26. Nell

26

Nell

T he mood in the car was tense as they drove south to Punalu‘u.

Over the past few weeks, Hugh had spent countless hours negotiating with his ex-wife. She claimed that she was open to giving him primary physical custody, but every time he gave in to another one of her demands, she came up with new ones.

Nell didn’t know the woman, so she didn’t know if she was actively trying to torture him or just loath to let go of her little girl… at this point, it seemed like a bit of both.

Hugh was slowly losing hope as the weeks wore on.

With the end of summer approaching, he was faced with a choice: send Daisy to the mainland to start school in Washington state or take his case before a judge. Either option would be hard on his daughter and probably a nightmare for the whole family, and so he was holding out as long as he could.

He tried to keep his spirits up, tried to smile and play with his daughter in the time that they had left, but Nell had watched his mood deflate until he was driving around with a soul like a flat tire.

When the main road turned west, they followed a narrow road to the coast. Thick greenery swallowed them for a minute, plunging the car into shade, and then they burst back out into the sunlight of the beach parking lot.

ALOHA! Over by the picnic area, bright yellow letters shone a greeting against a deep blue backdrop. The beach itself seemed to soak up the sunlight. It was pitch-black on the shadowy side and dusted with golden light on the sunny side of the tiny hills and dunes that scalloped the surface of the sand. A thick line of palm trees angled towards the horizon, leaning eagerly towards the ocean waves.

“There’s Tenn’s truck,” she said, pointing. “And Emma’s car. Look, they saved us a spot.”

Hugh pulled into the free spot in the smaller parking lot that doubled as a campsite. All of their friends were there already, saltwater in their hair and smiles on their faces.

“Finally!” Daisy threw open the door as soon as the truck pulled to a stop. “I’m going swimming!”

Hugh sighed and looked apologetically at Nell. “Will you keep an eye on her while I unload everything?”

“Sure.” She glanced uncertainly at Daisy, who had been waylaid by Emma, and then turned to look at the plastic mirror affixed to the backseat. Her toddler was sound asleep in his rear-facing car seat.

“I’ll be right here with Everett,” Hugh assured her. “All the windows are down, but I’ll move him into the tent if it starts to get too hot.”

“Okay, thanks.” She turned her attention to Cassie. “Want to go down to the beach?”

“Yes!” She threw her door open and ran after Daisy.

Down on the beach, the girls squealed and laughed when their feet hit the water. It was a rough beach with a strong rip tide, and Nell stayed close.

Hawaiian green sea turtles dozed in the sunshine farther down the beach. She admired them from a distance, her gaze flicking back to the girls every few seconds to make sure they didn’t go too deep.

Kai and Emma splashed past them, headed into the rough surf with their boogie boards.

Up the beach in the afternoon sunshine, Lani and her two girls lounged on a giant picnic blanket with sketchbooks and watercolors. Behind them, bright purple flowers carpeted the surface of the lagoon.

Nell’s nerves gradually unwound as the beauty of the black-sand beach and lush green coast seeped into her soul.

Whatever happened, she and her babies had what they needed. They lived in the most beautiful place on Earth, and they had good people around them.

She didn’t need anything else.

She wanted Hugh – wanted a life with him so badly that it scared her. But his daughter needed him. And whatever he had to do for her, whether that was moving to Washington or getting into a legal battle to keep her in Hawai‘i, Nell would understand.

She would wait it out… or she would let him go. And they would be okay.

At least, that’s what she kept telling herself.

A group of siblings came down to the water with enough floaties to fill a drug store: pink flamingos and inner-tube doughnuts and pineapple rafts, all neon-bright against the inky ocean water. They made instant friends with Cassie and Daisy, and their chatter flowed brightly above the low crash of the waves.

It happened in the blink of an eye.

One moment, the girls were playing in waist-deep water.

Then, faster than Nell would have thought possible, a swift current dragged them out to sea.

“Mommy!” Cassie realized the danger the same instant Nell did. Even from the beach, she could see the whites of her daughter’s eyes as they went round with fright.

In the distance, Dio barked frantically.

“Help!” she cried.

“I’m coming!” Nell tried to keep her voice bright and soothing, even as terror seized hold of her. She ran into the water, tripping over a wave in her hurry to reach the girls. “You’re okay! Here I come!”

“Nell?” Emma stood down the beach, taking in the scene.

In between them, the other kids and their floaties were floating quickly up the shoreline, approaching the same outward rip that had grabbed hold of the girls.

