Lincoln didn’t understand, but then, he wouldn’t. Lily didn’t know him well enough to wonder what he thought of the island or the home she’d invited him into, despite Zinnia’s protest when Lily called her after Keilen left for the hospital.

“I was about to call you,” she started, breath coming out in a rush. She still had two hours left in her shift at the hospital and already sounded exhausted. “What did you do to Keilen? He’s only been here an hour and already he’s barking at everyone, totally on a warpath. Thank God, I’m not on his service this month.”

“I…there’s a chance I might have to go home. One of our clients…”

“Lil, no.” Lily heard the disappointment in her niece’s voice, and when Zee started to speak with that frustrated, desperate tone, Lily knew she shouldn’t interrupt. “You can’t do that. I need you here. We can speed up the wedding. For you. Two weeks, we can do that. So you won’t have to make so many trips back and you can’t miss my wedding. You promised you wouldn’t. “

“It’s one of our biggest clients, sugar,” she tried, feeling horrible when Zee released a noise that was all exasperated and worry. Still, Lily tried to make her understand. “I can’t just completely flake out, and I…”

“You can’t just make a phone call or send an email?”

“That’s not what I do, honey. You know that. It’s more sensitive than that.”

“Please, Lil. I need you. Especially today. It’s Ano’s birthday and Leanni’s bringing over food and every damn Tau, Hale, and Rivers on Oahu. I’m tempted to pick up another shift just to avoid them, but no. I can’t do that. Hell. I need you to be my buffer. Meet me there at five. I can’t…I can’t do this without you. I need you.”

That had nearly done Lily in. She’d never turned her back when Zee needed her, because her niece never seemed to need her at all. Even as a kid she wanted to be self-reliant and when Lily returned with Lincoln to Zinnia and Ano’s home a couple of hours later, after a lengthy discussion at Lincoln’s hotel about the failing case and how it had gotten that way, she realized how much it took to ask for help.

“This is madness,” Lincoln said, following behind Lily as they walked through the front door. Every conceivable space was filled with boxes and bags, most with white mesh and silk, a few streamers of wedding-themed leis and other flowers generally used in island weddings. They walked through the home dodging people Lily didn’t know, nodding and smiling as they moved through the crowd.

“You could have stayed at your hotel,” she told him, still annoyed that he’d followed her to Oahu.

“You’re the one who wants to speak to Ellis. I’m privy to his number. You aren’t.”

They dodged a small congregation of children, none of whom looked older than twelve, and then stopped, side by side in the threshold of the kitchen. Ano sat at the head of the bamboo table surrounded by food, friends, and others Lily took for his family.

“Lil!” he called, smiling at Lily when he spotted her. His eyes were red-rimmed and two empty bottles of Blue Moon sat in front of him. “Here is my nani ke aloha’s auntie, Lily.”

“She’s fine, yeah?” one of his friends said, watching Lily closely as Leanni and two other women Lily had never seen moved in front of her to place platters of smoking chicken and kabobs of pork and mushrooms on the table.

“You should eat,” Leanni said, glancing at Lily, then to Lincoln. “Your man, too. We feed everyone here, not like stingy haoles.” Lily caught the cool look the old woman sent toward the other side of the kitchen, then glared at the woman. Zee was in the corner, listening to a heavy-set woman who could have been Leanni’s twin talking animatedly, looking like she could barely maintain her calm as the woman went on and on.

“Excuse me,” Lily told Lincoln moving passed Ano’s family, his fake-smiling granny and the crowd of people whose names she had no interest in learning. She only saw her girl, still in her scrubs and that wild, desperate look in her eyes; it was that look that had her moving, grabbing a bottle of rum from the island as she neared it, then Zee’s hand. “We’ll just be a minute,” she told the old woman talking to Zinnia, ignoring the small sound of irritation she released before she took her niece’s hand and led her through the house.

