Meghan drew Oriana into a hug and sighed into her neck. “He’s going to be all right, honey,” she said. And for the first time in months, Oriana found that she actually believed her sister.
It had been a difficult road of three different treatments plus surgery. But now, Reese was fully cleared of cancer, fully in remission. Oriana felt ragged, underslept, and overjoyed. Shedidn’t like to think about how much of her had assumed Reese would pass away.
When Reese spotted Meghan and Hugo on the veranda, he picked up their grandson and hurried through the sand to greet them. There was color in his cheeks and fat on his thighs. Oriana wanted to sink down and kiss the fat on his legs and his belly. She wanted to tell him to eat till he was stuffed. Hunger meant he was all right. Cravings meant he was alive.
That evening, after Alexa had picked Benny up, Meghan, Hugo, Reese, and Oriana sat on the veranda table, sipping wine and eating burgers and homemade onion rings. Oriana couldn’t help but stare at Reese often, mesmerized by how alive he seemed and how funny he was, now that his energy was returning. He made Hugo laugh so hard, once, that he spat beer across his shirt.
“Has she told you where we’re off to in a few days?” Reese asked, tipping his beer toward Oriana and wagging his eyebrows. He knew that Oriana had been keeping this news close to her chest. He knew that she’d expected something would keep them home, that something with Reese’s health would go wrong. But nothing had. Maybe nothing would.
“Why are you being so secretive?” Meghan asked, clasping Oriana’s hand.
Oriana laughed and brushed her hair behind her shoulders. “It’s not really a secret. It’s sort of spontaneous, I guess? I mean, I didn’t think we’d make it happen.”
“We’re going, baby,” Reese said. “We’re headed to Hawaii.”
Meghan and Hugo gasped and peppered them with questions. Which island and how long?
Reese said, “I’ll let Oriana explain. If she wants to.”
Oriana braced herself and laughed again. “You remember all that drama with Larry Calvin Johannes?”
“Of course we do,” Meghan said, narrowing her eyes. “What has he done now?”
“Nothing, actually. His new paintings aren’t selling. People are beginning to suspect that I was right about the true painter behind his other pieces,” Oriana said.
“No surprise there,” Meghan said. “You’re only an expert in the art world.”
“You should see my paintings,” Oriana said, scoffing. “I’m terrible!”
“You are not!” Meghan threw her head back. “But come on. What’s up?”
Oriana went on to explain what had happened two months ago. A woman named Jenny had called her to say she was pretty sure Henrietta Johannes was her mother and that she’d been going by a different name for fifty years. “Her mother had begun painting again,” Oriana explained. “Jenny recognized something in the works sold under Larry’s name, and she recognized something about the Larry Johannes story. She felt her mother behind the works. She felt her mother behind Larry’s lies. She couldn’t really explain it. She said she had to approach her mother about it before she got back with me.”
“I can’t believe she called without talking to her mother first,” Meghan breathed.
“That’s what I said,” Oriana offered. “Imagine hiding yourself away for fifty years, only to have your daughter call someone and tell them where you are.”
Meghan puffed out her cheeks. “She’s lucky it was you and not somebody else.”
Reese nodded furiously.
“I don’t know. But Reese and I have been so busy with everything,” Oriana went on. “I didn’t have much time to think about Jenny and her mother and Larry, not till last week, when Jenny called me again and said she and her mother had spokenand they wanted to invite me out to Hawaii to talk. Apparently, her mother wants to explain everything in person. She doesn’t trust the phones.”
Meghan and Hugo gave them looks of shock. Reese touched Oriana’s shoulder and smiled. “We deserve a vacation, anyway,” he said. “I need to get my tan back. And I want to eat a pound of fish every day.”
Before they left that night, Meghan and Hugo hugged Reese and Oriana goodbye and wished them well on their journey. Oriana and Reese returned to the veranda and sat beneath a sky bright with countless stars. Oriana turned to burrow her face in Reese’s chest. She heard the vibrant beating of his heart. She felt breath coming in and out of his lungs.
Everything was going to be all right, she knew. Somehow, she knew.
Their flight landed on Oahu, Hawaii, three days later at five o’clock in the evening. Reese had slept and eaten his way across the continent and part of the Pacific, but as soon as the plane stopped rolling, he admitted he was hungry again. Oriana laughed and promised they could find a snack on the way to the hotel. They planned to meet Jenny and her mother later that evening at a beach bar and taco stand. It wasn’t at all the stylish meeting that Oriana was accustomed to with other artists. But she knew that Henrietta Johannes wasn’t just another artist. She was someone special.
Oriana surprised Reese with a bright-red Bentley convertible rental car. At the rental place, she watched with her arms crossed as Reese walked around it, surveying it, his mouth open with surprise.
“I’ve always wanted to drive one of these,” he said, mystified.
“I know,” she said. Was there anything she didn’t know about Reese, about his dreams, about his past? Oriana didn’t know. She knew the important things, she guessed. She knew she loved him and always would.
They got in the car—Oriana in the passenger seat and Reese on the driver’s side. He fiddled with the radio until he found a Supertramp song and stepped on the gas. Oriana felt a level of freedom she hadn’t imagined for herself: the Hawaiian winds in her hair, Reese’s favorite songs through the speakers of a rental car, and Reese’s enormous smile. They soon pulled into a little snack shack where they shared a platter of fried fish and watched the water roll along the beach. Surfers were in the distance, sweeping across waves higher than their house in Martha’s Vineyard. It was an entirely different ocean, an entirely different vibe.
