7. Lani

7

Lani

T he clouds over Pualena had let up a bit, shifting from gray to white.

It was summer, and Lani ached to wake up to blue skies… but then she would think back to winter days in Alaska, which served as a quick reality check.

The sky above her hometown might be overcast, but the breeze blowing through was warm and balmy. Even without clear skies, there would be a steady stream of customers at Haumona today. She headed into her cousin’s shave ice place a few hours early to restock their supply of syrups, boiling down huge pots of lychee and white pineapple.

In between stirring the syrups and monitoring their temperature, she sketched.

‘ōlena had asked her to paint the interior walls of New Horizons Community Center while the playschool was out on summer break, and Lani was still playing with ideas.

The murals would serve as her primary contribution for the year, in lieu of paying tuition like most of the parents did. They would cover the walls of the rooms where all the kids she loved most in the world spent their days, and she wanted to create something beautiful. Nothing overbright or distracting, necessarily… more of a calm and subtle backdrop to the often frenetic energy that filled those rooms.

She planned to go with a garden theme for one room and an under-the-sea motif for the other.

The green room would be inspired by the tropical botanical gardens north of Hilo, with giant green leaves and small splashes of bright colors here and there, maybe high up on the walls where the room wasn’t as busy. She would start with a light gray textured ceiling like an overcast sky.

The blue room would be similar to the mural she had painted at home for Rory and Olivia: cool underwater tones with fish swimming by. She really wanted to paint a manta ray on the ceiling, but that might be overly ambitious, even for her.

She was toying with the idea of painting the hallway too. If she had time after painting the other rooms, she would. One side would show splashier tropical plants, like hibiscus bushes bursting with sunset-colored flowers. The other would be a beach scene with monk seals and sea turtles basking in the sun.

At this rate, the real trick would be to finish it all before Pualena Playschool reconvened.

She was so lost in her sketches that she jumped in surprise when the door swung open, even though Juniper had been due to start her shift five minutes before.

“Sorry I’m late.” Jun smiled in greeting, but it didn’t touch the haunted look in her eyes.

“No big deal. I lost track of time.” Lani set her sketchbook aside and stirred the pots to make sure that the bottoms didn’t burn. “Will you open up the windows?”

“Sure.”

Lani turned off the burners on the stove, covered the pots, and left them to cool. It was so warm in the tiny building that she was suddenly grateful for the overcast skies; she hated making syrups on sunny days, when the heat radiating down from the corrugated tin roof was even more intense than the heat coming off of the stove.

There was a heaviness to Juniper’s motions as she opened the two windows where customers would order and then pick up their shave ice. Lani’s heart ached for the young woman who had been through so much already, and she wondered if it would be more compassionate to say something or just let her work in peace.

But she couldn’t just pretend that nothing had happened.

“I heard about your mom.”

Juniper nodded, looking her way without fully meeting her eyes.

“I’m so sorry,” Lani told her.

She nodded again, blinking fast. Her breathing went ragged, a jerky rise and fall of her chest, and Lani couldn’t help herself. She closed the space in between them and put her arms around her.

Juniper stood stiff for a minute, and then the dam in her chest seemed to break. She put her face on Lani’s shoulder and cried.

Lani watched the windows warily. She had gotten the timing all wrong, bringing up Jun’s mom after opening the shop. But they rarely got customers before noon. Things picked up after lunch, and after that it was a steady stream of tourists heading back from the beach.

Juniper was taller than Lani, but she was still such a kid. Lani held her and patted her back, just like she would do with Rory. Seventeen was a rough age for anybody, and navigating the transition to adulthood without a mother was daunting. Jun had Emma and her other aunts, but it wasn’t the same. Mahina had always been there for Lani, and she was the best aunt anyone could ask for, but nothing and no one could fully step into the void that a mother left behind.

Even now, in her mid thirties, there were moments that the grief took Lani’s breath away.

“I’m sorry.” Juniper straightened up and moved towards the back of the room, farther from the windows. She wore an oversized cotton work shirt – one of Cody’s? – over her tank top, and she swiped at her cheeks with the cuffs of the sleeves.