“Where are we going?” Zee asked, looking over her shoulder, throwing smiles and promises to return as they went. “Lily…”

“You need a break.” She maneuvered through the house, onto the porch, then down the porch stairs before anyone could stop them, all while her niece asked over and over again “What’s going on?” and “Wait…” They’d passed from Ano’s property to Keilen’s by the time Zinnia stopped complaining.

The noise from the party was lower out on this property and by the time they moved onto the beach and down to the black rock over the ridge, Lily felt confident that Zee wouldn’t run off and she dropped the girl’s hand.

A few feet up a small embankment, sat a patch of palm trees and low growing grass. The limbs were heavy and thick enough to hide anyone wanting seclusion from the beach bums angling on the shore.

“Liam would take me here when I was a kid…after…” Lily got to the middle of the embankment and sat against the largest of the four trees in the center of the grass. “I’d ask him to bring me home every so often, when I’d miss my mom so bad the heartache kept me up at night. He’d get so tired of hearing of me nodding off in class or seeing me doze at the dinner table that he’d throw me in his Jeep and we’d sit in the driveway, just watching the house.”

Next to her, Zee lowered into the grass, leaning over Lily to pull the rum out of her grip. “You wouldn’t go in?”

“Never. I couldn’t. At Keilen’s the other day, that was a fluke. It was spur of the moment.” There had been a reason for the distraction, the easy jaunt into his home, but she wouldn’t tell Zee that. “When an hour would go by and all I could do was stare up at the house, holding onto the car door handle, he’d pull me out of the Jeep and we’d come here.”

She closed her eyes when a swirl of wind passed around them, smiling at the feel of the sea salt on the breeze. Next to her Zinnia shook her head, barely sipping from the bottle as she watched the waves across the shore growing taller and taller.

“Sometimes I miss them so much I can’t breathe at all,” Zee said. She leaned her head against the palm tree, attention on the clouds overhead. “That’s what got Ano and me talking at first; he said his dad would have throttled him if he was alive. The car he wrecked was the only thing his dad had left him.” She looked at Lily then, shoulders relaxing and the smallest smile twitched on her lips. “We started talking about our parents and not having them anymore and it…well…” Zee drank again, tapping her index finger against the glass, lost a little in whatever she remembered. “Mainly, we talked about how bad it sucked, being orphans.”

“He had his grandmother,” Lily teased, nudging Zinnia’s leg when she frowned. “Old women tend to forget what it’s like to be young.” Lily took the bottle when her niece offered it. “They forget what it’s like to not know much about keeping a house or being domestic. Maybe that’s my fault. I didn’t raise you to make a man happy.”

“You raised me to keep myself fed, my clothes clean, and my head full of things that are important. Things Leanni didn’t seem to learn.”

“Don’t discount her, sugar,” she told Zinnia. “She’s smart. She’d have to be to run a successful business.” The nod Zee gave Lily was brief, but certain, as though she reluctantly agreed despite herself. “I know she’s rough around the edges, but you have to remember she’s traditional. Lots of people here are. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, but you’re going to have to come to an understanding with Ano about how stupid he is where his granny is concerned.” Zee gave Lily another nod and she noticed the tension in the girl’s shoulder lessened furthered, then again when she drank more rum. Lily watched her smiling, realizing when Zinnia admitted to needing her, she meant it.

“Don’t be afraid of her,” she told her niece. “I’ve seen people like her a hundred times in the courtroom. She tries to take control of the situation by being passive aggressive in her moves and comments. Don’t let her. Stand up to her. I suspect you’ll only have to do it once before she backs down.”

“That’s what Ano said.” Lily nodded, motioning with her chin for Zinnia to keep the bottle when she offered it to her. The girl leaned further against the tree, hair flying into her face as she held the bottle between her folded arms. “He tells me to stand up to her because he can’t. He even admitted he liked being bossed around but that he wanted me to do it now.” She exhaled, head shaking. “He’d rather just let her—let all of them—have their way. It’s cultural, all the family pitching in. I hadn’t really realized it before, but the Samoans I’ve been around don’t keep to themselves at all. Family is everything. They share everything and do everything for each other. It’s not even abnormal for generations—children, parents, grandparents, aunts, cousins, uncles all to live together. It took some getting used to, all that family together all the time.”

