Maile had been back in Hilo for two days, awakening each morning to the dry, metallic taste of panic on her tongue. She was safely home, yet couldn’t stop worrying that her ex-fiancé might have followed her back from Honolulu. She sat at the kitchen table in her cousin’s house drinking coffee, a sliver of sunlight sliding through the barely parted curtains and caressing her wrist. She wanted to get up and make herself something to eat, but just the thought seemed to steal away all her energy. There was no way he could know, Maile reasoned. She was being foolish. She hadn’t told anyone she was returning to Hilo.

Still, she couldn’t shake the fear.

Maile was ashamed at how naive she’d been. As soon as she received her teaching certificate she was determined to leave Honolulu. Regardless of the eruption and the cancellations of steamers sailing to Hilo, she still found a way home. Her boat had docked on the Kona side. From there, she’d caught a ride to Kohala and boarded a train to Hilo. She arrived back in town at dusk, in the grayish light of despair, when most of the shops were closed and the locals would be at home with their families. She had sneaked back like a thief, trying to reach the safe area without being seen, just like when she played hide-and-seek as a child.

Maile had dated a few young men in Honolulu, but only one had been serious after Daniel, serious enough to marry. He was a good-looking haole—smart and worldly—having traveled throughout the mainland, he’d told her. He was a businessman, a dealmaker who took her out to expensive restaurants and popular clubs she never dreamed of entering. Until they were engaged, he’d been loving and attentive. Afterward, as the weeks rushed into months, his smile turned into a scowl. When his deals began to fall through, he blamed her. The first time he slapped her, Maile smiled at the stinging surprise of it, telling herself it must have been an accident, he didn’t mean it. Thinking back, she’d heard the same excuses from the lips of several of her high school girlfriends about their boyfriends. He made her quit studying for her teaching certificate, saying he would take care of her, right before he began following her everywhere just to make sure she was going directly to the store, or to church, or to a girlfriend’s house down the block.

“You better not lie to me,” he warned.