Chapter 18
Keone’s green Tacoma jounced down the rutted valley road behind the police cruiser, and neither of us said much for the first mile.
Ahead of us, the cruiser took the ruts slow, its brake lights flaring red through the dust. Souza sat in the front passenger seat, upright, a bandage white against his dark hair, well enough to wave off the air ambulance and ride out the regular way.
Malia was at the wheel—fortunately her left ankle was the injured one, and she was still able to drive.
In the cruiser’s back seat, behind the wire, were two pale shapes: Madison Chang and Dr. Susanna Patel, prisoners now, riding in silence from the valley that had broken open their schemes.
Keone’s hands stayed easy on the wheel, and I watched the cruiser’s brake lights and turned the morning over and over in my mind like a rock I couldn’t put down.
“I can’t stop thinking about the archive,” I said finally.
“Figured.”
“Pali wouldn’t give it up. Malia told him it was evidence, point-blank, he refused, and then she and Lei let it go because they had bigger concerns.
” I picked at a rip in the knee of my nylon hiking pants.
“I get why it happened that way, but I’m concerned about Pali’s action.
He walked off a federal crime scene with documents that belong in custody, and we stood there and watched him do it and said nothing. ”
“Because we trust him,” Keone said.
“No.” I blew out a breath. “Because it was a case of ?go along to get along.’ Not the same thing.”
Keone was quiet a moment, steering around a washout.
“Pali Moku is the straightest shooter I know,” he said.
“Grew up two houses down from me in Hana. I’ve watched that man fight for this valley his whole life—permits, petitions, standing in front of bulldozers, becoming an archaeologist so he can protect our heritage.
He’s never once done a thing that wasn’t for the land and the people.
” He glanced at me. “Whatever he means to do with that archive, it’s for Awawakapu. I’d stake my life on it.”
“That’s what worries me. People who are sure they’re serving something bigger than themselves are the types who decide the rules don’t apply to them.
” I heard the edge in my voice. “And what about Patel? She was sure too: sure the archive belonged in a university, sure she deserved to take money from the Changs and put a rock through Souza’s skull, and get academic glory, too. Conviction isn’t innocence, Keone.”
“Patel.” He said the name dismissively, the way you’d brush off a fly. “She’s not from here.”
The words sat in the cab between us.
He’d meant that about Patel, that dismissive tone.
That exclusion bias. He’d been referring to the rift that ran under everything in Hawaii, a line between the people who belonged to this place and the people who flew in to take from it: developers, speculators, tourists, even academics who saw precious relics as something to be used for career enhancement.
These were outsiders—people who didn’t understand that in Hawaii everything is connected. They came for what they could carry off, use, consume, or experience before they flew away to somewhere else.
But I’d flown here, too.
I’d come from a federal office on the continent; I’d had a badge and a caseload and no idea that bumbye meant by and by, that pilikia meant trouble, and that you didn’t go into a cave without asking permission of the ones who’d been there longest.
I was the haole girl. I would always, no matter how long I lived here, be one who wasn’t from here.
I turned my face to the window and watched the hala trees go by, and I didn’t say anything at all.
“Kat.” He’d felt the temperature drop; he always did. “That’s not—I didn’t mean you.”
“I know what you meant,” I said.
We rode the rest of the way out of the Valley in a silence that had gone from companionable to easily shattered.
At the turn where the valley access road met the highway, the cruiser turned toward Hana and the police station.
We would not follow. There was nothing more for us to do today; our statements would keep till morning. Instead, Keone pulled the Tacoma onto the shoulder and sat with the engine ticking.
“We lost our day,” he said. “What we planned: hike, swim, picnic, nap, all of it.” He glanced over at me, and there was hope in his gaze, an olive branch held out. “Ohia Bay’s nearby. The water’s flat. Let’s go put our suits on and wash off the day. Start over, even if it’s late.”
I could feel the hurt sitting in my chest like a swallowed stone. I knew myself well enough to know it wasn’t going to dissolve in salt water just because I wanted it to.
“Okay,” I said. “Worth a try.”
We changed in the shack, separately, in silence. I went into the bathroom where Miss Prissy liked to stay cool on warm days and pulled on the swimsuit I kept there for exactly these unplanned ocean moments.
Keone changed out front, and we didn’t talk, and the not-talking was loud.
Then we walked across the newly paved parking lot and the road, onto the sand at Ohia Bay in the late gold light.
