Unburying Hope (48 page)

Rosalinda’s clothes were neatly folded back
into her three drawers.
 
Pants were
in the bottom drawer, sweaters, t-shirts and sweatshirts in the middle, socks
and underwear in the top drawer.
 
There was a threadbare, too-small bathing suit that would need to be
replaced before Rosalinda could swim in the surf down at the beach.

Celeste had said quietly, “I don’t see any
dresses,” when she was unpacking the black trash bag and folding the clothes
earlier in the evening.

Rosalinda said, “No, Grandma told me not to
climb up where boys could see my underwear but I always climb, so ‘no more
dresses’, Grandma said.”

You have those lycra shorts you wear for PE
class?”

“Yes.”

“Wear them under a dress.
 
That way you’re always private.”

Rosalinda nodded thoughtfully.
 
“I can get into PE class easier, if I
already have my shorts on.”

“Sure, and wear a camisole underneath, since
you’re going to be a young lady soon.”

Rosalinda had preened a bit, unused to
permission to be herself, unused to someone ahead of her who could
affirmatively shepherd her through the path of growing up.

She’d fallen asleep fitfully but quickly,
exhausted by the terrible trauma of the day.

Now Celeste stood alone, staring out the open
front door into the darkness.

Frank had been devastated when she Skyped
him.
 
She could see that he wanted
to jump on a plane but she’d convinced him to wait again.
 
Not enough was known yet about the
explosions in Hana and she felt the truth on her tongue when she said, “I need
time alone with Rosalinda.”
 
Frank
hadn’t been offended.
 
Instead, his
face had glowed, his eyes filled with tears and he’d said, “my little girl has
grown up.”

She stood alone, the cottage quiet.
 
Malia’s grandson had come to collect
her, nearly crushing her in his hug, yelling at her in a lowered, broken
hearted voice, in Japanese.
 
Malia’s eyes were closed, she accepted his hug, his arms held her both
gently and firmly.
 
She’d opened
her eyes and blown a kiss to Celeste, then taken her grandson’s hand and his
voice changed from admonition to fear and, in English, he said, “I need you,
Grandma, I really need you.”

Everyone had made it through their loss,
Celeste thought.
 
The first wave of
shock and fear and grief had leveled them.
 
But they’d had each other as shelter from the aftershocks,
the invisible emotional earthquakes that rolled under and through them.

She didn’t know what she should think.
 
She knew nothing would be clear for
days.

So she stood, staring out into the darkened
gloom, barefooted, in a camisole and panties, her long legs not cold, her arms
folded together in front of her chest to ward off the night that she wouldn’t
let embrace her.
 
Her long hair
kept her shoulders warm but the cool evening air would need to eventually be
addressed, she knew.
 
Not this
minute, though, and she walked out the front door into the dusky garden,
stepping lightly, like an ethereal shadow, threading between rose bushes,
sidestepping thorns and feeling the cool earth under her toes.
 
She found herself in the center of the
three redwoods in front of the porch and she realized that the trees created a
warm spot between them, so she dropped her hands to her side and stared up at
the black sky between the tops of her three trees.

The sound of the tires of a quiet car
crunching rocks outside of the boxwood fence disturbed her enough to cover her
barely dressed breasts and body.
 
She was ready to go back inside and climb under her comforter to weep,
not to meet visitors.

Lights from two cars lit the gravel outside,
parked parallel to the front boxwood wall.
 
She couldn’t see who was there.

She chose quickly to hug to the sturdiest
redwood, her body hidden by its solid girth.
 

She looked back to the darkened house,
realizing that her cell phone was on the table next to her bed.
 
For a terrified moment, she wondered if
the meth dealers were hunting down Eddie’s family, if she and Rosalinda were in
terrible danger of retribution.
 
Would they brazenly park so visibly in front of the house?

Leaning against the redwood, she listened to
her heart and felt the assurance that whoever was outside the property would
not hurt her or Rosalinda, so she turned her face back to the street,
forgetting any need to retrieve her phone, to watch as well as she could
through the thickness of the elder shrubs.

She heard the quieted thumping sounds of
people clutching each other in embraces, quick, strong.
 
It was men, she was sure.

Then two cars, ignitions turned on in tandem,
inched gently off the loose gravel of the side of the road, back onto the
pavement, driving quietly away.

She was so intent on following the sounds of
the leaving cars that she froze when she realized someone was standing stock
still inside the arbor, calibrating her presence.

Who?
 
She was cold now, uncovered in the cool night.

Neither moved, both solid footed on the earth.

She breathed as silently as she could, her
mind racing.
 
Then her heart spoke,
it screamed at her and she flew out of the redwoods, deftly avoiding the rose
bushes and the fruit trees she’d threaded so many times with her cups of
morning and evening tea.
 

Her tears flowed so hard that she could not
see him.
 
She didn’t need to.

Eddie gripped her too but she released her
hold on him long enough to pull a few inches away on the brick path.

His hands caressed her body, his lips gently
and firmly smothered her face with kisses while she pulled him closer and
closer until she knew it was him.
 
Alive, in her arms.

She grabbed his hand and pulled him into the
house, momentarily thinking of waking Rosalinda, but instead she hungrily led
him to their bed, tearing off the covers she’d so carefully and despondently
placed earlier when she thought that forever she would be sleeping alone.

