Chapter 7 Oakley #2
Claire pulled off her sundress and dipped a toe in the water.
“Eek!” she squeaked. “It’s so cold!”
“It comes from up the mauna,” Harper said solemnly. “There’s snow up there sometimes.”
“Not in the summer,” Hayden told her.
“I said sometimes! Anyway, it’s still cold up there in the summer!”
Pete canonballed into the pool, and Claire shrieked when the water splashed her.
“Hey Claire,” Oakley said, “I’ve got sunscreen.”
“I’m okay,” Claire said. “I put some on back at the house.”
“You need to reapply,” she told her, spraying her own arms a second time.
“Ugh!” Claire coughed in disgust and backed away. “That stuff smells like cancer!”
“It smells, but it works.”
“I’m good!” She went scrambling up the rocks.
“You’re going to burn!”
“I reject and repudiate your curse!”
Anne laughed and shook her head. “It’s okay. I got her back and shoulders before we left the house.”
“She’s just like you,” Oakley said, exasperated.
Her silver eyes flashed wide. “I was never that fiery!”
Oakley burst out laughing.
“I wasn’t!” Anne insisted. “She’s more stubborn than I ever was.”
“Yeah, okay.”
Anne gave her a playful shove, and she nearly stumbled into the pool.
“Hey!” Oakley protested. “This sunscreen needs five minutes to dry!”
She rolled her eyes and dove in.
Five seconds later, she pulled herself back out again.
“That’s freezing!”
Oakley peeled off her sweaty dress and laid it out on a sunny rock, then finished meticulously reapplying her own sunscreen.
She glanced thoughtfully at the girls but let them be. Her daughters’ birth parents had blessed them with more melanin than her own body could have ever conjured up, and she was grateful for that; they never burned.
“Swim with me, Mom!” Harper waved at her from the top of the rocks.
“Three more minutes!” Oakley called back.
“I can’t jump without you!”
“I can!” Hayden launched herself past her little sister and off the top of the waterfall. She disappeared into the water with a splash, and Oakley moved to get a better view of her swimming through the water. She made it almost all the way back to the edge of the pool before surfacing with a gasp.
Anne gave her a high five. “That was awesome.”
“Mom!” Harper shouted. “Come on!”
“Okay, okay, I’m coming!” Oakley scampered up the rocks behind Hayden, who was already halfway to the top. She pulled herself up, stood, and walked across the miniature cliff that held the waterfall.
The view from there was breathtaking. To one side, she could see the waterfall at the back of the valley.
It was nearly two hundred feet tall, and it filled the air with a white noise that seemed to banish all her quotidian worries.
On her other side, the river meandered through a series of pools before finally plunging off a much larger cliff.
The waterfall at their feet ran with a gentle steadiness.
Between the sound of the water and the epic view, there was no room in her head for the mental load that usually filled her thoughts.
“Later days, dudes.” Hayden strode past them and launched herself off the cliff, somehow managing to salute them as she spun through the air and plunged down towards the pool. Oakley laughed and watched her as she swam through the deep, calm water back to shore.
“Do you want to jump with me?” Harper asked.
“Absolutely I do.” Oakley held out her hand, and Harper took it.
“One…” She hesitated, peering over the edge.
“Two…” Oakley grinned at her daughter.
“Three!” Harper’s hand tightened on hers, and she didn’t move.
“What are you counting to?” Pete asked from behind them.
“Um…” Harper blinked at him for a moment. “Five?”
“Can I jump with you?”
“Okay.”
“One two three four five!” Pete shouted. “Cannonball!” He launched himself off the rocks, curled his body into a ball, and landed with a splash.
Harper watched him with a sigh.
“Do you want to climb the rocks instead?” Oakley asked.
“No! I want to jump.”
“Okay.”
She inched towards the edge until her toes were hanging off.
“The longer you wait, the harder it gets.”
“I know!” Harper made to stomp her foot and nearly went tumbling off. Oakley laughed and pulled her backwards.
“You want to get a bit farther from the rocks than that. We need to jump, not fall.”
“I know!” She looked about ready to cry.
“How about a snack break?”
