the islands below.
There was a bleakness in her son’s voice that twisted Katharine’s heart. It hadn’t been as easy as she’d hoped to convince him that this was going to be a great adventure. Still, Michael had finally accepted the fact that they were going to go, and switched from trying to talk her out of the trip to attempting to convince her he should be allowed to go scuba diving. Rather than refuse outright, she’d taken the coward’s way out. “We’ll see,” she now said yet again, wondering how much longer she could put off the inevitable confrontation that would occur when she finally told Michael she hated the idea of his risking his life under a hundred feet of water. But when he winced at her equivocation, she knew he’d already figured out what her final answer would be. Now, trying to steer him away from the subject, she leaned across her son and looked out the window.
A chain of islands lay spread beneath the plane. The day was perfectly clear, and a snowcapped mountain peak glistened against a sky that was somehow even bluer than the sea. As the plane began its descent, the islands grew clearer, and then the pilot’s voice came over the intercom, identifying them.
“To the right of the plane, we’re getting a terrific view of Oahu today, while passengers on the left can see the peaks of Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa on the Big Island of Hawaii. In a few minutes we’ll be able to look down into the craters of both Mauna Loa on the Big Island and Haleakala on Maui. I doubt any of you will have trouble figuring out which one is the active volcano.”
As the plane descended, Katharine glimpsed the smoke boiling up from one of the active vents on the flanks of Kilauea, but then her attention was diverted by the pilot’s voice.
“As we make the turn around Maui, passengers on the right side of the plane will be able to see the southwest coast of the island, with the resort areas of Wailea and Kihei stretched along what many people — myself included — believe to be the best string of beaches in the state. For those of you who are visiting, may I be the first to wish you aloha. For those lucky enough to live here, welcome home.”
The plane swept lower and banked into the final turn. Through the window Katharine could see the coastline winding up toward Lahaina, and then the wildly rugged, green-clad buttresses of the West Maui mountains came into view. Below, a carpet of green spread across the valley floor.
The plane touched down, slowed, and turned to taxi up to the long, low building that housed the airport at Kahului. Michael was out of his seat the moment the DC-10 came to a stop, working his way around Katharine’s legs in his anxiety to retrieve their carry-on bags from the overhead compartment. Three minutes later, Katharine stepped out of the plane and felt the first naturally warmed air she’d experienced in months. She walked quickly through the jetway into the gate area. Michael was already outside the glass doors, and when he turned, she could see the wide grin on his face. She took a deep breath as the doors slid open in front of her, and as the fragrant air filled her lungs, a single word came into her mind.
Soft.
It was the only word to describe the caress of the gentle breeze.
Soft.
“We’re sure not in New York anymore, are we?” she heard her son say.
She glared at him with an expression of exasperation that was only slightly exaggerated. “I don’t believe it! We’re in paradise for three months, and all you can say is it’s not New York?”
“Come on, Mom! I didn’t say it was terrible! Actually, the weather’s not too bad. It’s—”
But Katharine was no longer listening to him, for she’d spotted a familiar figure at the far end of the long walkway.
A figure she hadn’t seen since graduate school, but whom she nevertheless recognized instantly.
Rob Silver.
He was as lithe and muscular as he’d been twenty years earlier, but his face had weathered into a rugged handsomeness, and his mop of unruly hair had grayed slightly. His eyes, however, sparkling as they fixed on her, were every bit as blue as she’d remembered them. As he dropped a sweet-smelling lei over her shoulders, he echoed aloud the words that had popped into her head the minute she’d seen him: “My God, you’re even more gorgeous than I remembered!”
While she tried to cover the flush that had come into her cheeks, he stuck his hand out to her son. “Hi,” he said. “You must be Michael. I’m Rob Silver.”
Michael hesitated, his eyes moving from Rob to his mother. He frowned, as if trying to puzzle something out, and when he at last took the hand that had been extended to him, Katharine could sense his reluctance. “Nice to meet you,” he said.
As they headed toward the baggage area, Katharine knew that despite his words, Michael wasn’t sure if he was pleased to meet Rob Silver or not.
She suspected that he was leaning toward “not.”
“They actually pay you to work out here?” Katharine asked as Rob Silver turned his dusty Ford Explorer onto a four-lane highway that seemed to lead straight up the vast mountain that made up the southeastern half of Maui. The car’s windows were wide open, and though the trade winds were blowing, the breeze held none of the bite of the harsh winter gale that had been lashing through the streets of Manhattan when they’d left the day before.
Rob gave her a mischievous glance. “Can I take that as an offer that you’ll work for free?”
“Fat chance,” Katharine replied. “I’m a poor working mother, remember? The happily starving student you used to know is long gone.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Rob drawled. “Doesn’t seem to me like you’ve changed at all.” Catching the look that came into Michael’s eyes in the rearview mirror — a look made up of equal parts suspicion and disapproval — Rob dropped the flirtatious note from his voice. “Actually, I’m not sure what’ll happen when I’m done with my project out here. I’ve got some feelers in at the university, but I suspect there are at least ten people I’d have to kill to get to the top of the list.”
“How much longer does your grant run?” Katharine asked.
In the backseat, Michael turned and gazed out the window at the cane fields that lined both sides of the road, tuning out the conversation droning on in the front seat. Couldn’t they ever talk about anything but money? Sometimes it seemed like that was the only thing his mother and her friends were really interested in.
Except for Rob Silver. From the moment he’d seen the way Rob Silver looked at his mother, Michael was pretty sure he knew what that man was interested in. And he was very sure that Silver and his mother hadn’t just been friends back in college. He’d also understood that as far as Rob Silver was concerned, nothing had changed.
Funny how his mother hadn’t said anything about that when she’d been trying to convince him that coming to Maui was such a great idea. Now, as the Explorer rolled through the fields, he was beginning to understand what she’d meant. Sure it was great for her — she got a good job, and plenty of money, and a man he could tell she was interested in, based on the way she’d looked at him at the airport.
So here he was, in a place where he didn’t know a single soul except his mother, and with only about three months of school left. Too much for him to talk his mom into letting him skip the rest of the year — he’d already tried that one — but not enough to give him time to make any friends, despite what his mother had said. He could still hear her: “Of course you’ll make friends. It’s not like New York. It’ll be easy.”
But it wouldn’t be easy. Easy? Michael wished his mom could understand how hard it really was to meet a whole new bunch of kids. Kids who might not like him. Or who might make fun of him the way they used to when he was sick all the time. Well, he wasn’t sick anymore, so maybe things would be different. Maybe he wouldn’t be quite as lonely as he thought. He sure hoped not.
His reverie was interrupted by the sight of a great plume of smoke billowing off to the left. “What’s that?” he asked.
“Sugarcane fire,” Rob Silver explained. “They burn the fields to make it easier to harvest the cane. That way they’re not hauling a lot of extra vegetation around. You’ll get so you automatically close the windows whenever you see it.”
“How come? It’s gotta be half a mile away.” Just then a blob of black soot blew in the open window, smearing across Michael’s shirt as he tried to brush it away. As he heard Rob laughing in the front seat, he felt his face redden.
“It’s called Maui snow,” Rob told him.
As the car climbed the flank of Haleakala, the cane fields were replaced by pineapple, and a few miles farther on, the pineapple, in turn, gave way to pastureland. But they were pastures that looked nothing at all like
