“That’s Chase’s music,” Alyssa said, appearing in the foyer. “Mom always tells him to turn it down. He thinks because she’s not here, he can blare it and ANNOY EVERYONE!” Alyssa yelled those last few words. Jasmine winced.
“Let’s go out to eat,” Jasmine suggested. “Go tell your brother.”
Within five minutes, the four of them were walking through the evening, headed for the kids’ favorite burger place. Jasmine was grateful that their favorite place was also one of the cheapest in the area.
“Where did Dad take Mom?” Alyssa asked, twirling her hair around her finger.
“He took her to Kauai,” Chase announced, presumably because he’d been home when their mother and father had packed up and left. He had more information than anyone else.
“Fancy,” Jade said.
“I don’t know how he’s going to afford it,” Alyssa said snidely. “Every other day, he’s telling us that he can’t afford our food or our clothes or whatever.”
“And he’s always telling me I need to get my own place,” Chase said, scuffing his shoe against the sidewalk. “I buy my own food! Like he told me to!” Chase cackled, as though it didn’t bother him to buy his own groceries in the house where he’d grown up.
Jasmine’s heart skipped a beat. But she told herself not to ask too many questions and not to lecture her grandchildren about their sinister father and his sinister habits. It wasn’t her place.
At the burger restaurant, Jasmine ordered a burger with blue cheese and a big platter of french fries and onion rings for the table. The kids got their usual orders: a veggie burger for Alyssa, a bacon cheeseburger for Chase, and a burger with extra onions and no cheese for Jade. They opted for milkshakes because it felt like a vacation. Jasmine felt like she was floating. It was hard to believe she’d ever avoided such decadent food to look better in a bikini. It was delicious.
“I think we should go for a hike tomorrow,” she announced.
“What about school?” Jade asked.
Jasmine considered this. Back when Jenny was a girl, she’d let her play hooky every now and again, if only to celebrate the beautiful world around them and the fact of their freedom. But she was worried that Jenny wouldn’t let her spend time with the grandkids anymore if she found out that she’d let them skip school.
“We’ll go on Saturday,” Jasmine said, which was the day after tomorrow. “I’ll swap shifts with someone. We’ll go to Diamond Head. Wear your athletic shoes!”
Chase laughed and admitted he was curious about going as well. “I have to teach a surf lesson in the morning, but I’ll be finished by eleven or so.”
“We’ll wait for you.” Jasmine grinned as she selected a crunchy fry from the pile.
Miraculously, Jasmine was able to swap her Saturday shift for a Friday shift, which left her Saturday free and clear for a gorgeous hike with her grandkids. Friday, she was extra joyful with customers, commenting on the weather and asking where they’d come from. Most of them were on fall break. They were from Indiana, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, and Wyoming. They all said Hawaii was paradise, and Jasmine agreed.
“But I could never live here,” a guy from Illinois told her. “It’s like living in a postcard. I can’t imagine I would get anything done!” He looked at her with a mix of confusion and curiosity. Probably, he assumed that she’d wasted her life out here, that that was why she didn’t have enough money to retire and had to keep working at the convenience store, brewing coffees and chatting with people she’d never see again. Maybe he was right. She grinned back at him, almost as a challenge to tell her what he was thinking. But he packed up his supplies and left.
At eleven fifteen on Saturday, Chase returned to the house for the hike. Jasmine, Alyssa, and Jade had spent the morning making sandwiches, packing up water, and making homemade trail mix with M&Ms, peanuts, and raisins. Chase high-fived them and said that the tourists he’d been teaching that morning “didn’t manage to stand at all. Not even once!” He said he felt like a failure. “But they signed up for another lesson tomorrow,” Chase explained as he put on his hiking shoes, pulling the laces taut. “I guess they had a good time getting swallowed again and again by the waves.”
Jasmine mentioned that she was due for another lesson.
“Grandma, I don’t know,” Chase said. “You’ve been living in Hawaii for how long? And you still haven't learned to surf?”
“Fifty years,” Jasmine said wistfully.
“I think it’s too late,” Chase said.
Alyssa swatted her brother. “It’s never too late!” she declared. “Don’t be stupid. I’m going to learn new thingsthroughout my life. I’m going to ski down a mountain when I’m eighty-five and write the best American novel of all time at one hundred.”
Jasmine giggled. “That’s the spirit, honey.”
Jasmine drove the four of them out to Diamond Head, where they slung their packs over their shoulders and set out on the trail. It was seventy-eight degrees, and they’d slathered themselves with suntan lotion and protected themselves with baseball hats. As they went, Alyssa and Jade gossiped lightly about high school and people they knew, while Chase remained quiet, his eyes to the horizon. Sometimes Jasmine could find her husband’s face in Chase’s face, which made her feel strange and hollow. How she’d loved that face! How she loved Chase’s face now.
Time was a strange thing. It always found a way of making you feel misplaced.
“Grandma.” Chase interrupted her reverie. “How come you never go back to the mainland?”
“My family lives in Hawaii,” she said. “You, Jenny, and your sisters. You’re all here.”
“Yeah, but you must have had family before us,” Chase pointed out. “You had Mom here in Hawaii, but you came from somewhere. How come you never go back to see them?” He paused and wet his lips. “I mean, I’m from Hawaii. If I ever left Hawaii, like on vacation or something, I would miss Hawaii all the way down in my bones. I would count down the days till I get to come back.”
