“And sometimes you have to be the one who takes care of business.” Lei pulled into her driveway, going through the motions of opening the house, showing her aunt where to stow her things, giving her the bedroom and getting out the futon for herself.
Rosario had brought a lot of food from the restaurant in the white cooler, and she put it away, keeping up a stream of gossip about mutual friends and relatives as she thawed some kalbi ribs and warmed up poi rolls for their dinner.
“Business has been pretty good. I still surprised how many Hawaii people drive for miles to find us. Momi and I are training some new waitresses; we lost Kailani when she went back school. The best one is our new girl Anela Ka`awai. She’s related to the Ka`awais from Kaua`i and she a hard worker. Momi talking about making her assistant manager
…”
Lei sat at the little table, and let the words wash over her.
She squinched her eyes shut, trying to shut out the memory of Mary’s dusky face. Funny how she’d never noticed that little mole by her mouth before.
“Lei.” Aunty touched her shoulder and she looked up.
“What?”
“I brought something. Something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about for a long time.” She came and sat back down beside Lei. She was holding a thick packet of letters bound with rubber bands. She set them in front of Lei. “From your father.”
Chapter 34
“What are these, Aunty?” Her heart accelerating, she picked the stack up, slid the rubber band off. She turned over the topmost letter, looking at the return address.
Wayne Texeira, Federal Correctional Center Lompoc, Lompoc, California.
Wayne Texeira. Her father-the man whose incarceration had led to such devastation for her and her mother. Her blood seemed to roar in her ears as she shuffled through the letters, postmarked all the way back through the years to the first one, written in 1989.
I was five years old, she thought. I thought he forgot all about me. She looked at the address they had been sent to:
Lei Texeira, c/o Rosario Texeira, 300 D. Street, San Rafael, California.
“He sent them to me. At first I’d lost track of you, couldn’t get them to you. Then, it seemed like it would upset you too much to give them to you.” Aunty got up, banged some pots around. Lei looked at her small, sturdy form, shoulders hunched as she flipped the ribs on the cookie sheet with her back turned.
“Why now?” Lei turned the packet over in her hands. Her chest felt constricted, that panicky feeling returning. She wanted to get up and run, run, run.
“I don’t know. It just seemed time, and like maybe you needed something else to think about.”
“You shouldn’t have kept them from me.” Lei stood, went into the bedroom and got the Glock in its holster, strapped it on. Picked up her backpack, slid the letters into it. Her voice trembled with the effort of self control. “I’m going out. Keep the door locked.”
Her aunt nodded without turning around.
Lei hooked the light nylon parka shell off the back of the door and slipped into it to cover her gun, grabbed her keys and went back out to the truck. She drove to a nearby espresso bar and sat at her favorite spot in the corner, where the sun cut a sharp, bright lance across the table. She ordered a coffee of the day, and sipping it out of the thick, white mug, she pulled the letters out of the backpack.
She arranged them into chronological order. Interesting Aunty never read them, she thought, examining the intact flap of the very first one, dated November of 1989. He had been arrested in October of that year.
She’d been asleep in her little bed, and still remembered the boom of the front door breaking open, waking her up. Even at five, Lei knew it was smartest to hide, so she’d slid out and crawled under the bed, clutching her favorite stuffed kitty. She remembered her father’s voice, raised in argument, her mom yelling, the glare of the lights, flashing blue and red… and eventually silence.
Lei crawled out and went into their bedroom, climbing into the wide bed, still dented with the shape of her father’s body. She’d snuggled into his still-warm pillow beside her weeping mother, a fatalistic sorrow taking up residence in her bones.
Lei refocused on the letter in front of her. She realized she didn’t know his handwriting, an unfamiliar hieroglyphic of deeply pressed block letters. She traced the dents on the paper with the tips of her fingers.
November 4, 1989
Dear Lei-girl,
I hope you are okay, and not missing me too much. I sure miss you, though. I wish so many things could be different. I hope you and your mom are staying with your Aunty Rosario. I told your mom to go there because I think you will do better there with her to look out for you both.
I am so sorry, honey. I never wanted you to know about any of this. Truth is, I always meant it to be temporary, just until I could get enough money together for something better, but I waited a little too long. I hope you aren’t too ashamed of your old man. I always wanted you to be proud of me…
Love, your Daddy
Lei refolded the letter and put it back into the envelope. Her eyes prickled with unshed tears but she blinked them away. She went on to the next. His tone grew frantic, wondering why he never heard from them, then fatalistic as Rosario must have told him what was happening with Maylene’s addiction. He expressed his helplessness, worry, sorrow, loneliness and, above all, love for her again and again. At some point, he seemed to realize she was not getting the letters, but he continued to write them every six months or so, telling little stories of his life.
Finally finished, Lei restacked the letters, slipped the old rubber bands back over them, put them back in the backpack. She checked the time on her phone. Aunty would be waiting. Her coffee had gone cold, a milky clot forming on the surface.
People sat at the little tables, reading the paper. The bell over the door dinged with each customer’s entrance or exit. The smell of coffee, the periodic roar of the blender, the bubbling hiss of the espresso machine were all the same as they had been when she came in. But inside Lei something had profoundly shifted.
I thought he forgot me. I thought he never cared. All along he loved me. All along he was missing me, thinking of me. The truth of it pressed on her heart, a message written in deep block print.
She slipped the backpack on, waved distractedly at the barista, and pushed out through the glass door with a ding of the bell. A few minutes later she pulled back into the garage, letting the exterior door rumble down behind her as she went out the side door. The front door was unlocked-and she’d told her aunt to close up. She relocked it and put the chain and deadbolt on.
“Aunty?” she called, heading for her room. She slung the backpack onto the bed, patted it with affection as her aunt called from the kitchen:
“In here, Ku`uipo.” She went in. Her aunt was washing dishes at the sink. She’d always called her “sweetheart” in Hawaiian.
“Why was the front door unlocked?”
“Someone knocked. I opened it and there was a letter there for you on the mat.” She indicated a plain white envelope on the counter, LEI TEXEIRA printed on it. “I hope it’s okay.”
Lei’s heart picked up speed. She’d so hoped the stalking was over, and now he’d come when her aunt was home alone.
“Dammit, Aunty, it was the stalker!” she exclaimed. “There was a reason I told you to keep the door locked.”
“No talk sassy to me, girl.” Rosario dried her hands on the dish towel as Lei went and got a pair of gloves, snapped them on. Got a steak knife, slit the top, took out the trebly folded note, and opened it.
I THINK OF YOU EVERY TIME I TAKE A BATH.
Lei’s stomach dropped and her vision swam. Aunty Rosario reached over her shoulder and snatched the paper up. Her color drained as she read it, hand coming up to cover her mouth. Her eyes were huge looking over her fingers at Lei.