After my shift, I picked up Tommy right on time.
He was crouched by the sandbox, holding a white shell up to the sun. The light came through it and painted his face red. When he saw me, he jumped up and ran into my arms.
"Mommy!" He shoved the shell into my pocket. "Look! I found this treasure in the sand! It's for you!"
I laughed and ruffled his messy curls. The soft texture under my fingers filled me with a happiness I'd never known before.
"Mommy, Lina said the luau this weekend has hula dancing! Can we go? She said she's wearing her prettiest grass skirt!"
"Yeah, we'll go." I nodded.
After work, I took Tommy to Lina's surf shop.
Six years ago, when I first landed in Oahu, I had nothing. I was desperate. It was Lina who took me in that rainy night when I was about to give birth—broke, terrified, alone.
Lina was a classic Hawaiian-Brazilian mix. Dark glowing skin, fiery personality. She was pushing surfboards on a customer when she saw us, dropped everything, and scooped up Tommy.
"Little hero! Did you behave at school today?" Lina planted a kiss on his cheek.
Tommy giggled and ran to the back to play with Lina's big dog. Lina pulled me behind the counter and handed me an ice-cold beer.
"So, Ella, Mark asked you out again today?" Lina raised an eyebrow and took a long pull.
I held the bottle and shook my head slowly. "Lina, I don't want a relationship. My life's calm now. Tommy's good. I don't want complications."
"Girl, you're twenty-eight, not eighty-two." Lina set down her beer and sighed. "Mark's a good man. The way he looks at you—like he'd carve his heart out and hand it to you."
"That's exactly why I can't drag him into this." I smiled bitterly, eyes drifting to the waves outside. "I can't go through that again, Lina. I don't have it in me to trust anyone like that anymore."
Lina went quiet for a moment, then patted my shoulder. "Six years, and you still haven't let that bastard go?"
"I let go of love. But I didn't let go of the lesson." I stared at the label on the bottle, voice low but firm. "He taught me one thing. You can't count on anyone but yourself."
The next few days, the temperature in Oahu climbed fast.
More patients flooded the hospital—tourists with heatstroke, surfers stung by sea life.
I kept up my usual brutal pace. Being busy was the best painkiller. It left no time for sadness. No time to remember Boston.
"Ella, room ten's got a foreign patient. I think she's speaking French. Go check it out," the head nurse said during rounds.
I froze. French? In Oahu, you didn't run into many French speakers—just the occasional European tourist.
"On it." I set down the tray and smoothed my uniform.
When I walked into room ten, I saw a middle-aged woman in an expensive silk blouse sitting on the bed.
"Bonjour," I said in French. "I'm Ella, the nurse here. How can I help you?"
The woman looked up, surprised. She clearly hadn't expected to find a French speaker in some backwater community hospital.
"Oh, dear, thank God. These locals don't understand a word I'm saying. I think I've sprained my ankle, and my skin's having some kind of allergic reaction."
"Let me take a look." I knelt down to examine her. The whole time, she complained nonstop—about the brutal sun, the shabby hospital.
During lunch, Mark found me again.
"That French lady was raving about you, Ella." Mark handed me a bottle of water. "Said your French is better than the translator she hired in Paris. Everyone's wondering—what did you do before this?"