“Don’t be sorry. Here.” Lani pulled a clean rag off of the shelf and tossed it to her.

“Thanks.” Juniper cleaned up her face and blew her nose.

“If you want me to cover your shift,” she started, but Juniper cut her off.

“No. It’s okay. I want to be here. It’s easier than being home. It helps having something to do.”

“I get that.” Lani hesitated, not wanting to make things about her, and then offered it up anyway: “My mom died when I was young too.”

Startled, Juniper looked her in the eyes. “Really?”

“Yeah.”

“When you were my age?”

“I was fourteen.”

“Wow. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. I mean, it’s not, but– I just want you to know that I’m here. If you ever need to talk.”

“I appreciate that, but…” Juniper pulled the over-long sleeves of the dress shirt over her hands, looking down at them and toying with the buttons. When she spoke again a few seconds later, her voice was slow and halting. “I wouldn’t even know where to start. Talking about my mom has always been really hard.”

“I get that.”

“Do you?” Her voice was sharp. “At least you had a mom.”

Lani took a quick breath in. “Yeah. I did.”

Juniper put a hand over her mouth and looked at Lani in horror. She dropped her hand a moment later and said, “I’m so sorry. That was an awful thing to say.”

“It’s okay.”

“It’s really not.” She pressed her hands to her eyes and took a shaky breath. “It’s just that my mom has been an addict for as long as I can remember. I never had a mom, not really. I mean, sometimes she was okay. Sometimes she was great. She was an amazing artist, and we would paint together… but it felt more like having a big sister or a fun aunt, you know?”

Lani nodded, giving Jun her full attention.

“Mostly she was gone, or just checked out. The prescription meds she tried were almost as bad as the street drugs. She just… wasn’t there. But now she’s gone gone and that’s different, but at the same time it feels like just more of the same mess I’ve been dealing with my whole life.”

Lani nodded along, but guilt joined the anguish in Juniper’s hazel eyes.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to, like, word vomit all over you.”

“You can talk to me whenever you need to vent.”

“People say that,” Jun muttered, looking down at her shoes, “but they don’t really mean it.”

“I do,” Lani assured her.

“I loved my mom,” she said in a broken voice.

“Oh, honey. I know you did.”

“It isn’t fair.”

“No, it’s not.” Lani sighed. “My mom was sick for a long time before she died too.”

Juniper gave her a sharp, questioning look.

“Not in the same way. But addiction’s just another kind of sickness, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.” Juniper’s tone was bitter. “They say that.”

“Mental illness is still illness, Jun. It’s not fair, and it’s not easy to understand. It just… is.”

She nodded, looking chastened.

“When my mom was sick, and… after, there were times that I only felt okay when I was out on the water.”

Juniper looked away. “I’m not much of a surfer. I always end up with squeaky-clean sinuses and a big bump on my head.”

“We don’t even have to surf. Sometimes it’s enough just to get out on the water, far away from everything that’s happening back on land.”

Jun nodded along, but Lani could see that she wasn’t convinced.

“I find peace out there. A lot of us do. Maybe you would too?”

“Maybe.”

A sudden idea came to her, a sparkling memory of dolphins in a deep blue bay, and she grinned.

“How about this. The next morning we both have free, you give it a chance. Tenn has a paddleboard, and I know we can borrow another one from somebody. I’ll show you a secret beach where a huge pod of dolphins plays every day.”

Finally, a spark of interest in the girl’s eyes. “Wild dolphins?”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Okay, I’m in.”

“That’s more like it!”

A woman knocked on the window, and Lani waved.

“Be right there!” To Juniper she said, “I’ll man the window, you handle the ice?”

“Deal.”

Lani went to the window with a new bounce in her step.

She knew that nothing would heal Juniper’s heart overnight; that was the work of years. But what the girl needed most was community support and healthy coping mechanisms, and Lani could help with both. There was nothing like swimming with wild dolphins; she had a good feeling about this.

And sometimes, being the community support was even more healing than leaning on it.