“Sorry.” Anne wrinkled her nose and slumped backwards, bracing herself with two elbows in the sand.
Claire came stomping back across the beach and retreated into the shade. After a moment, she burst out, “There’s not even a signal up on the cliffs!”
Halia patted her shoulder without looking up from her paperwork.
Akemi let her sulk. Later, when the sun retreated to the west and they built a fire by the river, she would try to coax her niece out of her head. If she succeeded in getting her out from under cover right now, that would only result in a sunburn, and the poor kid was still peeling from her last bout of Hawaiian sunshine. There was no way that Akemi was taking responsibility for that.
That was the scariest part of motherhood. Taking responsibility for a whole life.
She felt confident in her ability to care for a baby. Feed when hungry, clean when dirty. Simple enough. She had helped her parents to care for plenty of babies over the years, including newborns who’d come to them straight from the hospital.
But being responsible for every decision that would shape their childhood and their life? Nowthatwas scary.
She disagreed (albeit silently, most of the time) with many of the decisions that her sisters made on behalf of their children. Of course, Oakley had been quick to communicateherdisapproval of Akemi’s travel plans. Maybe all of them thought that she was naive and foolish – as if there weren’t a thousand different worlds out there with women mothering in a million different ways.
It felt as though they would always think of her as the baby of the family. Laughable, when she was old enough to officially make this a geriatric pregnancy. Somehow she felt too youngandtoo old to have a baby, both at the same time.
And in spite of all her fears and reservations, she loved her baby fiercely. Already. Sight unseen.
“Auntie?” Harper crash landed in the sand beside her. “Will you hunt for sea glass with me?”
Akemi stretched and looked around, wondering where Harper’s playmates had gone. Hayden was down the beach with Oakley, swimming in the big waves. Pete and Mia were down near the river, deep in conversation as they stacked careful towers of river stones.
She looked back at eight-year-old Harper. River water dripped from her dark hair, and her brown eyes were wide in a silent plea for attention.
Akemi smiled. “Sure.”
They walked to the river mouth and picked their way slowly along the edge, hunting for bits of color amidst the black and gray. This beach in particular was a treasure trove; any handful of sand taken from the water’s edge was almost certain to contain at least one piece of water-smoothed glass.
Before long, they had amassed a pile of color. Brown and clear and green, mostly, but a good amount of blue as well, and bits of golden amber.
They smoothed out a patch of black sand and created a mandala, working their way out from a polished white scrap of dishware that Harper had placed in the center.
She wandered off after a while, but Akemi kept working. There was something deeply peaceful about the process of creating the mandala. She loved sitting there in the warm sand, placing the bits of glass, letting her mind rest in the present moment instead of spiraling off towards the future.
“Can we start the fire now?” Pete asked.
Akemi blinked herself out of her meditative trance and looked at her nephew, then up at the sky. It was still full daylight, but the shade from the cliffs was gaining ground. Soon the sun would drop behind the mountain, and a sudden chill would overtake the beach.
“Did you gather enough driftwood?” she asked.
“We have a big pile, look!” He pointed to a spot where they had gathered a sizable stack of sun-dried wood.
“Okay, lets do it. Just give me a few minutes, and I’ll meet you over there.”
She grabbed her phone and snapped a picture of the mandala before the tide came to wash it away. Then she dove into the river one last time, washed the sand off of her body, and pulled a dress on over her swimsuit.
The kids had already dug out a pit in the sand and placed a circle of stones around it. With help and supervision from their aunties, they had a crackling fire going by the time the sun disappeared and the temperature dropped. It was big enough to warm all of them: the five Aloha sisters and the five children too.
Wordlessly, Halia produced a bag of marshmallows. A cheer went up from the kids. Oakley wrinkled her nose, probably atthe grocery-store brand and its questionable ingredients, but she managed to keep her mouth shut.
The kids went hunting again, this time for sticks narrow enough to use for roasting marshmallows. Then it was just the five sisters, warm firelight on their face amidst the twilight gloom of the deserted beach.
Akemi felt a wonderful sense of peace… which was then punctured by a sudden realization. She wanted to stay right where she was. For the first time in her life, she wasn’t looking forward to her upcoming travels.
She didn’t want to leave.
10
