“Put out pots and pans to catch the leaks.”
Chapter Four
It was noon before Gina had put away her clothes, tried all the windows to see which ones worked, and inspected the house for what needed to be fixed. After a cheese sandwich, she dressed in the coolest clothes she had brought. With sneakers on her feet, her phone in a pocket, and a yellow pad and pencil in her hands, she went on an inspection tour of the estate.
Gina followed an old double track of packed gravel, something that looked like it had been a road, or at least a driveway in the past. It came from the little bridge they’d used the night before, and made something of a circle around the perimeter of the estate grounds. Millie had emailed her a simply-drawn map of the estate, which Gina had printed before she came. The estate had a long triangular shape, about ten acres in size. The border of it along one side was the Manoa Stream, which came down a ravine from the lower slopes of mountains. The other side of the property reached to the crest of a ridge. The bottom end just barely touched on a street, and that had been marked on Millie’s map as the ‘future entrance’. About six hundred feet north and uphill from there was the upper boundary of the property, a straight line that reached from the stream to the ridgeline.
Soon she was out of the shade of the tall trees and palms that surrounded the house. She was already discovering the grounds were something of a palm display garden, with several different species. Some were short and stout, whiles others reached high to catch the sunshine, waving in the steady breeze that had started. Standing in an open area where she had a view of most of the property, she tried to take in the size and shape of the estate.
“That’s one heck of a big chunk of land,” she muttered, scanning the forested uphill slope with her hand shielding her eyes from the sun. “I bet they could get a million bucks for this from a developer.”
The sun was high then, directly overhead, and Gina wished she’d worn a hat. A pair of helicopters flew over, dark colored with heavy droning engines. A few bees flew about, looking for flowers in the brush and weeds. The noise of the city not far away was dampened by the sound of the wind in the trees and the rustle of palm fronds. With the steep mountains in front of her, and the lush green trees all around, it was a scene that she’d never seen before.
She snapped a couple of pictures and sent them to Ana.
The double-track was crowded along both sides with vines and shrubs, not the usual blackberry brambles she was used to seeing at home. It followed the base of the ridge, which had flat-topped trees growing on the slope. Looking at one more closely, she found giant spike-like thorns along the stems. She referred to a plant guide of the tropics.
“Okay, I know what that is. That’s called kiawe, a type of mesquite. The ancient Hawaiians used that for firewood. Those thorns look nasty.”
Along the other side of the driveway was the occasional fruit tree, with colorful fruits ripening in the sun. Papayas and mangoes were along the way, with orange and lemon trees, and an old avocado tree closer to the house. There were even a few banana plants, long past their bloom or fruiting.
Startling her was something darting across the driveway. Catching only a glimpse before the little brown creature ducked between rocks, she wasn’t sure if it had been a long skinny rat, or a squirrel of some sort.
As she hiked uphill, further along were trees with twisting branches that looked like oaks. Seeing a few red bottlebrush flowers on them, she found those on her chart, the ohia tree. Palms were mixed in here and there, some with clumps of dates hanging below, others with green coconuts in them. Still others didn’t do much except rattle their fronds in the steady breeze. Keeping an eye on the area below her to the left, the main part of the garden, she decided to follow the trail up the ridge to as far as it went.
After several minutes of climbing up the steep grade, she found a stone cairn, mostly fallen over. Looking at her little map again, she figured that was the top corner property marker. Just beyond and wrapping around the cairn was a heavy wire fence, rusted and partly fallen over as though it were old. Lifting the stones that she could, she stacked the cairn again. Without a gate there, she either had to climb the rickety wire fence to continue following the trail up the ridge or find another way. Looking off into the scrub and weeds, she saw what looked like an old stone wall, and wondered what that had to do with the estate, if anything. While she was there, she used her phone to take pictures of the area again.
“I can look at that stuff some other time.”
With the sensation that her skin was burning in the sun, and already getting thirsty, Gina turned around. From that height on the ridge, she’d be able to get a good look at the layout of the property. Instead, something else caught her attention.
“Oh my god.”
She got her phone and started snapping pictures, not of the property below her, but of the view in the distance. She sent several to her sister and mother before putting her phone away. She used her hand as a visor to take in the view.
“That is one heck of a big ocean out there.”
Gina decided on the spot that she’d eat her lunches there on days off.
Getting started again, she went back downhill to the shade of the
