10. Anne #2
“I don’t live in them anymore, and I usually have two or three going at a time. I’ve got a team of guys I work with now.”
“You mean guys who work for you.”
He nodded modestly.
“You’re an entrepreneur.”
“I don’t know about that. I just like fixing these old places up. Breathing life back into them. Selling to local families at a reasonable price.”
“You are something else, Noah Kapono.”
He shrugged and looked away. “I hate seeing them knocked down, just to fill the whole lot with some soulless manor house for rich mainlanders to rotate through.”
His voice had taken on a bitter tone, and Anne frowned. “Are you alright?”
“What are we doing here, Anne?” he asked suddenly.
She straightened, startled. “What? You asked me.”
“All I want is to be near you.” His voice was softer now, but he wouldn’t meet her eyes. “It’s all I’ve ever wanted.”
“And now that you are?” She stared at him, uncomprehending. Her stomach sank. “Am I a disappointment?”
He laughed in a rough sort of way. “No. Never.”
“Then what’s wrong?”
“I’m terrified.” He looked straight at her, and she saw the truth of it in his eyes.
She was stunned. “What are you scared of?”
“I’m scared of losing you again.” He swallowed and looked away. With his eyes on the water, he continued, “It was bearable the first time, because I was so sure that you’d come back. But you never did. Not to me.”
“I’m here now.”
“Are you?”
She took his hand in hers and pulled it to her knee, holding it there. “I’m right here.”
He let out a shuddering breath and leaned towards her.
She met him halfway, letting his forehead rest on hers.
They stayed that way for a long time.
“What are you scared of?” he asked eventually.
“I’m scared of hurting Zoe again.” She pulled back to look at him. “I’m scared of messing things up as badly with my other two kids as I did with her.”
“Your kids will be okay.”
“I hope so.” She peered into his eyes. “Zoe too?”
“Zoe too. She’s tough.” He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “What about you?”
Anne tilted her head to one side. “What about me?”
“What do you want?”
She took a breath and looked out at the horizon. “I haven’t asked myself that in a long time. I’ve been so focused on surviving. I still am.”
“Think on it,” he said, squeezing her hand. “I’ll get you that malasada. Custard?”
Anne grinned, letting the tension of their conversation fall away. “Yeah.”
Noah walked over to the shop and came back a moment later with two malasadas, each of them fried golden-brown and sparkling with sugar. He settled down beside her and handed her one of the pastries.
“Cheers.” She tapped her malasada against his.
“Cheers.” His grin was soft, and she fell in love all over again looking at the lines around his eyes. They radiated out like rays of sunlight. Whatever she had put him through in the past, he’d still found plenty of reasons to smile.
Anne bit into her malasada, and it tasted like the best days of her childhood.
Noah’s phone rang.
He glanced at the screen, muttered a quick apology, and answered.
“Hey. You okay?”
He listened for a moment, his expression serious.
“I’m on my way.” He gave Anne an apologetic look as he disconnected the call. “Will you come with me? I can drive you home after.”
“What’s going on?”
“One of my foster kids needs a ride.”
“Your what?”
“I’ll explain on the way.” Noah stood and offered her a hand.
They took their malasadas back to the truck.
“So… you’re a foster parent?” Anne asked as she buckled her seatbelt.
“Yeah.” He started the engine and pulled onto the highway.
“How long have you been doing that?”
He thought for a moment. “About four years now? Mostly teens. There aren’t enough people willing to take them in, so they end up institutionalized. I’ve helped keep a few of them out. The twins have been with me for almost a year now.”
“That’s a long time.”
Noah shrugged. “It’s not hard.”
“Right.” She grinned at him. “Teenagers are notoriously easy to parent.”
“They bike to and from school. I drive them to the beach or something on the weekends. We trade off making dinners. It’s no big deal.”
“It is, though.”
“They’re good kids.”
“How old are they?”
“Fifteen.” He cleared his throat. “Technically, the twins aren’t in foster care. They’re a part of the Kinship Care program.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s similar, but it’s specifically for families.”
“So they’re…”
“They’re my cousins. Well, their mom is my cousin.”
“And she’s…?”
“In and out of rehab.”
“I see.” Anne looked out at the greenery flashing past her window. In the distance, an African tulip tree blazed with orange flowers.
“Do I know her?” she asked after a while. “Their mom?”
“I don’t think so. She lived with me and my grandma for a little while when we were young, but then she went to live with her dad on Maui. She and the kids wound up at A Place of Refuge a few years back, but… I guess she never quite got her life together. Not for long, anyway.”
“Those poor kids.”
“They’re tough,” he said. “They’re alright.”
Anne pressed her lips together, holding back her doubts. She had seen how deeply relatively small disruptions affected kids that age. To grow up on such shifting sands – their father either absent or abusive, their mother an addict, homeless at least once – was a brutally difficult way to grow up.
She had known plenty of kids from situations like those – and in her experience, none of them were ever really ‘alright’.
