Travel was her everything: her passion, her love, her life’s work. It sustained her, both literally and figuratively. No matter how many places she visited, there was always more to see. She couldn’t imagine giving that all up.
She was glad to be home. She had longed for it. But she knew herself, and she knew that within a few weeks, she would be itching to fly someplace new.
And to complicate matters even more, she missed Lorenzo.
She had never missed a man before, not the way she missed him. But this budding partnership was different from any other relationship she had experienced. They were already a family, in their own unique and disjointed way.
How would that change once their baby was born?
Akemi would be happy to visit Italy once or twice a year – long visits to a villa just outside of Florence weren’t exactly a chore – but she wasn’t willing to move there permanently.
She loved Pualena, and if she couldn’t live full time in such an idyllic climate, surrounded by the people she loved most in the world… well, she didn’t suppose she would ever be ready to settle down anywhere.
She spooned up the last few beans from her bowl of soup and then stood to take it to the sink.
“I’ll wash that.” Anne appeared in front of her. “You must be exhausted.”
Akemi smiled and nodded. Her mind was worrying a mile a minute, as it so often did these days, but her legs were ready to collapse. Even speaking felt like it might take more energy than she had left.
“Do you need anything?” her sister asked.
“Help with my bags?”
“Of course!” She sprang into action and grabbed the bags that Akemi had left on the lanai.
After many, many years as a backpacker, Akemi had finally called it quits and switched to rolling luggage – at least for the duration of her pregnancy – though she didn’t suppose carrying a baby along with a backpack would be any easier.
She would just have to figure things out, one stage at a time.
Anne hauled her luggage up the stairs, and Akemi hauled herself, one laborious step at a time. Her sister left the bags near the door of her room, and Akemi continued down to the bathroom for a quick shower. She was almost tired enough to skip it, but she was also desperate to wash away all the grime of travel.
With that done, she waddled down the hall to the bedroom that had been hers ever since she was a teenager. Her home basethroughout all her adventurous decades of travel. Her own little den.
She closed the door, flopped onto the bed, and fell instantly asleep.
24
Laurie
“I understand that neither of you are fully happy with this agreement,” said the mediator, “but that’s the nature of compromise. You can revisit and adjust things as necessary as your daughter grows, but the important thing is to provide her with a sense of safety and stabilitynow.”
By some miracle, the man had maneuvered Chris into a custody agreement. Laurie had helped the process along by making financial concessions left and right in favor of more time with her daughter.
The mediator had talked a great deal about the process of going in front of a judge – the long wait times, the expense, the complete lack of control – and finally Chris had agreed to allow Laurie to homeschool their daughter.
They would have joint legal custody, and he would have the right to however many weekends he chose to claim each month.
It was the best that Laurie could reasonably hope for. She had seen enough of the court system second-hand to understand how difficult it was for one parent to get full custody. Judges consistently valued the rights of a parent over the wellbeing of their child. Barring life-threatening danger to the kids, both parents were entitled to fifty percent custody.
If she continued to fight, there was no guarantee that she would even get her daughter five days per week; if she made Chris angry again, it could just as easily go the other way, with the court mandating that Mia return to school in Hawi and be allowed weekend visitation with her mother.
Realistically, this was the best possible outcome.
But it still tasted like defeat.
Eight full days a month was more time than Chris had ever spent with Mia when they lived in the same house, and it was far more time than Laurie had ever spent away from her daughter.
Mia wasn’t a baby anymore, Laurie reminded herself. They would be together most of the time. They would make it through.
