2 Empath (24 page)

“Well,
duh,”
I responded, laughing again.

A smile spread slowly across his face. But it wasn’t his typical open, friendly smile. This one was downright conniving. “All right, then,” he said, shifting suddenly into that knee-weakening sexy whisper of his. “I’ll kiss you.”

He leaned in toward me, tantalizing close. But he stopped with his lips just short of mine, his green eyes twinkling devilishly.

“Just as soon as you learn how to swim.”

Chapter 19

Sleep wasn’t in the picture for me. I tossed and turned until the wee hours of the morning, and even then the best I could do was to fall into some weird semi-conscious state where I moved from one crazy dream to another. Zane was a wraith again, cruising through the Pipe. Then he popped out of my birthday cake in a devil costume and told me that refined sugar was bad for my teeth. My dad was a little boy, romping around the cemetery in the shadow of Diamond Head. Kalia came and took his hand, and told him to watch the fireworks, and the volcano erupted. But instead of fire and ashes, it spewed cardboard. The jig-sawed pieces held the answers to the riddle I was trying to solve, and I tried to gather them up and put them back together. But the skies darkened and opened up with rain, and the pieces in my hand turned soggy and unreadable, and I could see Kalia through the haze, holding my infant father and laughing…

Holy crap!
I sat up straight in bed. My nightshirt was damp with sweat.

It was hot in my bedroom. There was no air-conditioning, of course — the old house didn’t even have central heat. Ordinarily my room was kept cool enough by the breeze; but tonight, the wind was sickeningly calm.

I rose and opened the door to my lanai. It was cooler outside.

Doing my best to put the idiotic dreams out of my mind, I dropped down on the floor of the lanai and started a stretching routine. I was getting out of shape. I needed to find a dance studio soon — see if I could enroll in a summer program. It was only one of a long list of “to do” items I had so far ignored. But I shouldn’t be too hard on myself. Even though it seemed longer, we had only been in Oahu for three days.

I had just finished my lunges and downward dogs and was about to move on to my splits when my mom came out to check on me.

No, not my mom.

I blinked back at the empty doorway. Then I rose. “Show me quickly,” I whispered.

Nothing was visible to me, yet I knew Kalia was there. I knew when she went inside my room. I knew she was hovering near the box again.
Her
box.

You need to give her options — almost like multiple choice questions.

I practically tripped over my bed. I reached the box and took off the lid, then scrambled to strew its contents about the room, each piece in a distinct location. “Which one?” I whispered again, my breathing heavy. “I’ve looked at it all before; if I missed something, show me!”

I could see nothing still, not even faint pixilations. She was around the dresser somewhere, but I couldn’t narrow down which piece she was indicating. Then she seemed not to be present at all.

“Kalia!” I squeaked, “Please! Try again!”

My frustration peaked, and Kylee’s words came back to me like a kick on the backside.

Negative feelings from you could make it harder for her to appear.

I closed my eyes a moment. It wasn’t Kalia’s fault, was it? It was mine.
Innocent until proven guilty, Kali.

I concentrated on the old days, the feelings I’d had for Kalia when I was a child. Many times I had taken her picture down from the shelf and sneaked it away to my room, where I would gaze at it while making up all sorts of wonderful, fanciful tales. My grandmother, I would pretend, had secretly been a princess. A Hawaiian princess. Beautiful and noble and loving and good… and someday, I would grow up to be just like her, because my grandfather said that I would. I wanted that so much. I loved her so much…

I opened my eyes. A creamy column of vapor hung directly over the fat envelope of correspondence.

“Good! Perfect!” I cried. I pounced on the envelope and emptied its contents, spreading the cards and notes as thinly across the floor as I could. But there were so many! I stood back and watched, but the column remained stubbornly over the envelope itself. I picked it up again and looked inside, but saw only a littering of torn scraps and crumbled off corners stuck in the bottom. Still, I cracked the envelope open wide and shook out every last bit of paper on top of my bed, spreading the scraps with my hand.

My eyes caught a small, discrete blur, just over a yellowed piece of newsprint. I snatched it up.

