His frailty was one thing—as a nurse, she understood that, he’d experienced some sort of psychic trauma; but he was infantile too in a way that baffled and provoked her. He had been like a child at the scene of the accident at Waimea, yawning anxiously, looking away, shuffling his feet. And he was childlike too at the police station, hesitant to speak, tongue-tied and touching his face; he had squirmed in the car like a brat, and back home had curled up, hugging himself, buried in pillows. Olive struggled to be patient. The stark truth that he had no one else—that his behavior would have antagonized most people—brought out a maternal side in her, the one that had softly throbbed in her body when in a pool of blood she’d miscarried in the surf. And so she reclaimed the child in Sharkey.

They were back in the car the next day, heading into town on the freeway, Sharkey bent forward as though he’d been scolded, and she could hear his long slow breaths, like sighs of woe, as he made himself small in the passenger seat, spitefully compact, holding his head in a lamenting posture.

In the heat and glare of Honolulu, on the dusty concrete of the back streets of Iwilei, he seemed smaller still and looked stricken, among the industrial buildings tagged with graffiti, the lowered shutters, and the corrugated iron warehouses behind padlocked fences. He was no longer the bold waterman who rode the big waves. She wondered if his childishness was a reversion, his way of sorrowing. It was not his physical size she was assessing but the diminished aura of strength, his way of standing, one shoulder lower than the other, that made him oblique. He was now like a man seen in profile, turning aside, shy and unthreatening. Because of that impression, she—who was delicate and so much smaller—loomed larger as a force, giving directions, vibrant with nervous energy, taking command but maintaining a mode of motherly protection.

Sharkey lingered behind her—“I’m with her,” he said to the receptionist, who singled him out because he was a man—while at the counter Olive unfolded the paper with her hospital’s letterhead.

“I’ve got this for the medical examiner,” she said.

“Stickney not here at the moment. He wen’ stay in conference.”

The clerk fingered the paper. She was a fish-faced woman, her black hair drawn back so tight the contour of her skull was evident under it. Her fingernails were long and glossy green, and one nail tapped a line on the paper.

“Who Olive Randall is?”

“That would be me.”

“I’m need for see you photo ID.”

Olive handed over her driver’s license and at the same time signaled for Sharkey to show his.