“I would miss Hawaii, too,” Jasmine said.
“But you’re not from here.” Chase looked at her quizzically.
“I am now,” Jasmine said.
Chase looked vaguely annoyed but ready to laugh it off. “All right, Grandma. Keep your secrets.” He ran up ahead, leaving Jasmine’s heart churning. Was it so obvious that she’d drawn aboundary between this life and her past life? Was it obvious that she refused to say?
When they’d been hiking for nearly two hours, they took a break on a hillside overlooking the ocean. The girls removed sandwiches, waters, and more trail mix from their packs and passed them out, looking dutiful and pleased with themselves. Jasmine took a bite and told them the sandwich was sensational, and they giggled.
“Chase says you won’t tell us about the lower forty-eight,” Jade said, her mouth half full of sandwich.
Jasmine’s stomach fizzed. “That’s not true.”
“What are they like?” Alyssa asked, leaning forward, her eyes catching the sunlight. “I mean, what are some of the states we should go to when we finally get over there?”
To her grandchildren, Jasmine realized, the lower forty-eight were mysterious stretches of mountains and river-veined lands, plains and cities, and millions and millions of people they’d never know.
“I didn’t go to all of them,” Jasmine admitted. “But I traveled a bit before I came out to Hawaii. That’s how I knew I loved to travel. I knew how easy it was to start over, to pretend you were someone you weren’t. When you go somewhere new, nobody knows your backstory. Nobody knows if you’re telling something that isn’t true. You can invent anything you want to. You can start again.” Jasmine felt carried away, her chest heavy with the pressure of what she knew and what no one else ever would.
Her grandkids continued to blink at her, their sandwiches poised in front of unmoving mouths. Jasmine forced a smile and gestured vaguely toward a bird watching them from a fat old palm. “They don’t have birds like that in the lower forty-eight,” she told them, surprised that tears felt so entirely near. “Your life in Hawaii is unlike any life the other Americans live. Your life is more like a fantasy, more like a fairy tale. You have the water andthe sun and divine food and the mystical stories of Cynthia and her native Hawaiian family members. You have so much. Tell me. Why are you curious about that dark world we left behind?”
Her grandkids exchanged glances. Finally, a spell was broken as they chuckled.
“We want to travel like you, Grandma.” Jade rolled her eyes.
“You can’t hate us for being curious,” Alyssa affirmed.
Chase threw a peanut into the air and caught it on his tongue. He threw his hands in the air in celebration, and Alyssa and Jade immediately tried to copy him, throwing M&Ms and raisins until the ground was scattered with them. When they urged Jasmine to try, she caught an M&M on the first try and grinned as her grandkids celebrated. It was remarkable to see herself through their eyes: an older woman with secrets, an older woman who still wanted to give surfing a try. She wasn’t dead yet. She still felt the story of the next years of her life, shaking at the tips of her fingers.
Chapter Seven
It was after the party at the Jessabelle House that Oriana and Reese found themselves in the Nantucket Hospital, waiting to hear from the doctor. Oriana gripped Reese’s hand tenderly and bit her tongue to keep from crying. She knew that many of her Coleman family members were in the waiting room, refusing to return to the party or to their respective houses until they learned that Reese was stable.
The strange thing was that Reese seemed pretty dang stable right now. He sat up in bed and looked curiously around the room, his color brighter than it had been that morning. His cheeks were still sunken from his dramatic weight loss, but he cracked jokes every few minutes and seemed to delight in Oriana’s smile. He’d collapsed out of the blue, but maybe it was simply exhaustion. He kept talking about how tired he was. For the first time—perhaps ever—Oriana wondered if they should talk more seriously about early retirement.
“I think we should head home,” Reese was saying, rubbing his thin thighs beneath the sheets. “I don’t want to waste any of these doctors’ time. I feel fine. Honestly.”
Oriana’s chest throbbed with worry and sorrow. How could she tell Reese that she didn’t think he was fine, that she wantedto stay at the hospital and demand every test? She didn’t want to worry him more than he already was. She wanted to be light, comical, and breezy.
But this was the love of her life, there in the hospital bed, exhausted and thin. She needed answers.
“Baby,” Oriana whispered, lacing her fingers through his, “let’s tell the doctor what’s really going on. Okay?”
It took Reese a long time to meet her gaze. When he did, Oriana saw a flicker of anger, up against an unending tunnel of sorrow and fear. It was clear he didn’t know what to say, nor how to face this. He’d always been healthy. He’d always been a clean-eating, exercise freak.
“You’re going to be fine,” Oriana added.
When Dr. Miller came in to talk to them, he was friendly, easygoing, and open to their suggestions. When Reese tried again to get out of any future testing, Oriana gave him a hard look that forced him to say, “Well, I have been tired lately. And I’ve dropped maybe twenty pounds. Rapidly.” He looked embarrassed, like he’d done something wrong.
The doctor ordered a number of tests, all of which could be done back on their home island of Martha’s Vineyard. He had his secretary make a series of appointments for them. Oriana felt as though she were deep underwater, watching and listening as things happened around her, and she struggled to maintain her position in the black wet darkness. When Reese got dressed and was wheeled out of the hospital, she walked beside him, keeping her chin up. The Coleman family stragglers ran after them and stood in the blinding October sunshine.
They seemed not to want to overwhelm Reese and Oriana, but their eyes searched for answers.
“Everything is fine,” Reese informed them. “Except it seems that I’m getting old. Who knew that would happen?”
Meghan and her husband, Hugo, chuckled nervously. Sam and Hilary crossed and uncrossed their arms in disbelief.
“Do you want to come back to the house and rest?” Sam asked. “We’ll disband the party and keep it down.”
