Sharkey had seen enough of such arrangements to understand the ominous implications. Courts in the islands heard the cases all the time: the caregiver moves in, bonds with, and then dominates the employer, gets written into a new will, displacing the family. And the thwarted, disinherited family members litigate for what they believe is rightfully theirs, but in vain. The intrusive, usurping caregiver inheriting the house and the fortune of the employer was a common story in Hawaii; most moneyed families had a version of it—grotesque, melodramatic, farcical, or violent, depending on how much money was involved, but always with the same result, the servants ending up with everything. People who had much less, hearing these stories, clucked in sympathy but believed that there was justice in it.

His mother knew that, and the more she said, “Milly’s a treasure, Ollie can fix anything,” the more resigned he was to finding a renter for the house at Jocko’s and moving back, enduring his mother’s final years, simply to protect her.

Turned out of the house, Milly bared her teeth at him and hissed like a snake, certain proof that she was as greedy as he suspected. But she had beautiful teeth. She stole some of his mother’s jewelry just before she left. Orlando growled and made vague threats, saying, “I’m not leaving this island,” and made off with some tools from the garage.

“This is as it should be,” his mother said. “Just the two of us.”

Surfing calmed him, he competed more, and with his winning, his mother insisted on going with him to the North Shore, though she dozed in the car for most of the way, waking to the sound of the surf when he rolled down the windows at Waimea.

Sharkey was having his picture taken one day at Ali‘i Beach and heard a familiar fluttery voice: “I’m his mother.” She ran to his side and posed with him, girlish, waving to the camera.

She had been too young to be a widow, and she was now too young to be an invalid. She complained of obscure aches, and Sharkey hated her for what he took to be her dishonest complaints, for his captivity, having to spend every night under her roof. It was as though he were sitting on a swell, waiting for a wave to take him away, but there was nothing to ride.

He wished her dead, and one night she complained of chest pains. “And my arm!” Sharkey took her to Queen’s Hospital in spite of his skepticism—she said she was in agony; he believed she was drunk again. She was admitted and wheeled away. At dawn the next day a nurse (he guessed) called him at home to say, “I’m sorry to tell you your mother has passed. We tried our best. It was her heart—congestive heart failure.”