From the journal of Minnow Gray
February 8, 1990
The Vivid Dancer.My father told me they were fairies, and I believed him. I remember having this mini-obsession with them. And at night on Catalina I would sit by my window once the lights were out and watch for their tiny bodies to circle the moon. To a young girl their iridescent blue color and finely veined wings matched perfectly with what I thought a fairy should be. Later, in school, I learned that they were damselflies. Similar to dragonflies, only daintier, and their wings fold back when at rest. Whenever I see one, I feel like my father is near.
Chapter 30
The Note
Koa: brave, bold, fearless, valiant; bravery, courage
When she returned, the property felt oddly quiet and empty without the Kaupiko brothers, like the soul of the house was missing. After a quick rinse, Minnow was about to enter the house when she noticed a piece of paper under a lava rock in front of the door. She bent down to pick it up, thinking maybe Woody had left it for her and she’d missed it earlier since she went out the other door. But it was not from Woody.
SHARK LADY
GO BACK TO CALIFORNIA
BEFORE SOMETING BAD HAPPENS
YOUR NOT WELCOME HERE
Luna and the recent memory of her father were immediately forgotten as a sharp wind hit her from behind. She read the paper again,noting the misspelled word. Had that been on purpose? What kind of nut job would leave a threatening note here on the doorstep at Hale Niuhi? Someone bold, obviously. She spun around, eyeing the bushes and rocky outcrops, keenly aware of her dive knife on the table with her mask and snorkel. Slowly, she walked over and grabbed it, taking the blade in the house with her. On the table was a small, shimmering dead fish. She leaned in closer to inspect it, thinking at first it was a reef fish.
“Oh... my gosh,” she said, picking the little thing up by the tail to make sure it was what she thought it was.
A minnow, of all creepy things.
That someone would go to the trouble to find an actualminnowfreaked her out. Did they even have them here in Hawai?i?
Chilled, she tossed the poor fish into the pond, then filled the kettle and set it on the stove. She wrapped herself in a blanket and lay on the bed with the phone, dialing Nalu’s hotel room even though she knew he wouldn’t be there. She was right. He and the scientist were probably en route to Hilo to see Lum. Minnow had declined the offer to join them. For a brief moment she contemplated calling the police but decided to consult with Woody first. No one answered at his main house either. She looked up Cliff in the phone book, but he wasn’t listed. It figured.
Her mind began to run through possibilities of who might be behind this. Lum and Warren had pushed hard for the hunt, but they didn’t have much skin in the game, did they? And the note felt personal. Sawyer and the open-water swim officials maybe. Both stood to lose a lot of money if nothing was done to appease the public. But she’d never gotten an unhinged vibe from Sawyer. She also thought of Stuart Callahan and his immense grief, and Angela and Zach, but their tragedies had already happened. Minnow being here would have no bearing on them. Maybe she’d inadvertently pissed off some local who just wanted her off their turf? Whatever the case, Minnow was not leaving.
When the tea was ready, she took her mug outside and sat on the lanai, watching the whitecaps form on the water. So much had happenedin the past few days that it felt like she’d been here for months, years even.
The memory from earlier was still fresh in her mind, and she reexamined it from all angles. The kayak had been left on the beach by her father the previous evening, and when he ran into the water to get it, she hadn’t been able to hear him. All she was guilty of was not noticing that the kayak had been swept out and not hearing him.
Two things beyond her control. Six-year-old Minnow moving through life believing that she had killed her father. It was going to take a while to undo the wound in her soul, but the awareness felt liberating. Because how could you heal from something you couldn’t remember? The sweaty, heart-thumping nightmares, the isolation, the pushing away of men she thought she loved. All of it.
A loud bang came from somewhere behind the house, and she startled. It sounded like a door slamming or something big falling. She peered around the house to the shed out back, but that door was locked. A gunshot? Jumpy and skittish from the note, she grabbed the machete that Cliff had been using and circled the house. The wind now whipped in a frenzy and she had to pull the hair out of her eyes to see anything. She wished Woody had stayed.
On the other side of the house, she discovered one of the wooden boards that covered the windows when no one was there had fallen against the siding. Relieved, she went back inside and pulled it up with the rope, securing it more tightly this time. Suddenly a thought came to her: There was no one around to hear her if she screamed. She tried to tell herself she was just being paranoid, but it was hard to ignore the warning, especially with the dead minnow.
Nalu called ten minutes later from a pay phone to tell her that their drive to Hilo to see Lum had been a waste of time, and he and Chip, the other scientist, were going to grab some food and head back to the hotel.
“I don’t know what Chip was thinking, but he was adamant that Lum might listen to him over you, since he grew up on Maui. A braddah-braddah kind of thing.”
“What you really mean is because he’s a man?”
He paused awhile. “Maybe. Yeah, probably.”
She was about to tell him about the note but decided not to. If he knew, he’d insist on coming over and bringing Chip, and she wanted to be alone.Neededto be alone. They agreed to meet at five in the morning at the house and hung up.
Not really hungry, Minnow took a Sierra Nevada from the fridge, snagged a half-full bag of Fritos and scrambled out to the rocks where Cliff had been sitting. Wind blasted in off the ocean, but she’d tied her hair in a tight knot at the base of her neck and she gripped the bag of chips as though it were a lifeline. Within minutes a thin layer of salt covered her whole body. She felt like she should be doing something, anything, to put off the shark hunt, but no one would be out there in this weather. Tomorrow was her last hope.
Here at the far end of the wild Pacific Ocean, she watched the clouds fade from gunmetal to black. She finished the beer and the chips and thought about her parents and how much she still loved them all these years later. That love had a life of its own—this astonishing, full-bodied love that ran in her veins. But maybe that was the way of real love: It never left you, not even in death. Especially in death.
When her clothes became soaked from the salt spray and she realized she was shivering, she fumbled back to the house in the near-dark. She had just reached the lanai when she swore she could hear the sound of shoes crunching on lava rock. She stood still and listened.
