Claire came back outside as Anne was opening up a can of paint. Pete trailed behind her, red-eyed and forlorn.
“I don’t really want to live with Dad,” Claire said. Pete hugged her waist, and she put an arm around his shoulders. “But I don’t want to live here either.”
“How about we take things as they come?” Anne said. “I know the uncertainty isn’t easy. But until we get some money coming in,hereis our only option.”
“Okay,” Claire said quietly.
“We’re lucky to have a family home to come to.”
“I know.” She had been to A Place of Refuge – Halia’s shelter for women and children – plenty of times growing up. She and Pete had heard the other kids’ stories of living in cars and tents and moldy old shacks. They’d seen what happened to people who had no one to turn to.
“Did I ever tell you the story of how your grandma and I came to live at the Kalama place?” Anne knew that she hadn’t; she had been waiting for them to be old enough to understand the family’s complicated origin story. Now both of her children looked at her with expectant eyes.
“Weren’t you born here?” Claire asked.
“Sure was. Right there in the back bedroom.” The house was smaller then; it hadn’t yet gotten the add-ons that would allow for more and more children. “But I came here already in her belly.”
“I don’t get it,” Pete said.
She paused to dip her roller in the paint and asked herself how much of the story she wanted to share with her children – particularly Pete, who was a young and innocent nine.
There were broad, dark swaths of her mother’s upbringing that even she didn’t know about – chapters that Dawn had buried entirely.
“Grandma was living down in Puna with my biological father,” she began.
“Wait,” Pete interrupted, wide-eyed. “Grandpa wasn’t your dad?”
“He was my dad,” Anne said calmly, eyes on her work, “but Grandma was already pregnant with me when she met him.”
“So who’s your real dad?”
“Kimo.” She took a moment to look her son in the eye. “Your grandpa’s the only dad I ever had.”
“Okay,” he said, still looking confused.
“It’s like how Auntie Oakley isn’t Hayden and Harper’s birth mom,” Claire said, “but she’s still their real mom, you know?”
“Yeah, okay.”
“I never met my biological father,” Anne said. “He wasn’t a good guy – or at least, he wasn’t ready to be a dad, or even a partner. He and Grandma were just a couple of kids, really. Teenagers.” She paused to sponge up more paint. “They were living in a shack in the jungle, somewhere down off the red road.”
“So wait.” Claire tilted her head to one side. “How did Grandma and Grandpa meet?”
“Grandma’s boyfriend kicked her out, I think, or things got bad enough that she left. I’m fuzzy on the details; she doesn’t talk about it much. Anyway, she went walking up the red road with just the clothes on her back. Just one of those really hopeless situations that young women can get into down there.” She trailed off, focused on her work.
“And then what?” Claire pressed.
“Along came Kimo.” Anne shot her a smile as she moved down the wall. “Pick up a brush, would you? Give me a hand with those tricky spots around the windows.”
“Just like… driving down the road?” Claire dabbed a sponge brush in the white paint.
“Exactly. He’s headed to the beach, and he sees this girl walking down the road.”
“Barefoot and pregnant,” Dawn chimed in.
Anne jumped in surprise and turned to see her mother watching them from the lanai. There was a sparkle in Dawn’s eyes that had been absent for a long time.
“Belly out to here,” she added, gesturing in front of her. “I was walking to a friend’s house a few miles down the road. I didn’t have any plans past that – it wasn’t even a good friend I was looking for, just someone I knew who lived close. Anyway, this guy stopped to ask me if I was okay.
