The woman was where they’d left her, in the small office, a folder on the desk before her. She plucked it open with satisfaction.

“This is the title deed we found in the annex. For a house in the name of Ebba Mulgrave, Indian Creek Trail, right here in Floristan. And this here, another document certifying payment in full, some serious money, with the notarized signature of the gentleman you inquired about, Mr. Max Mulgrave. And his address.”

Olive examined the names, mother and son, impressed by the flourish of the son’s signature, in great contrast to the mother’s irregular scrawl, less a written name than something pictorial, a doodle in blue ink.

“Funny old address,” Rose said.

“Kaulawaha Road,” Sharkey said.

“You know how to say it. What kind of word is that?”

“Hawaiian.”

“That zip code,” Olive said. “It’s in a place called Wai‘anae.”

Rose clapped her hands and said, “Looks like you found what you was looking for.”

8

The Leeward Side

You look happy,” Olive said. “I can tell you’re much better.”

Crap. Sharkey, blank-faced, too tired from the return flight to speak, thought people said those empty words to sell their hopeful delusions and to be blameless.

He was not happier, he was not better, getting back to Hawaii on the long flight from anywhere was like a hangover, he still felt weak and alienated, like someone fighting the grip of turbulent water. The memory kept repeating. He’d been drowning in the outflung arms of Waimea Bay when they found him and hauled him to shore. But the fright had not abated, and now he knew that in such close calls, something much worse than he’d experienced before, the fear did not leave him, even in the clods of red dirt in Floristan: he went on drowning.

“Glad to be back here anyway,” was all he said after Olive prodded him.

He could not tell her why, though he knew. He never had the words for the images in his head and didn’t want to sound stupid trying to describe what he saw, the stifling sense of confinement he felt on the mainland, the chill on the sunniest days, how he craved the freedom he felt in Hawaii, the beauty of the light skimming on the ocean, the empty space most of all.