The water was clear and calm, the temperature perfect; Hawaii’s is an ocean that receives you no matter where you’re from.
I dove under and came up and started to swim hard strokes, fast kicking. I headed out toward the mouth of the little bay in a steady crawl, because my body wanted to do something with what my chest was holding.
Keone swam beside me, easily matching my pace, his big shoulders rolling smoothly as he turned his upper body with each stroke.
We went out past the shallows and the coral heads to where the water turned that deep cathedral blue.
I turned right and swam lengthwise now; I did laps until my arms burned and the heat in my lungs felt better than the hurt.
We trod water out there eventually. From where we floated the shack was a small brown box behind the Post Office on the shore, with the Pahinuis’ General Store on the right.
Behind the hill where the village was built, the green wall of the valley rose, and the village’s small homes dotted the gentle hill.
I might not be ‘from here’ but Ohia was my home now.
“Okay. What’s wrong?” Keone was breathing a little hard, water beading on his lips and high cheekbones. “And don’t say it’s nothing.”
I gazed at the shore, the pier, the coconut palms, the village. At the valley’s ridge in the far distance. At everything I’d thrown myself into for two years without once stopping to ask whether it would ever be mine to keep.
“Will I always be an outsider?” The question came out wobblier than I meant it to; I blew water off my lips in a raspberry to try to lighten my words.
“Here. On Maui. Is there a line I don’t get to cross, no matter what I do, how hard I try?
Because I helped today. I’ve helped a lot of times.
” I spread my arms so I could float without moving for a bit.
“But I’m still one who flew in. I’m not from here, and never will be. ”
Understanding moved across Keone’s face—and behind it something that might be grief.
He swam to me. He gathered me in, the both of us treading water with our feet, his arms warm around my shoulders and the deep blue holding us up.
He put his forehead against mine. “You’re already kama?āina.
You hear? Uncle Kalani told you that himself—bumbye you come one kama?āina—and that man doesn’t say things he doesn’t mean.
Yes, you came here a stranger—but since then you’ve given this place everything you had.
On this case alone you helped get the petroglyphs back.
You refused to go past where Uncle Kalani said to stop until Malia asked the ancestors for permission.
No, you’re not Native Hawaiian and can never be—but belonging isn’t always where you’re born, Kat.
It’s—where you give yourself.” His arms tightened.
“It’s what you’d give blood to protect. And when you marry me, it’ll be official, in front of everybody.
Our names, our families will be joined. I look forward to becoming Smith-Kaihale or Kaihale-Smith.
We can flip for whose name goes first.” Gazing into his eyes as we treaded water was almost too much for me; I had to turn away, blinking away salt that had nothing to do with the sea.
“But you don’t have to marry me to be a part of our community.
You belong in Ohia, no matter what. You’ve been ours since you earned your place here solving that first case. ”
I felt the truth of his words trying to dissolve the hardness in my throat, the hurt in my heart.
It didn’t. Couldn’t. Because words said carelessly about somebody else had landed too hard.
“That means a lot,” I said. “Thank you, Keone. But—” I pulled back, getting some space. “I guess I’m full up. Fed up. On drama, on the caves, on people’s motives, on all of it. I’ve had about as much human nature as I can take for one day.”
“Kat—“ He closed his eyes and shook his head in frustration. Water droplets flew off his dark curling hair; he was a merman with his glossy brown skin and sleek muscles.
“I’m not mad.” That was true. “But I need a night off from all of it. I’m going to go home to Aunt Fae and eat something that isn’t a sandwich or a granola bar, sleep in my own bed, and let today be over.
” I touched his wet, warm cheek. “Rain check on our day off together. I mean that. But not tonight.”
He searched my face, and whatever he saw there, he was wise enough not to argue with. He seemed to know when to push and when to let go—another thing I loved about him.
“Okay,” he said. “Hug the cat for me and we’ll check in tomorrow.” A pause. He gave the smallest smile, sad at the edges. “But we’re not done talking about this. You don’t get to vote yourself out of belonging.”
“Noted,” I said.
We swam in. I decided to shower at home as my clothes were too filthy to put back on; I wrapped up in a beach towel.
Our silence was gentler now, if not yet healed, and he walked me to my car in the long amber twilight and kissed me deeply at Sharkey’s door.
I drove the short distance into New Ohia State Park and Aunt Fae with my windows down and the ocean coming and going in the background. My whole heart was full of things I didn’t have the energy to sort out.
Some days you can solve a case and still drive home sore all over.