Kimo said, “He put some aside for those kids, to give them one chance in life. The bank in Hale‘iwa got all the papers. They know he wen’ make?”

“Probably not,” Olive said.

“You can tell them—show them the death certificate and all that.”

“We’d be glad to do that. If it’s important to you.”

“Important for the will,” Kimo said. “Rhonda in the will. The keikis in the will.” He went to Sharkey and held him by his shoulders. He said, “I know you upset. But was an accident. Max was high a lot of the time. He fall off his bike, sometimes he half drown. He safe now, in heaven. No more pain.”

Hearing this, Sharkey feared he might cry, and he blinked away his tears. He could endure anger, but any expression of forgiveness made him weepy.

Kimo faced him, and although he was ragged and smelled of the smoke and the camp, he was precise in his instructions, saying, “Go to the bank today. Take the documentation. Rhonda need that will. The kids too. After probate they have a chance. Like the lottery, brah.”

All this time Rhonda had been smiling at Sharkey. At the mention that Max Mulgrave had been living with her—in the car or the blue plastic shelter, it was not clear—she’d assumed a sly expression. But now she raised her hand and poked his arm again, the small girl’s teasing face in her old woman’s battered features, her red eyes and gray braids fixed on their ends with tattered ribbons. She tugged his arm and then spoke softly, a braid in each hand, wagging her head like a coquette.

“Way back, you was one lifeguard.”

“Long ago,” Sharkey said. “I was a kid.”

“I was one of your girls,” the old woman said in the same low voice. “You fuck me on the beach at Waimea. You call me your seal pup.”

The other woman, Winona, had not heard. She walked over to Sharkey with the greasy box of malasadas and said, “Try one. They junk when they come cold.”

Standing under the trees, the smoke from the fire pit blowing past them, the dog lying in the dirt biting itself, Kimo and the others took turns hugging Sharkey and Olive, who promised to meet them again and to submit the death certificate to the bank.

“Maybe fix us up with a lawyer,” Kimo said. “And then you gotta come back and see the keikis.”

In the truck, driving away, Moe said, “I know this guy—Max, Smack, whatever. Long time ago, he want so choke pakalolo from me I cannot receive it in my mail can, because the post office they get more suspicious. So I do a bad thing. I send it to your mail can—and, shoots, it come lost.”

“I’ve heard that story,” Olive said, her hand flying to her face to cover her smile.