Lily glanced toward the house. “That was just a preview, I take it?”

“Yeah,” Zee said, pointing the bottle across the beach. “Ano’s birthday party? That’s nothing at all. I can’t even imagine what the wedding will be like. Pure insanity.”

“And you’re okay with that? All that family? All that intrusion for the rest of your life?”

Zinnia thought about it for a moment, her features shifting for a handful of seconds—nothing at all to Lily’s mind, before she answered. She hardly hesitated. “Of course I’m okay with that. Leanni is insane and bossy as hell. But, Lil, I love Ano. I…sometimes I think of him and my heart goes all stupid and wonky and races like I’ve just sprinted ten miles.” She sat up, the bottle dangling from her fist as she wrapped her arms around her knees. “We can sit together and not say a word. He’ll move his fingers down my shoulder or in my hair like it’s an afterthought, like it’s something he does with the same thought he puts into breathing. It’s just natural.”

Lily had no idea what that was like or if she’d ever experience anything remotely similar. But as Zee paused, eyes unblinking and the soft, small grin picking up the right side of her mouth, Lily realized her niece had found something on her own; something they’d both lost a long time ago—somewhere to belong.

“This life he wants me to live,” she said, voice soft, a little awed, “it’s nothing like what you and I knew. It’s big and noisy and completely overwhelming, but Lil, I’ll stand in the middle of that storm, endure all that madness if it means at the end of it, I’ll get Ano and me and those afterthought moments for the rest of my life.”

Lily had held something sweet a long time ago. It had only lasted for a night. That time with Keilen, her dream, her fantasy made real, had been the closest she’d come to something that might have lasted. Now it was back, he was, ready for her to take and in the middle of that beach, with her niece going on about the storm she’d gladly endure, Lily understood something she never had before—sometimes the storm broke. Sometimes it burned. Sometimes that storm was the very thing that strengthened those who weathered it.

“If you’re happy,” Lily began, going silent when Zinnia’s laugh cut her off.

“I’m stupid happy.” She handed Lily the bottle and wiped her hand on her shorts. “He’s afraid of his lolo granny and she’s the bossiest woman on the planet. His aunties want the most ridiculous fanfare for the wedding and I probably will have very little say in how it all turns out, but yeah, Lil, I’m very happy.”

“Okay. Good,” Lily said, standing before she offered a hand to her niece. The girl took it, following her aunt with the rum in the crook of her elbow. Lily loved the smell of the beach and the feel of Zee next to her, a smile on her face despite the chaos they were walking back toward. “Just make sure you stand up for yourself. If you don’t like something, tell them. If you don’t, you’ll spend the rest of your married life killing yourself to make his family happy. There should only be two people in a marriage.”

“I will, Lil. Trust me.” They passed over the property line and took their time walking through Keilen’s yard, back toward the noise of the crowd. “I was gearing up for it when you kidnapped me.”

Around the house there was a lingering crowd—kids chasing each other in the yard, some coming precariously close to the remains of the old garden fence and half-standing swing set. On the porch, Lily spotted Ano and his cousins, as they listened to a younger man, a full foot taller than her niece’s fiancé, but thinly built.

“Mekko,” she told Lily when they both watched the men as they sat around the porch swing near the steps. “He’s not local. Only here for the weekend, I think.”

They came closer to the house, but didn’t take the stairs, deciding, instead to move around the front, toward the drive. Lily smiled, watching how coolly Zee ignored Ano, a small seduction that made her laugh to herself as they moved away from the stairs. He didn’t pull his attention from Zinnia the entire time.

“You getting a burn from the fire shooting at you right now?” she asked her niece. They came to front drive and both leaned against the work truck Ano lent to his helpers when they were between vehicles.