The piece of paper was small — just a column wide, less than a dozen lines long. It had shrunk and grown brittle with age. I didn’t remember having seen it before, but I knew, as I began to read, that even if I had noticed it among the rubbish in the base of the envelope, it would have held no interest for me. Nor, for that matter, would it have meant anything to my dad.

Now, it meant everything.

Pfc. Emilio James Lam, son of Josefa Lam and the late David Lam, of Waianae, has been killed in action in Korea, the Defense Department notified his mother Monday by telegram. Pfc. Lam, aged 18, had sent a letter to his mother dated June 21 indicating that his unit had shipped to Korea and was participating in the Korean fighting. Pfc. Lam was an only child and recent high school graduate.

I flipped the clipping over. The back showed part of an advertisement. My sleep-deprived brain attempted to run the numbers. My father had been conceived in May of 1953, right around the time of Kalia’s high school graduation. If this man… this
boy,
really… was the father of Kalia’s baby, they could have been classmates. The clipping wasn’t dated as to year, but its tone indicated that the Korean War was still going on. When exactly had it ended?

My breath caught. I couldn’t be sure about the timing. But the scenario springing into my head did make sense. Kalia could have sent her high school sweetheart off to war, not realizing she was pregnant until after he had been drafted and had shipped out. Maybe not until after he had been killed. And her response had been to marry my grandfather.

Did Albin know?

I looked around the room. Kalia had gone.

“Emilio James Lam,” I read out loud, softly. “My biological grandfather.”

And he loved her.
In my mind I saw again the wailing figure at Kalia’s grave. I smiled sadly. He looked like an Emilio.

In an instant, my reverie was broken. At Kalia’s
funeral?

I stared again at the clipping. It wasn’t possible. If the two were classmates, Emilio would have died nearly three years
before
Kalia.

So who the hell was the man crying at her grave?

I groaned out loud and dropped my forehead onto the mattress.

“Kalia!” I said miserably. “Please! I need more! Why did you even take us to the cemetery?” I raised my head and looked around the room again. But she was definitely gone.

I picked up my phone.

It took Tara forever to answer. “Kali?” she said groggily.

Oops.
What time was it in Cheyenne? I hadn’t even thought about it.

Tara yawned. “My alarm doesn’t even go off for, like, an hour. And for you it’s the middle of the night…” Her voice cleared quickly. “What’s up? Is something wrong?”

“Yes and no,” I answered. “I’m sorry to wake you up. It’s just that, well, Kylee’s told you what’s been going on with my grandmother appearing, right?”

“Yes,” she answered. “At least up through the cemetery visit.”

They were definitely keeping close tabs on me.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Tara said. “You’re thinking we must have nothing better to do here at the home base than to live your adventures vicariously. Well, you’re right. It’s been boring as dirt since you left. Kylee and I can’t even think of enough things to argue about.”

I grinned. “That’s awful. Maybe I could text you a list of suggestions.”

“That would be great,” she deadpanned. “Now, enough about us. Tell me why you called.”

“You have something to write with?”

I gave Tara the whole story, reading the newspaper clipping aloud.

“The Korean War ended in July of 1953,” she said offhandedly, as if it was a fact anyone with half a brain should know. So your theory makes sense. Of course, the clipping could have come from an earlier year in the war — but only if Emilio isn’t your grandfather, in which case, why would Kalia insist you see it?”

“It’s him,” I said, feeling sure of it now, even with all of the outstanding questions. “Tara—”

“Wait a minute,” she interrupted. “I’m checking something.”

I heard a keyboard clicking in the background. “It fits, Kali,” she declared. “The names: Josefa and Emilio. They’re most likely Spanish or Portuguese. And there are a lot of Portuguese people in Hawaii. That would explain your Southern European roots. Emilio’s father could have been a mix of Asian and native Hawaiian. It fits your profile almost… well, perfectly.”

I rubbed my free hand over my face. “That’s fabulous,” I said with frustration. “But it still doesn’t tell me what Kalia wants, and what kind of danger is looming over my dad. Ghosts don’t appear just to clear up paternity suits, you know? And even if they did, what good would it do to tell my dad now that he isn’t who he thinks he is? His biological father is dead. His grandmother Josefa is bound to be dead. And it says Emilio had no brothers or sisters. We don’t even know under what circumstances Albin married Kalia — and I’m telling you, if there was any deception involved, it would drive my dad out of his tree. It would destroy his image of his mother.”
Just like it did with me.
I bit my lip. “I can’t do that to him.”