In the darkness, still with the scent of the
strong trees in her burnt nostrils, she pulled him down, wrapping her arms and
legs around him, pressing her lips all over his face, meeting his ardor with
her own until their bodies joined and rocked and they kissed deeper than either
knew how and finally both their bodies exploded in passion.
 
Instead of rolling aside, they held
each other tight, continuing their deep kisses for what felt like an eternity
of un-clocked time.
 

The whole world outside fell away and the only
real thing was this moment, the physicality of their primal grip on each other.

“I thought you were dead,” she finally said,
when her lips had given him countless benedictions.

“I did too,” he said.

“Rosalinda, we both thought you were gone,”
the tears came again, this time softened by the reality that he was naked, warm
in her arms.
 
“Hana,” she said, her
mind racing with too many ways to tell him what she’d seen.

“Fuck, why the hell did you go to Hana?”

“We went looking for you, Rosalinda and Malia
and me.”

“You’re okay?” he asked.

“Yeah, your dive buddy gave us tanks after the
explosion, he got us on the road out.”

Eddie gripped her tight again and she said,
“We’re okay.”
 
Then, with another
realization that he was alive, she gripped him as hard as she could.
 
“So what the hell happened?” she asked.
 
“When we saw the explosion in Hana,
your buddy thought for sure you’d been in that house on the hill, Malia’s
house.
 
Malia was sure that you
were there.”

“I was in the house.
 
We had to time it closely so the dealers thought one bomb
went off.
 
But we didn’t know they
had all charged up there, ready for an all out war.
 
Two different families and two branches of the Mexican
cartel all showed up with guns out and they blew up the entire house and the
hillside around it.”

“We?”
 
Celeste finally realized that in her fear and then joy, she hadn’t
thought of Eddie having help.

“The local cops.
 
The Kihei cops spread the word about my sound bombs in
Detroit.”

“But the bombs in Hana, they were one after
the other,” Celeste said, circling back to the trauma of the day.

“They weren’t supposed to be.
 
Those insane dumbasses blew themselves
up.
 
They lit their own
explosions.
 
There was nothing to
do but send in the haz mat guys and thank god the DEA guys were there because
they had the equipment in their vans.
 
They went in and found all these dead bodies, like a war zone.”

“Why didn’t you die?
 
Everyone said you were in the walls of the house?”

“I was.
 
But I got a really strong premonition that something had gone
wrong.
 
I hadn’t done the
reconnaissance.
 
I’d let the cops
do it.
 
But you’ve got to do your
own, you have to know the perimeter and your exits, like I taught you.
 
And I knew that I would be trapped
there.
 
I got out of the wall and
headed to the back of the house when I saw all the cars speeding up.
 
It was not what we planned.
 
The cartel got everyone freaked out and
they were going to take out the local guys.
 
So I headed up into the hills, signaling the cops and we all
got out of range right as things blew.”

Celeste held his face in her hands.

“We just stopped to check in with Malia.
 
That’s how I knew you thought I was
dead,” Eddie said.
 
“She was so
tired and she shooed me off to come home here to see you.
 
She gave me this to give to you.
 
He reached over to his pants on the
floor and pulled out an amulet.
 
“It’s jade and has a phoenix on it.”

She held it in her hands, feeling its cool
touch.

“Celeste,” he said, pulling her into a full
body hug, “I need to go away for a few weeks, maybe 30 days.”

Her heart in her throat, Celeste threw her
arms around his neck, “Why Why Why?” she cried, pulling him as close as she
could.

“I need to go into rehab.”
 
He hung his head.
 
“The local cops, they said they’d help
me.
 
I’ve got to kick my addictions
to my meds.”

“What about the dive shop?”

“Well,” he said hesitantly, “I know I was rude
to you about it but you could run it.
 
Malia’s grandson can work for you.
 
And when I get back we can work it together.
 
It would be good for Rosalinda to see a woman run a business
too.”

“Rosalinda thinks you’re dead,” Celeste
froze.
 
“She thought she should go
to an orphanage.”

His face fell.
 
“I didn’t think you would even know I was involved in Hana,”
he said, “but Malia said you both outsmarted me.”
 
He brushed the hair off her forehead.
 
“I’ll get dressed and go wake Rosalinda
up, let her know everything is okay.”

“Is it?” Celeste asked, cautiously.

“I need to do right by you,” he said.

She looked at his face in the bare moonlit
room.
 
Rehab was their best hope.

“Will you marry me?” he asked, his eyes clear,
his face filled with love and determination.

“Marry you?” Celeste asked.
 
She’d seen Malia breaking apart roses
and shaping small hearts on the paths with the petals out in the yard the other
day.
 
She felt the jade phoenix in
her fingertips.
 
Did the little
witch make this happen?

“I love you.
 
I want to get better with you, to live a long life with
you.
 
I will raise Rosalinda so you
don’t have to when I get back.”

“No, I told her I’m raising her,” Celeste
said, her voice softening.
 
“She’s
my girl and I’m her Momma, that’s what we agreed.”

His face radiated with joy and he grabbed her
hands.
 
“Marry me, please, Celeste.
 
Malia says she’ll sell me this house.”

Celeste sat up, her eyes lit with her own
happiness.
 
“Yes,” she said simply.