“He’s a little drunk, I bet, and wondering if I’m mad at him.” A quick glance at the porch and Zee shook her head, noticing that Ano had moved from the swing to come around to the front side of the house. “He asked me about five times if I was upset within an hour of their arrival.” She turned, leaning on the truck so that her back was to the house. “I told him last night that we should go away from his birthday. I had a feeling they’d do something like this, but he wanted to stay home and watch the All Blacks playing Australia on the satellite.” She flipped her hair off her shoulder, pretending to frown as she winked at Lily. “Let him stew a little. Serves him right.”

From her vantage point, Lily could see Ano doing just that. His cousins went on talking, they even leaned next to him as he rested his elbows on the railing and watched Zinnia, his focus sharp and unflinching from her.

“He doesn’t seem too happy for a birthday boy,” she told her niece, withholding a laugh when the girl rolled her eyes. “How long are you going to ignore him?”

“Until we finish this,” she said, holding up the half-full bottle of rum. To demonstrate, she downed three large gulps and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, waggling her eyebrows when she finished. “Now,” Zee said, moving to the back of the truck to lower the tailgate. She patted the spot next to her when she sat and Lily joined her. “Tell me about Lincoln and why the hell he’s standing on the corner of the balcony all alone and gawking down at you like a creeper.”

She hadn’t lied to Keilen. There was no need to worry Zee, not when she had enough on her plate. But she’d be honest. They’d always been honest with each other over the years. It was the only way they could be.

“It’s just some things at work got twisted and he wants to make sure I know he’s the lead on it. He’s the only one with access to the partners while we’re here, so I’m stuck with him until we hear back from our boss.”

“And that requires him staying here?”

“Until we get a call, yeah, I think so.”

Zee looked over her shoulder, eyes squinting as she stared at Lincoln. “I don’t get a ‘just business’ vibe from him, not the way he looks at you.”

“He’s controlling and loves to ‘mansplain.’”

“That it?” She looked again, snorting after a quick survey of Lincoln. “I think he has a crush.”

“He can have one.” Lily grabbed the rum, taking a few sips that felt thick, but sweet on the back of her throat. “It won’t be reciprocated.”

“And who would you reciprocate with? Hmm? Keilen?” Zee nudged her, laughing when Lily shot her the bird. “Is that asshole why Dr. K is treating the interns like disobedient frat boys?”

Lily shrugged, rubbing her neck as a distraction. “Things got complicated with Keilen.”

“How complicated?”

She glanced at her niece, not giving her a full look. “We…we kissed and made out a little.” Lily didn’t want to see the stupid grin or how the girl danced a little in her seat.

“Knew it.”

“Don’t be smug.” She forced the bottle back in Zinnia’s hand, eyes rolling. “It’s no big deal.”

“Please. It’s the biggest deal ever. You and Dr. K.? Man, that would be amazing.”

“Not so amazing when I have to leave.”

Zinnia frowned, setting the bottle down before she folded her arms. “You don’t have to, you know. You can stay here. You can come home, Lil.”

“We’ve had this argument before.”

“And no matter how many times we do, I’m still right. You know how it was after college. You know I drifted. God, I was so homesick.” She turned, moving closer to Lily to brush the hair from her aunt’s shoulder.  “This place, Lil, you know it better than me, it gets inside you. It’s a living, breathing entity that can’t be quieted. You could travel a million miles. You could put as much space between yourself and the past and it still won’t silence the voice inside you.”

“What voice?”

“The one that tells you where you belong.” She took Lily’s hand, squeezing her fingers. “The one that tells you to come back.” Zee managed two large sips of rum, finishing the bottle. In an instant, her demeanor changed and something sweet, something mischievous had shifted her expression. “I bet you if you stayed, you wouldn’t regret it.” Keilen had told her the same thing and Lily wondered if those were empty words or the promise of what her life could be.

Zee straightened, stepping to the side of the truck as she looked down the driveway, then followed Keilen’s Mercedes as it pulled into the drive next door. “I bet you there is a lot waiting for you here. You just have to be willing to fall a little, Lil.”