“Get those kids out of the water!” Nell shouted.

Emma ran up the beach towards the other kids, and Nell dove into the waves.

She surfaced a few yards away from the girls, swimming as hard as she could, but the current was pulling them farther away.

“Kick, Cassie!” Daisy urged. They both clung to the same floatie, a pineapple the size of a kindergartener. “Kick to the beach!”

Cassie swam as hard as she could, using both legs to kick and an arm to paddle as she clung to the floatie with one hand, but it was no use. Even kicking together, they couldn’t fight the current. They were moving backwards, and fast.

Nell swam at an angle until she hit the same current that had snatched the girls, and it gave her the boost of speed that she needed. She closed the gap and reached across the raft, closing her hands around each of their arms.

Only then did the terror finally let up.

They were still in danger, still caught in a rip current with a flimsy floatie, but she had them. She could keep their heads above water for as long as she needed to, even if the drug-store pineapple sprang a leak.

“Mommy, I’m scared.” Cassie’s voice shook with unshed tears, and Nell blinked tears and seawater out of her own eyes.

“You’re okay. I’ve got you.” She paused for just a moment to catch her breath, and then she looked between the girls with an encouraging smile. “Let’s go back to shore.”

“I want to go home,” Cassie said.

“Do you remember what we do when we’re caught in a rip?” Nell asked, already kicking her legs as hard as she could. Her arms were full, balanced on the raft as she held the two girls by their wrists to make sure neither one of them slipped off.

“Swim sideways,” Daisy said.

“That’s right! We swim sideways along the beach until we escape the current that’s pulling us out to sea. Can you help me kick?”

Even swimming at an angle, their progress was incremental. They weren’t being swept out to sea anymore, but for each full minute of maximum effort they only gained a few inches towards shore.

And then Hugh was there, standing above the surface of the water.

He knelt and lifted Cassie, who was closest to him. He set her on the inflatable paddleboard and then immediately pulled Daisy out of the water. Then he slipped off the board and into the water with Nell. His arm was warm around her waist as he pressed a kiss to her temple.

“That was fun!” Daisy said. Cassie was wide-eyed and trembling, but the older girl was grinning. “I like this boat!”

“I want to go home,” Cassie said again.

“We’ll get you back to shore,” Hugh promised her.

“Oops!” Daisy said. She had tried to use the paddle, which was about two feet taller than she was, and promptly dropped it into the current.

Hugh took a breath and dove under the board to rescue the paddle, which was quickly floating away. He returned a moment later, paddle in hand.

“I don’t think it will hold all four of us,” he said, speaking across the board to Nell, “but it can definitely hold you and the girls.”

Nell nodded in agreement. She handed the accursed pineapple up to Daisy.

“Hold this for me.”

With effort, she hauled herself up onto the big paddleboard. Her arms and legs were shaking from the exertion and adrenaline of dragging the girls out of the rip tide.

“What about you?” Daisy asked her dad.

“I’m right here with you,” he said. “I’ll be your motor!”

“Yeah!” she shouted when he started kicking them back to shore. “Faster!”

Nell didn’t even try to paddle. She settled her weight in the middle of the board, let Cassie crawl into her lap, and focused her attention on keeping Daisy and the long paddle from tumbling over the edge.

Eventually, they made it to the rocky peninsula by the camping area and clambered one by one over the rocks, with lots of helping hands to steady them and pull them up. Just behind the crowd of familiar faces, Dio strained at the end of his leash and whined in concern.

“Come get warm.” Emma wrapped an oversized beach towel around Nell’s shoulders and steered her towards a big campfire.

Nell felt a sudden jolt of fear and guilt. “Where’s Everett?”

“I’ve got him,” Juniper shouted. “Over here!”

Nell looked across the asphalt campground and saw Everett playing happily in a portable playpen. Fern sat off to the side with baby Theodore sound asleep in her arms.

Hugh walked over with their two girls, each wrapped in their own hooded towel and perched on his arms.

“What are you sniffling about?” Daisy sounded genuinely confused. “No one died!”

Cassie wailed and toppled into Nell’s arms.

“Come sit by the fire,” Emma urged gently.

Nell settled into a beach chair with Cassie in her lap. Dio curled up at their feet, his tail thumping with relief. The heat of the fire washed over them, as soothing as a hot bath. She closed her eyes and bathed her face in firelight.

“Do you want marshmallows, Cassie?” Kai crouched next to them, his face filled with concern. “I have a stick you can use to roast them.”

