off slobbery kisses as Lei started up the truck.
“When you goin’ teach this dog some manners?” Aunty scolded as Keiki nudged her with her big square head, her tongue lolling in a happy grin.
“She’s actually very well-trained,” Lei said, snapping her fingers. Keiki withdrew her head from between the seats and settled into the backseat with a sigh.
“So tell me what the hell has been going on,” Aunty said, pinning Lei with her fierce black eyes. “Why I gotta hear from a stranger my baby girl being stalked?”
“I’m sorry,” Lei said, keeping her eyes on the road. “I didn’t want to worry you.”
“What? Who raised you to talk crazy like that? Oh yeah, that crack whore momma of yours. That’s why I should expec’ this kine thing.” She folded her arms and stared out the window. They drove in silence for some minutes, Aunty letting the full weight of her displeasure settle over the cab. Finally Lei put her hand on her aunt’s arm.
“I’m sorry,” she said again. “I’ll call you next time I have a problem, I promise.”
“That’s what family is for,” Aunty said, slightly mollified. “I guess I should expec’ I gotta teach you that. Now tell me ever’t’ing.”
“I nevah like talk about it,” Lei said.
“You stay goin’ to,” Aunty said. “I need fo’ know.”
Aunty never took her eyes off Lei as she filled her in on what had happened with the stalker and Mary.
“I want you to come back to San Rafael with me,” her aunt said with a note of finality. “Take some vacation time. Momi and I will take care of you.” Momi Pauhale was her aunt’s longtime partner in the restaurant and like a second aunt to Lei.
“No,” Lei said. “I have to see this through. I want to catch these guys-the one who killed Mary and the girls, and the one who’s stalking me.”
“Sometimes you gotta let other people take care of you,” Aunty said, an eerie echo of fifteen years ago when she’d picked up a battered child of nine from Social Services.
“And sometimes you have to be the one who takes care of business.” Lei pulled into her driveway, going through the motions of opening the house, showing her aunt where to stow her things, giving her the bedroom and getting out the futon for herself.
Rosario had brought a lot of food from the restaurant in the white cooler, and she put it away, keeping up a stream of gossip about mutual friends and relatives as she thawed some kalbi ribs and warmed up poi rolls for their dinner.
“Business has been pretty good. I still surprised how many Hawaii people drive for miles to find us. Momi and I are training some new waitresses; we lost Kailani when she went back school. The best one is our new girl Anela Ka`awai. She’s related to the Ka`awais from Kaua`i and she a hard worker. Momi talking about making her assistant manager
…”
Lei sat at the little table, and let the words wash over her.
She squinched her eyes shut, trying to shut out the memory of Mary’s dusky face. Funny how she’d never noticed that little mole by her mouth before.
“Lei.” Aunty touched her shoulder and she looked up.
“What?”
“I brought something. Something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about for a long time.” She came and sat back down beside Lei. She was holding a thick packet of letters bound with rubber bands. She set them in front of Lei. “From your father.”
Chapter 34
“What are these, Aunty?” Her heart accelerating, she picked the stack up, slid the rubber band off. She turned over the topmost letter, looking at the return address.
Wayne Texeira, Federal Correctional Center Lompoc, Lompoc, California.
Wayne Texeira. Her father-the man whose incarceration had led to such devastation for her and her mother. Her blood seemed to roar in her ears as she shuffled through the letters, postmarked all the way back through the years to the first one, written in 1989.
I was five years old, she thought. I thought he forgot all about me. She looked at the address they had been sent to:
Lei Texeira, c/o Rosario Texeira, 300 D. Street, San Rafael, California.
“He sent them to me. At first I’d lost track of you, couldn’t get them to you. Then, it seemed like it would upset you too much to give them to you.” Aunty got up, banged some pots around. Lei looked at her small, sturdy form, shoulders hunched as she flipped the ribs on the cookie sheet with her back turned.
“Why now?” Lei turned the packet over in her hands. Her chest felt constricted, that panicky feeling returning. She wanted to get up and run, run, run.
“I don’t know. It just seemed time, and like maybe you needed something else to think about.”
“You shouldn’t have kept them from me.” Lei stood, went into the bedroom and got the Glock in its holster, strapped it on. Picked up her backpack, slid the letters into it. Her voice trembled with the effort of self control. “I’m going out. Keep the door locked.”
Her aunt nodded without turning around.
Lei hooked the light nylon parka shell off the back of the door and slipped into it to cover her gun, grabbed her keys and went back out to the truck. She drove to a nearby espresso bar and sat at her favorite spot in the corner, where the sun cut a sharp, bright lance across the table. She ordered a coffee of the day, and sipping it out of the thick, white mug, she pulled the letters out of the backpack.
She arranged them into chronological order. Interesting Aunty never read them, she thought, examining the intact flap of the very first one, dated November of 1989. He had been arrested in October of that year.
She’d been asleep in her little bed, and still remembered the boom of the front door breaking open, waking her up. Even at five, Lei knew it was smartest to hide, so she’d slid out and crawled under the bed, clutching her favorite stuffed kitty. She remembered her father’s voice, raised in argument, her mom yelling, the glare of the lights, flashing blue and red… and eventually silence.
Lei crawled out and went into their bedroom, climbing into the wide bed, still dented with the shape of her father’s body. She’d snuggled into his still-warm pillow beside her weeping mother, a fatalistic sorrow taking up residence in her bones.
Lei refocused on the letter in front of her. She realized she didn’t know his handwriting, an unfamiliar hieroglyphic of deeply pressed block letters. She traced the dents on the paper with the tips of her fingers.
November 4, 1989
Dear Lei-girl,
I hope you are okay, and not missing me too much. I sure miss you, though. I wish so many things could be different. I hope you and your mom are staying with your Aunty Rosario. I told your mom to go there because I think you will do better there with her to look out for you both.
I am so sorry, honey. I never wanted you to know about any of this. Truth is, I always meant it to be temporary, just until I could get enough money together for something better, but I waited a little too long. I hope you aren’t too ashamed of your old man. I always wanted you to be proud of me…
Love, your Daddy
Lei refolded the letter and put it back into the envelope. Her eyes prickled with unshed tears but she blinked them away. She went on to the next. His tone grew frantic, wondering why he never heard from them, then fatalistic as Rosario must have told him what was happening with Maylene’s addiction. He expressed his helplessness, worry, sorrow, loneliness and, above all, love for her again and again. At some point, he seemed to realize she was not getting the letters, but he continued to write them every six months or so, telling little stories of his life.
Finally finished, Lei restacked the letters, slipped the old rubber bands back over them, put them back in the
