Chapter 16 Anne
Anne
Between one thing and another, it was a while before Anne saw Noah again.
They met up once at the beach so that Claire could meet Jasmine before school started, but hanging with their kids was far from date territory.
Noah spent most of the day snorkeling with Pete, which warmed Anne’s heart – but at the same time, she wondered how her kids would be affected if she let Noah into their lives only to mess things up again.
She very much wanted to get things right this time… she just wasn’t sure what that looked like.
Then, on the day that she dropped Claire off to try her luck at Kea?au High, he showed up at her door with an enormous picnic basket.
“What’s this?” she asked, laughing.
“It’s the first day of school,” he said, dangling the basket in front of her, “so I thought you might be able to get away for an hour or two.”
“It’s the first day for the teens. Pete’s co-op doesn’t start until next week.”
“Oh.” The hand holding the basket dropped.
“I suppose I could still get away.”
“He could come,” Noah offered, but she shook her head.
She wasn’t bringing her son along on a second date – not even when that date was with Noah Kapono. Their lives were already overly intermeshed and messy. She needed time to get to know him – just him, as he was now.
“Your kid already crashed our first date,” she joked.
Noah winced. “I’m sorry about that.”
“Don’t be,” she said immediately, putting a hand on his arm. “Your responsibility to those kids comes first. I get that.”
“And you don’t mind me stealing you away from yours?”
“He’ll be fine. He’s hyperfocused on his mongoose today. He’s been watching cat training videos and trying to apply them to Rikki.”
“How’s that going?”
“The results aren’t in yet.”
“So… are you up for a picnic?”
“I’d like that.” She twisted a strand of red hair around her finger. “Where are we going?”
“Just here on the cliffs. I’ll have you back before school gets out, I promise.”
“That sounds perfect. Let me just go check with my mom. I want to make sure she’ll be here for Pete until we get back.”
“Sure.”
Anne ran up the stairs and found Dawn sitting in the master bedroom, reading a book in a comfy chair by the window.
“Hey Mom,” she said. “Will you be here a while?”
“I don’t have any plans today. Why?”
“Noah invited me on a picnic, and I don’t want to leave Pete here alone.”
Dawn’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Are you and Noah an item again?”
“Just two people on a picnic.” Anne kept her voice breezy. “So you’ll be here?”
“I won’t leave Pete alone.”
“Great. Thanks!” She hurried downstairs and went to check on Pete, who was on the back porch with Rikki and a bag of cat treats.
“Mom!” He perked up when he saw her. “Watch this! Rikki, up!”
The mongoose popped up off the ground, standing on his back feet.
“Pete, that’s amazing!”
He sighed and said, “He’s supposed to jump into my arms when I say that.”
“Well, that’s a good start.”
“I guess.”
“I’m going for a walk on the cliffs. Grandma’s here if you need anything.”
“Okay.” He’d already returned his attention to the training book he’d gotten from the library.
Anne went back through to the lanai.
“Ready?” Noah asked.
She crammed a sunhat onto her head and slipped her feet into a pair of sandals. “Ready.”
They walked along the cliffs until they reached the ironwood forest, where Noah produced a picnic blanket from his basket and spread it out on the pine-needle floor. Anne sat down, and the forest floor sank beneath her like a memory-foam mattress.
“This must be the most comfortable picnic spot in the world,” she said.
“I always thought so.” Noah laid out a spread of fresh lychee, onigiri, sliced veggies, and ‘ulu dip. Finally, he pulled out two bottles of sugarcane-juice lemonade.
“What a perfect lunch.” Anne said, taking a sip of lemonade.
“And perfect company.” He clinked his drink against hers.
They chatted about their adventures (and misadventures), bouncing easily between their shared memories and the decades they had spent apart. They shared their triumphs and tragedies, and just generally got to know each other again.
When they finally walked home, hand in hand along the cliffs, she felt as though they had built a bridge between their shared childhood and the present day. With luck, that bridge might even extend to a shared future.
Noah kissed her goodbye on the lanai, and she floated into the house on a cloud.
“What was that?” Zoe’s harsh tone brought her right back to Earth.
Anne startled and looked around to find her eldest daughter glaring at her from the kitchen.
“Are you dating now?”
“You make it sound like a crime.”
“You are unbelievable.”
Anne took a deep breath, pushing down the urge to snap back at her daughter. They were both adults, but she was the mother. She was the one who desperately wanted to repair their relationship.
But Zoe wouldn’t relent.
“You think you can just come back and pick up where you left off?”
“This is my home too, Zoe.”
“It’s not! Not anymore. You made it very clear a long time ago that you were too good for us, too big for small-town life. Just because you show up broke and turn our home into a business doesn’t mean that you’re one of us.”
Tears pricked at Anne’s eyes. “I am one of you.”
“You never wanted to be! Not until the mainland chewed you up and spat you back out.”
