“That’s rough.”
“It’s terrifying. I can’t wrap my head around the thought of handing my daughter’s whole life over to a stranger who’s never even met her. That’s insane. It makes me think of foster care. I never in a million years thought my daughter would be in the same position that I was.”
“It’s not the same,” he said gently. “She has two parents who care about her.”
Laurie swallowed and nodded, forced to concede the point.
“That doesn’t mean it’s not hard.” Like any beginner, his movements were slow and deliberate – but he got every sign right.
“Are you even real?”
Kekoa laughed in surprise. “What?”
With just a few weeks of work – and God only knew how many hours that man was studying every day, to learn this quickly – he was already signing at least as well as Dawn, who had been using ASL for well over three decades.
“My mother never learned to sign,” Laurie said.
“Your birth mother?” he asked.
She nodded.
“Weren’t you always a Kalama? Since you were really little, I mean?”
“Yes and no… The Kalamas fostered me from the time I was five, but my mom never relinquished her rights. Sometimes she would get clean and find a place to live, and the state would send me back to her for a while. Mostly I was with Dawn and Kimo… but she never let them adopt me. They did anyway, once I was eighteen.”
“Are you two still in touch?”
“She passed away a few years ago. I hadn’t seen her in a long time. She never met Mia.” Laurie frowned and scratched the back of her neck. “Sorry. I don’t even know why I started talking about her.”
“She never learned to sign.”
“Right.” Laurie’s stomach did a miserable little sommersault. It shouldn’t still hurt; she should be past it by now. But she wasn’t, and it did.
“I’m sorry.”
She nodded and looked out at the orchard, where Kekoa’s son was climbing trees with his cousins.
“What happened to ‘Iolani’s mom?” Laurie asked.
“She left when he was two.”
She gave him a sharp look, and he shrugged. “‘Io wasn’t… planned. His mother never wanted to be a mom. She tried for a while, but in the end, she just… I don’t know, she didn’t want to. So she left. She moved to Maui.”
“Does she see him at all?”
“She visits once or twice a year. Calls about once a month. She flew him out to visit her for a week last summer. Sometimes I think it’s almost worse than going no contact, but… I don’t know. It’s his mom.”
“So you’ve been raising him by yourself since he was two.”
“I wouldn’t say that.” He gestured towards the main house. “I have my family.”
Laurie nodded, looking at him with new respect.
“What?”
“I don’t know. I guess I still think of you as the mischievous kid I knew growing up. We haven’t seen each other for so long.”
“You expected me to keep on acting like an eight year old?”