“I don’t want a snack break!”
“You’ve done this before,” Hayden said. She stood behind them, dripping and waiting for her turn. “Like, three different days you’ve done this.”
“I know.” Harper’s voice was unsteady.
“Should we just push you?”
Oakley shot Hayden a look, but then Harper nodded.
“Seriously?” Oakley asked.
“Yeah. I think I need a push.”
“How about this?” Oakley scooped her younger daughter up in her arms like a baby. Harper giggled and wrapped her arms around her neck. “Ready?”
“Yes! Hurry! Go!”
Oakley leapt from the top of the waterfall with her daughter in her arms. The water enveloped them, quick and frigid, and Oakley opened her eyes to watch her baby rush to the surface beside her.
“Again!” Harper shouted the moment she’d caught her breath. “Let’s go again!”
“Okay,” Oakley agreed, laughing.
The cold water was invigorating, a welcome shift from the heat of the day.
Oakley swam to the edge of the pool with easy strokes, keeping pace with Harper. They pulled themselves up onto the sun-warmed rocks, and Harper hurried back to the cliff.
“Slow and steady,” Oakley warned her as they climbed back up the rocks. “The more we do this, the more slippery everything gets.”
After that first time, Harper didn’t hesitate once.
They jumped at least twenty more times, making the climb and the leap over and over again until the kids finally got tired. Finally, Oakley handed lunch off to the kids and sprawled out on a hot stretch of stone to dry off.
Anne climbed up onto the warm rocks to sit beside her. She was shivering a bit from the icy water, but the powerful sunshine warmed her up quickly enough.
As soon as the water evaporated from their skin, Oakley sprayed her sister’s freckled back with sunscreen.
Anne gave her a look that was half exasperation, half affection.
“Wait five minutes,” Oakley ordered.
Anne rolled her eyes and handed her half of a tangerine.
They sat shoulder to shoulder, watching their kids splash and play. Claire was splayed on a flat rock above the waterfall, and Oakley’s hands itched to douse her in sunscreen. Maybe after this tangerine, she would just climb up and…
“Mom!” Harper shouted. “Look at this!”
“I’m watching,” she called back.
Her baby – eight years old already, by some cruel trick of time – did a spinning jump off of the cliff, twirling through the air like a ballerina before splashing into the water.
Oakley’s breath caught; it always did when one of her girls was underwater.
Then Harper surfaced with a smile, and she could breathe again.
“Are you going back in?” Anne asked.
“Eventually.” She felt languid and relaxed, sitting there in the sunshine.
“How’s Trent?” Anne asked after a while.
“Good. He’ll be back next week.”
“He’s gone?”
“Business trip. Some meetings on the mainland.”
“You never talk about him.” Anne was peering at her in an intense sort of way from beneath her oversized sunhat.
“Sure I do,” Oakley said with a frown.
“Not really.”
She looked back out at her girls, who were climbing the rocks beside the waterfall for the upteenth time.
“Is everything okay with you guys?”
“You know how it is.” Oakley shrugged. “Once kids come into the picture, everything else sort of fades into the background. That happened with you too, didn’t it?”
“Yep.” Anne’s mouth twisted into a wry smile. “And look how that turned out.”
She winced. “Sorry.”
“I’m happy to babysit. I know driving all the way down to Mom’s just to drop them off for a date night is hard. I can drive up as soon as I have my car.”
“Sure,” Oakley agreed automatically. She stared off into middle distance, trying to remember the last time that she and her husband had gone out on an actual date, just the two of them.
She couldn’t remember.
Years of infertility had taken their toll, and then parenthood had finally come all in a rush, with a traumatized toddler and a wailing newborn.
Oakley had thrown herself into motherhood with everything that she had, and Trent had supported her.
She could hardly remember what things had been like before, when it was just the two of them.
That was almost inconceivable to her now.
They needed time to reconnect.
But as she sat there watching her daughters, she had to acknowledge that she didn’t actually want her sister to babysit. Their childhoods were flying by at breakneck speed, and there was no part of her that wanted to exchange even a few hours of time with her girls for a night out with her husband.
Deep down, she knew that wasn’t a good sign.