
“What’s up?” she asked. “Aren’t you going to make the most of your last day of summer?”
Claire and Jasmine exchanged a glance.
“About that…” Claire started.
Anne frowned and sat down, giving them her full attention.
“We don’t want to go back to Kea?au High. We want to stay home this year.”
“Yes!” Pete vaulted over the back of the living room sofa. “Just like me!”
“Not exactly,” Claire said, but her little brother was busy dancing around the table.
“No more homework, no more books, no more teachers’ dirty looks!”
“You still read books,” Dawn said primly.
“Well yeah, but good ones.” He turned to Anne. “She can, Mom. Right? She can stay home with us?”
Anne was surprised; Claire’s freshman year at Kea?au High had gone smoothly. She hadn’t mentioned homeschooling all summer.
When Anne had broached the subject the year before, Claire was so staunchly against it that she hadn’t tried again – but then they had been in a new place where her daughter didn’t know anyone, and now she had a best friend and a circle of acquaintances that they met up with once or twice a week.
“You’re sure that’s what you want?” she asked.
“We’re going to do it together,” Claire said, taking Jasmine’s hand. “The three of us.”
Anne looked uncertainly between the trio of teens. She liked the twins – loved them, in fact, the way she did her own nieces and nephews – but she wasn’t sure they would make the best cohort for Claire.
Jasmine was a good influence on her in many ways, but academics were not her strong suit. And Jayce was even worse. He was a talented carpenter with zero interest in school.
Anne worried that ‘homeschooling’ for him at this age would be tantamount to dropping out of high school altogether.
He cut class more often than not, and when he did go, he kept getting into fights.
She suspected it was only respect for Noah – and a desire to stay in his house rather than being shuttled back into the foster system or some kind of youth shelter – that had kept him going to school at all.
“Noah already said yes,” Jasmine said when Anne’s silence stretched on.
Anne chewed on her tongue. Had he known that they were going to spring this on her? Or had the twins asked him last-minute as well?
Maybe Jayce would do better studying at home with Noah than he had in a barely-mediocre public school, surrounded by boys who kept picking fights.
But would Claire? Would she take her studies seriously, or would she want to be off gallivanting around the island every day of the week with Jasmine… and Jayce?
He wasn’t a bad kid. She knew that. He’d been dealt a rough hand, with a tumultuous childhood that included a stint at A Place of Refuge and weeks spent homeless at the beach.
Now, with the stability offered by Noah, he was trying to figure things out.
Jayce sometimes reminded her of Noah at that age. And Claire was so much like her mother had been as a teen, headstrong and passionate. Anne often worried what might happen if the two spent too much time with each other… but as far as she had seen, Claire wasn’t interested in him in that way.
She couldn’t let her past obscure her judgement and get in the way of their future.
Anne sighed and looked between their hopeful faces. This was what she had wanted for Claire to begin with. She couldn’t very well say no now, just because it might mean more time with Jayce.
“We already found a program,” Claire said, pulling something up on her phone. “We can learn all the basics, and some of the classes even give college credit, look.”
Anne clicked through the website, gleaning what she could.
“This should have been a longer conversation, Claire,” she said after a while. “You can’t just spring this on me last minute.”
“You’re the one who wanted me to homeschool in the first place!”
“Yes, but I thought we would figure it out together.”
“We still will. If this program isn’t good, then we can try something else. Just like you said last year, right?”
“Right,” Anne said reluctantly.
“Is that a yes?” Claire asked, beaming.
“I suppose it is.”
“All you have to do is sign this.” She produced a Notice of Intent and pushed it across the counter.
“I know. I did that for Pete.”
“Well?” Claire pushed the crumpled form a bit closer.
Anne sighed and signed the paper.
“Okay, let’s give it a try.”
Claire rounded the kitchen island and nearly tackled her with a hug.
“Thank you thank you thank you!”
Anne patted her daughter’s back. She would have loved to have gotten a reaction like that the first time she suggested homeschooling – but at fourteen, more time with her mom and little brother hadn’t been much of an incentive.
Now fifteen, she was even more driven by time with friends.