It’s March and it has rained nonstop for the past four days. I haven’t heard from Franklin in more than three months. I can’t stop pacing from my bedroom down the hallway through the living room to the kitchen and back. Over and over. I’m afraid if I stop moving I won’t ever start again, collapsing right here on the floor. I no longer have the energy to be frantic. Now there’s only fear and anger coursing through my body and still, still, the sharp longing for him that only fuels my rage. Koji comes by every week to see if we need anything. I know he’d come every day if I asked him to, but the last thing we all need is more confusion. How can two men who grew up together be so different?

I glance down at Franklin’s kitchen chair. I can almost see him sitting there, yeah, smoking a cigarette with his morning coffee, trying to pull me onto his lap. My anger suddenly rises like a quick flame and I pick up his ashtray, open the back door, and throw it as far as I can, its landing blunted by the rain and mud. The thick air smells of dying flowers, of misery. Before now, the longest period of time I hadn’t heard from him was just short of a week. He later told me there had been an accident on the construction job and he’d been laid up. “Believe me, sweetheart, I had no way to get word to you.” I believed him then because it was the first time, and Daniel was still a toddler and he had kissed me, sucking gently on my bottom lip. I begged him then to stay in Hilo. There was talk of a new federal building being built and they would need construction workers. Meanwhile he could work odd jobs or for the plantations. “Doing what?” he’d said, his anger rising. “I’m no knife swinger!”

There were extended absences for a time or two afterward, but never more than a week, yeah, and he always sent money every month to supplement what I would make from my sewing and mending. This time I haven’t received anything from him since he was home at Christmas. Franklin left again just after the New Year and I’ve been alone with Daniel ever since.