“I’m trying to build a life here.”
“Why?” Zoe demanded.
“Because I love you! All of you!”
“You love yourself more than you ever loved me.”
Anne took a step back, but Zoe just kept coming.
“My dad is not a toy! You can’t just pick him up and then put him down again when you get bored of him!”
“I know that! I’ve known him a lot longer than you have!”
“Do you have any idea how much you hurt him when you left?”
“He wasn’t even here when I left!” Anne shouted back.
“Poor you, right? He abandoned us, so you abandoned me. That’s such a crock! First you drove him away. And he didn’t really leave. He just left for work.”
“I left for school.”
“He came back!”
“So did I!”
“Visits don’t count! You were never really here!”
“I know!” Anne closed her eyes and took a deep breath, letting her anger melt into the pain and remorse that lay beneath. She opened her eyes and said, “I’m trying to make up for that now.”
“Too little, too late.” Zoe stormed out, slamming the screen door behind her.
Pete peered through the window, staring at his mother with wide blue eyes, and Anne’s remorse doubled.
“What was all that?” Dawn asked, coming down the stairs.
“Just Zoe being Zoe,” Anne said.
Her mother didn’t reply.
“I don’t know how to get anywhere with her. She won’t let go of things that happened ages ago! And now she’s going off on me because she thinks that she needs to protect her dad? That’s crazy.”
Dawn was silent.
“What?” Anne demanded.
“Just don’t hurt him again,” Dawn said.
“Are you serious right now?”
“You broke his heart when you left.”
“He’s a grown man. He can look after his own heart.”
“He’s still my kid.”
“I’m your kid!” Anne raged. She cut herself off and looked at the window, but Pete had disappeared. In a quieter voice she said, “I’m your daughter. Me. Noah came to stay a few times. That’s it.”
“They’re all my kids, Annie. Everyone who took shelter here.”
“Right. Thank goodness for Saint Dawn.”
“Don’t be nasty.”
“You always cared about them more than you cared about me. You still do.”
“Not more. Just… equal.”
“Right. Great. I’m glad that the human being you made is at least equal to random kids who stayed here for a few nights. Thanks a lot.”
Her mother looked at her the way someone might look at a toddler throwing a tantrum – but not Dawn, because she always had infinite patience with toddlers. It was Anne that she’d always expected too much of.
Always Anne who wasn’t allowed to falter or fail.
She stormed upstairs and shut herself in her room… much like the petulant teenager that she seemed to turn into whenever she spent too much time with her mother.
She grabbed her phone and texted the one person who always had her back.
Anne: Get me out of this house.
Oakley: What’s going on?
Anne: The usual. I’m the worst person in the world, etc.
Oakley: You are not. Where’s this coming from?
Anne: Mom and Zoe are teaming up on me.
Oakley: Sounds like you need some time at the beach.
Anne: That would be great.
Oakley: I can meet you in a couple hours.
Anne: Perfect. I’ll leave at two to pick Claire up from school. Honokaa OK?
Oakley: Yep. See you there.
Anne sent her sister a string of hearts and then set the phone aside, already feeling a bit better. She still needed to go find Pete and talk to him about what had happened.
Her son was equal parts sensitive and oblivious, so either he was deeply concerned or he had already forgotten what he’d heard. It was anybody’s guess with that kid. Either way, some time at the beach would do him good.
She was so grateful for Oakley. Whatever else happened, her sister was in her corner.
The trouble was, she didn’t want corners. She didn’t want to fight.
She just didn’t know how to make things right.
Dawn’s words hurt because they were true. The more time she spent in Pualena – and with Noah – the more regret she felt about leaving in the first place. She’d hurt him deeply, and he hadn’t done a thing to deserve it.
She could have built a life there – even as an eighteen-year-old mother. She could have had a wonderful little family with Noah and Zoe. Her eldest daughter would probably be a completely different person today… kind and content.
But she couldn’t regret leaving, because that mistake had eventually given her two more children who she loved more than anything.
In her most honest moments, in the silence of her own soul, she had to admit that she loved them even more than she loved Zoe. She supposed that made her a terrible mother, but it was just the truth.
She had missed out on Zoe’s childhood, missed out on being a mother.
She hadn’t been there for her first steps or her first day of school.
She had never fished a baby tooth out from under her pillow to replace with a gift from the tooth fairy, never been there to make her a snack after school or help her with her homework.
She was there for every moment with her younger kids, every milestone. Still too busy, maybe, but there for all of the big stuff.
If she had been the only one affected, she could forgive herself easily. It was the damage to her daughter that she couldn’t ignore. Of course Zoe despised her. If Anne focused on her past mistakes for too long, she despised herself.
She wanted to move forward and forge a new relationship with her adult daughter, if only Zoe would let her.
She needed to make things right… but she had no idea how.