“Come on. Let’s get your stuff inside.”
Anne and her kids hauled their luggage out of the back of the van, then up the steps of thelanaiand into the house. The spacious front room felt cavernous and empty without her dad’s larger-than-life presence there to fill it.
“The prodigal daughter returns.”
Anne knew that voice right away, before she even turned to look. The youngest of the Kalama girls wore oversized clothes and a scornful expression. Her hair, once a deep and gorgeous auburn, had been bleached (again) and dyed acid green.
“Zoe,” Anne said, heart in her throat. “Hi.”
Zoe’s eyes narrowed. “Hello, Mother.”
2
Laurie
Anne stood frozen, staring at her eldest daughter.
Born when Anne was still in high school, Zoe was raised by her grandparents. She’d been a happy little girl, and the whole family had doted on her… but then, near the start of her teen years, she’d retreated into herself.
It was an impulse that Laurie sympathized with.
Zoe had silver-gray eyes and dark golden skin, a contrast that made everyone stare. Worse, she had the kind of body that attracted attention even from a distance. That had been true for a long time, ever since adolescence.
It was awful, the way men leered at thirteen-year-old girls.
But Zoe had retreated from everyone, including Laurie. Even now, well into her twenties, she kept the entire family at arm’s length.
Laurie had tried to connect with her; they all had. Some of the family came close – Zoe loved her little cousins, and she’dadored her grandfather – but she never really connected with anyone on a deeper level.
There was a wall there that no one could get past.
It seemed as though Zoe didn’t knowhowto lower her defenses, even around her family… a feeling that wasn’t entirely unfamiliar to Laurie.
Despite growing up in a loving home, Zoe had grown up to be more closed off than any of the Aloha sisters – or even most of the foster kids who’d passed through the Kalama place, many of whom had stayed in touch ever since.
Laurie didn’t fully understand why her niece was so guarded, but she did her best to be there for her. Throughout everything that had happened in her own life, she’d worked to keep the lines of communication open so that Zoe could open up if she ever felt ready.
She was fully walled off that day, though. Arms crossed over her chest, staring at her mother with a glare that pinned her to the floor.
Anne’s relationship with Zoe had never been easy, but they had reached a fragile truce in recent years… a peace that seemed to have dissolved in the wake of Kimo’s death, along with so many other things.
Pete came barrelling through the room, breaking the spell on Anne. Zoe thawed too, smiling at her little brother. He threw his arms open to hug her; she dodged him playfully, then ruffled his hair and offered him a double high five.
Anne turned away and started hauling her biggest suitcase upstairs.
“Hey Pizza,” Zoe said. “How was your flight?”
Pete’s response was long and enthusiastic. He was turned away from Laurie, so she heard only a faint stream of sound. Something about the movies he watched on the plane, maybe.Unless she could see someone’s face to read their lips, she didn’t hear enough to understand much.
Even when she paired lipreading with her hearing aids, her comprehension was never quite one hundred percent – but then again, as her adoptive mom liked to remind her, nobody understood anybody one hundred percent of the time. Growing up, it was a refrain that occasionally comforted Laurie… or more often made her feel even more frustrated and misunderstood.
Claire came through the door and grinned at her big sister. Half sister, technically, but that modifier was never used in the Kalama family. It was doubly irrelevant in a culture where every neighbor was a ‘cousin’ and elders were called Auntie or Uncle.
Zoe was cooler with Claire than with Pete, but still kinder than she ever was to Anne. The lanky teenager and her much-older sister looked so alike that Laurie couldn’t stop staring.
Laurie didn’t resemble anyone she knew – not her daughter, not her birth mother, and certainly not her adopted family. Her high cheekbones and clear brown eyes had come from relatives she had never seen, not even in photos.
The face in the mirror didn’t look like anyone she had ever known.