“Of course not,” Tara agreed. “And I’m sure that’s not what Kalia wants either — at least, not by itself. There’s more we haven’t figured out yet.”

I said nothing for a moment. I was too discouraged.

“Kali,” Tara said gently. “Is your dad still… you know… ignoring what’s going on with you?”

“Oh, yeah.” I sighed. “Zane brought it up once in casual conversation and the Colonel nearly passed out on the floor. My mother keeps saying he’ll be okay with it in time, but I’m not so sure.”

“It’s hard for him,” she said thoughtfully. “Believe me, I get what he’s going through. But it’s going to be tough on all of you if whatever disaster Kalia is trying to avoid can only be avoided with his participation.”

I drew in a ragged breath. “I hadn’t even thought about that.”

My forehead banged on the mattress again.

“Listen, Kal,” Tara said after a moment. “You and Zane just keep doing what you’re doing — waiting for more messages from Kalia. I’m going to take these names and research the bejesus out of them. There are genealogy sites that can give you access to military records and a bunch of other public databases that a regular internet search won’t pull up. Maybe I can find something interesting. Or helpful. Hopefully both.”

I smiled into my sheets. “That would be great, Tara. Thanks.”

“Don’t thank me,” she said morosely. “I’m stuck at home on demon watch all day. What else am I going to do, analyze dryer lint?”

***

My swimsuit was still clammy. Probably because instead of hanging it up yesterday, I had wadded it into a ball and thrown it into a corner of my room. I hadn’t thought I would need it again. But despite my pleas over the phone this morning, Zane was still refusing to let me quit the swimming lessons. At least for now. I refused to take his resolution about the whole kissing thing seriously — he was a guy, after all. And since I would not, in fact, ever learn to swim, he would have to break down sometime.

Still, it was annoying.

Instead of putting the suit on, I stretched it out and threw it in my beach bag. Maybe I could talk him into going surfing first.

I changed from my work clothes into a bright colored tank top and shorts and headed back downstairs to watch out the front window for Zane. My mother was taking her lunch break in the kitchen. “I finished organizing all the yard tools and stuff,” I told her. “They fit in the shed okay. But there’s nowhere in the storage room to set up Dad’s workbench. I think we need another shed.”

My mother sighed. “I know. We’ll look for one over the weekend.” She turned to me with a serious expression. “Did you sleep okay last night?”

I tensed. “Not great. It was pretty hot upstairs. Why?”

She looked uncomfortable. “I could hear you talking up there again. Do you want to tell me to whom?”

“Not really, Mom,” I answered. “At least not yet.” It occurred to me, suddenly, that she might be more worried about a certain flesh-and-blood visitor than she was about the shadows. Which would be a normal motherly reaction, I suppose. Little did she know that her obviously lovesick seventeen-year-old daughter had found the one and only eighteen-year-old guy on the planet who absolutely refused to kiss his own girlfriend. “Like I said,” I repeated, “it’s nobody living.”

“All right,” she replied. “But you can tell me, you know, if you want to.”

I smiled. “I know. Thanks.”

My mother sighed again. “Your father had a rough night.”

My pulse sped up all over again. I hadn’t seen my dad this morning; he had left early, before I got up. “Oh? How so? Too hot?”

She shook her head. “No, the heat doesn’t bother him. He was having… strange dreams.”

“Strange dreams?” I repeated faintly.

“Yes,” she replied. “Ever since we moved here, really. But last night was the worst. It really seemed to bother him, and he’s not usually bothered by such things. Usually he gets up and shrugs it off. But this time…” She paused and looked at me. “He says that he keeps dreaming about his mother. And that she’s upset about something.”

I swallowed hard. Perhaps Kalia had been busier than we’d given her credit for. “What is he dreaming, exactly?”

“Disconnected, vague things,” she answered. “Brief scenes where she’s trying to lead him somewhere. But he isn’t able to follow her.” She stopped and sighed. “Ordinarily, I wouldn’t think it meant anything. I would figure he was just thinking about her more because we’re in Hawaii. But… you remember my friend Julie, from Maine? The hospice nurse?”