Her preconceptions were confirmed when they pulled into a convenience store parking lot in Hilo to pick up a kid who had obviously just been in a fight. He had a split lip, and one side of his face was swollen; he’d have a black eye tomorrow.
“What happened to you?” Noah blurted when his cousin climbed into the back seat.
The kid didn’t answer. He just looked between Noah and Anne.
“Sorry.” Noah let out a frazzled sigh and ran a hand through his hair. “Jayce, this is Anne. Anne, Jayce.”
“Sorry I messed up your date,” Jayce muttered.
“Who was it?” Noah asked. “Do you know them?”
Jayce shut his mouth and looked out the window.
“Was it adults or those kids from school? I at least need to know that much.”
“Why?”
“Do we need to file a report at the police station or schedule a meeting with the principal?”
“You don’t need to tell nobody. It’s not that big a deal.”
“Jayce.” Noah’s voice was firm.
“Kids,” he grumbled.
Noah sighed. “Okay. We’ll talk about it later.”
The drive back to Pualena was silent, aside from some country music playing quietly on the radio. When Noah parked in his driveway, Jayce immediately jumped out of the truck and ran into the house. Noah and Anne sat there in silence for a moment.
“He’s a good kid,” Noah said.
“Okay.”
“What a disaster.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “This is not how I wanted our day to go.”
“Noah?” she said softly.
He turned to look at her. “Yeah?”
“You’re a good man.”
The tension dropped from his shoulders, and the stress on his face melted into a gentle smile.
“Do you want to see the house?” he asked.
“I’d love to.”
He hopped out of the truck and circled around to open her door.
“I’ve flipped a lot of places,” he said as they walked inside, “but I didn’t want to let go of this one. I put it on the market because it’s way too much for just one person… but when the offers came in, I just couldn’t sell. So I stayed. And I became a foster parent.”
“Noah, that’s wonderful.”
He shrugged. “It’s only fair, after the way this community stepped in and raised me. Your dad more than anybody.”
Anne swallowed and nodded, suddenly close to tears.
“I miss him too,” Noah acknowledged. He took her hand and led her inside. “Come on.”
The house was a lot like Anne’s childhood home, albeit less rambling and located farther from the cliffs. It was a wooden house with high ceilings and a spacious, airy feeling. Oversized couches in the living room made the big space feel cozy.
Out back, a teenager was working in the garden. She had huge headphones nested in her curly hair, and her cheeks were smudged with dirt.
“That’s Jasmine,” Noah said, following her gaze. “Jayce’s twin. There was nothing at all back there when they moved in. I’d fixed up the house but hadn’t gotten around to taming the weeds out back. She turned it into a garden.”
“You sound just like a proud dad.”
“Do I?” He looked back at Jasmine with a small, worried frown. “I wish I was.”
“What do you mean?”
“I would adopt them if their mom would let me.”
“But she won’t?”
“No. Not yet, at least. A few months ago, the kids came to me and asked. I tried talking to their mom about it, but she wouldn’t hear it.”
“I’m sorry.”
He shrugged. “Reunification’s the goal. Or it’s supposed to be. But it’s hard sending them back to parents who just keep failing them. It’s the hardest part.”
Anne squeezed his hand, and he turned to look at her.
“I can’t believe you’re here,” he said softly.
She stared into his eyes, wishing that she could just fall into his gaze and lose herself in the moment… but she couldn’t stop thinking about the battered fifteen-year-old boy sitting upstairs.
“I should go,” she said. “Jayce needs you.”
“You’re right.” Noah took a step back. “Let me drive you home first.”
“I’ll walk.”
“I’ll drive you.”
“It’s not far. Go talk to your kid.”
Noah looked between her and the stairs for a moment, torn. Then he nodded.
“Thanks for lunch.”
“I’ll walk you out.”
Outside, in the shade of the lanai, Noah took her hand and pulled her gently back from the stairs.
“Wait,” he implored in a soft voice.
She turned to face him, and her heart sped.
“I’m sorry that our first date went off the rails.”
“You did the right thing.”
“Still. It wasn’t what I’d planned.”
“It’s okay. Anyway, it wasn’t exactly our first date.”
He let out a huff of breath, somewhere between a laugh and a sigh. “Our first date this lifetime, at least.”
“You haven’t changed much. You’ve grown up, but you’re still you.”
“And you’re still you.”
Noah leaned in slowly and kissed her, soft and sweet. It was just like their first kiss, so many years ago… and Anne’s body responded the same way it had then. Her reaction rushed ahead without any conscious thought.
She rose up on tiptoe, losing herself in the kiss. One hand rested on his neck; the other was in his hair. A long-forgotten passion rose up in her chest – and with it, the fear of losing herself to something beyond her control.
Anne broke away and stared up at him in shock.
The familiar smirk on his face made her laugh, breaking the tension.
“I’ll see you soon,” she said, backing away.
His expression turned reluctant, but he let her go. She hurried down the steps and up the driveway. When she glanced back over her shoulder, he was still watching her from the lanai.
After all this time, her feelings were still the same.
Maybe she had finally grown enough to hold them all.