Then she stared at Quinn again. “Her second child was a girl. A tiny snip of a thing she was, her features a blend of her mother’s Native Hawaiian heritage and her father’s Scandinavian one. From the very first week they brought her home, that child took to the water, and her father called her his little Nama, short for Namaka, who was a water spirit and the god of the sea. She was the center of their world, and having her softened them both. My daughter had matured, and her sense of ohana was coming back. She couldn’t resist the pull of family, and, finally, I felt that we were in a place of healing. After some convincing, I even managed to pull together a small wedding so that Jules and Noah would be legal and the children could have his name without complications. As a wedding gift, we bought them a small piece of property near the beach, where they built a humble house. They did nearly everything themselves, insisting it would be their forever home and they wanted their mark on it. Their goal was to be self-sufficient eventually, so it had solar panels and all that other stuff those off-the-grid people do. They planted fruit trees, and last I saw, they had a huge garden.”

Quinn had to admit, the story that Helen was telling about her daughter may have been unsettling to her as a mother, but it sounded very romantic from the viewpoint of Jules and Noah.

Helen rocked back and forth for a moment, catching her breath.

“Life went on, but our relationship was still tenuous. Jules and Noah didn’t want to accept any more gifts and strove to maintain their simple life. They embraced the land we’d bought them but turned away from any other offerings. They wanted to do things on their own, and their visits were few and far between as they worked to build their business.”

She stopped talking and moving, sitting completely still. Her eyes on her hands clasped tightly together in her lap.

“Tell her the rest, Helen,” Carmen said.

Helen looked up again. “I didn’t hear from my daughter again until months later, when she called me, hysterical and begging for my help. Nama was missing. She and Jonah had fallen off the boat when an unexpected squall came up during a scuba tour. Her brother was found immediately, but Nama had disappeared, and, at less than two years old, was thought to be drowned.”

Both Quinn and Maggie gasped at the same time.

“With my daughter on the other end of the phone, I fell to my knees, broken in the knowledge that the curse had found my granddaughter, and this time it was exacting the ultimate punishment for deeds done long before she was born.”

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-One