Chapter 45

J. P. Brett had been close enough for her to touch before he got a good laugh with "Nevertheless" and walked up to the stage. He replaced the silver-haired general from central casting at the podium and then, just like the general had, did his level best to cover his ass.

Rivers and Brett weren't technically lying, but they weren't telling the truth either. Rachel Sherrill was convinced of that.

At least, they weren't telling the whole truth.

Excellent timing, Rachel, girl,she told herself. It's your first trip back to Hilo since you got fired from the botanical gardens, and this time a lot more than a grove of your precious banyan trees might get blown sky-high.

Rachel walked out the door while Brett was still speaking. She needed some air and some time to think, knowing this particular show wasn't even close to being over.

It had been nearly a decade since her own world blew up. The decision to fire her, she was convinced, hadn't been made by her bosses at the botanical gardens. She'd gotten nothing but praise and support from them since the moment she'd taken the job.

But after what happened in the banyan grove that day, she had been persistent with her questions about why the army had reacted with such a frightening show of force. Eventually she was told that the board members of the botanical gardens were "going in a different direction"—the corporate version of a soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend saying, "It's not you, it's me."

But Rachel Sherrill, Stanford graduate and no one's fool, suspected that "going in a different direction" wasn't the reason she'd been fired. And she'd always wondered what Henry Takayama did or didn't know about what happened in the banyan grove that day.

All she really knew for sure was that the army had buried news of an event that had turned her trees to ashes.

How very biblical,she'd told herself at the time. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. The dust being her career.

She'd never gotten to speak to Henry Takayama about it. Ted Murray had phoned her just before she left and said, "They know I'm your friend and that I talked to you. But I'm done with this now, Rachel. Done. Don't ask me about it again unless you want to get me fired too."

"Get fired from the U.S. Army?" she'd asked.

"Have a nice life," Murray had said, and he hung up.

A few months later Rachel was back on the mainland, vowing never to return to Hawai‘i. She took an associate's job at the Bellevue Botanical Garden in Washington State. Got married; got divorced. Moved to Portland, got a job at the Hoyt Arboretum. But she was still full of regrets and anger about the way her dream job in Hawai‘i had ended.

And still full of questions about what had happened that day in Hilo all those years ago, even though, according to public records, nothing had actually happened that day.

But a month ago, she'd made a spur-of-the-moment decision. She announced to her boss at Hoyt that she was taking all her vacation time, then she booked a flight to Hawai‘i. She was staying in the hotel nearest to the botanical gardens.

The moment she arrived at Hilo International, the earth began to shake. She knew about quakes from when she'd lived here. But this was different. These were different—more powerful and more persistent than anything she remembered.

But she hadn't come this far to turn around and head back to the mainland.

She went to the botanical gardens and walked all the way out to where the poisoned banyan trees had stood. She saw only a wide expanse of beautifully manicured lawn—it was as if the army's scorched-earth assault had never happened.

Almost as if the trees had never been there.

Almost as if I were never here.

Standing there, she felt the most powerful quake yet. It nearly knocked her to the ground and made her wonder if coming to Hawai‘i had been an even bigger mistake than she'd feared.

Back in her hotel room that afternoon, she had a couple of glasses of wine to settle her nerves and told herself she would leave tomorrow, that it really had been crazy for her to come back in the first place.

Then she'd seen the announcement on social media about what sounded like a combination press conference and emergency town hall meeting. Rachel was curious enough to drive over to the Edith Kanaka‘ole Stadium. She'd arrived just in time to see the by God chairman of the Joint Chiefs step up to the microphone. Dr. John MacGregor, whom she'd recently seen on television talking about the coming eruption at Mauna Loa, was on the stage with him, as were the Cutlers, the two divas dressed like comic-book heroes.

Then J. P. Brett had arrived, and that's when she'd stepped out for some air.

When she returned to auditorium, MacGregor was talking about lava flow and the speed of it and trenches and pits. But Rachel found herself wondering what Dr. John MacGregor wasn't telling them, her mind flashing to what might happen if an epic lava spill somehow combined with the incident she remembered at the botanical gardens.

Rachel wondered if the by God chairman of the Joint Chiefs was here for something more than an eruption.

And she wasn't just angry now.

Rachel Sherrill was scared.