“O-o-okay,” she sniffed, reaching one hand out of her towel cocoon to accept his offering.

Nell brushed aside the red-gold hair that was plastered to her daughter’s cheeks and forehead, and then she used the edge of her towel to wipe her runny nose.

“We’ve got plenty of food when you’re ready,” Emma said.

“Are the other kids okay?” Nell asked, immediately feeling guilty that they had slipped her mind.

“All good, thanks to you,” Emma assured her. “I handed them off to their parents and talked to them about giving kids pool floaties at a beach like this one.”

Her guilt dug in deeper, and she turned to Hugh with a horrified look.

“I am so sorry,” she said.

“For what?” Humor glinted in his eyes as he parroted his daughter: “No one died!”

Daisy giggled and reached over to grab a marshmallow from the bag Kai held.

Nell just looked into Hugh’s eyes, mute with the horror of what could have happened.

“No lifeguard could have done better,” he assured her, reaching out to squeeze her hand. “Everyone is okay.”

She took a shaky breath and nodded, turning her face back to the fire.

The adrenaline of their ordeal slowly faded as the sun disappeared behind the trees. Gathered around a fire with a dozen people that she adored, her nervous system settled back into a place of safety and contentment faster than she would have thought possible.

With sudden astonishment, she realized that was her default state now.

After years of living in survival mode, always on guard, always terrified… she had somehow come to a place where feeling safe and loved was her norm. It had happened so gradually that she had never fully realized or appreciated the shift.

Suddenly, she was fighting tears again – but this time, they were pure gratitude.

Everett dozed off in her arms while she sat there, soaking it all in. Cassie was talking story with the other kids, happy and healthy and ten times more confident than she had been at the start of the year. Juniper rocked her baby brother back and forth while Ethan and Fern took a twilight stroll on the beach. Lani admired Olivia’s latest painting while Tenn and Emma chatted about a local farm. And Hugh… picked up a phone call and wandered away.

Nell sighed. Life was so close to perfect.

And close to perfect was about as good as anything ever got, so she grabbed ahold of her gratitude with both hands and went back into soaking up the good company along with the warmth of the fire.

A few minutes later, Hugh summoned her with a tap on the shoulder and a quick movement of his chin. He steadied her with a hand under her elbow as she stood, still holding her son. Everett wasn’t even one yet, and already he felt about as heavy as his sister. Nell shifted him in her arms, moving the weight of his head up to her shoulder, and followed Hugh to the edge of the firelight.

“That was Amy’s lawyer,” he said. There was a light in his eyes that made her breath catch in hopeful anticipation.

“And?”

“She signed the latest version of the custody agreement.”

“So Daisy can stay?”

“She can stay.” A grin lit up his face, and he put a hand on her arm. “I have to fly her out for a visit next weekend, but she’ll be back to start at Pualena Playschool the week after that.”

“I’m so glad.”

“Me too.” Hugh let out a huge sigh of relief. “Good lord, what a weight off my mind.”

“Are you going to tell Daisy?”

“Nah, let her roast marshmallows.”

“Don’t you think she’ll be excited?”

“It’s what she wanted, but it’s still a lot to process. I’ll tell her when we get home tomorrow.”

“Yeah, that’s a good plan.” Nell turned towards the ocean, admiring the silver glint of moonlight that danced over the surface of the water. The low rush of waves on the beach moved below them, a soothing white noise that underlay the warm voices of friends gathered around the fire. She sighed, just appreciating the moment.

“Are you alright?” Hugh stood behind her. He was so much taller that his chin was above the top of her head. When she leaned back, he wrapped his arms around her and Everett both.

Standing there, with her son on her chest and Hugh at her back, her community behind her and the island in front of her, she felt held and supported in a way that she never had before.

“Never been better,” she replied.

He kissed her cheek and then kept his head bent, his cheek resting warm against hers.

“Thank you for being so patient this summer.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“My attention was scattered. Daisy, work, my mother, the custody drama. I was focused on everything but you.”

“All that and you still made time for us.”

“You deserve more. I want more.”

“More what?”

“Time together.”

“Good. Me too.”

“There’s still a lot going on. I’ll still be focused on Daisy the next few weeks, helping her through this transition–”

“I wouldn’t expect anything less.”

“That’s one of many things I love about you.”

“They’re only little for so long. We have time.”

“Decades, hopefully. That’s what I was trying to say, Nell. I want you to know that this – you and me and them – this is everything to me. I’m all in.”

She turned her face up for a kiss. “Me too.”