Keira’s mother never wore slippers. Even at home, when no one was expected, when she wouldn’t be entertaining her friends or pretending that the shine of their lives was tarnished, she always took care with her footwear. Wedges, sandals, pumps and heels, all designer, all obnoxiously expensive, but the woman did not own a single pair of slippers.
It was slippers, though, that Keira saw when she blinked awake. They were pink, thin, and very clean, as though they’d just been pulled from cardboard and plastic. Her eyes shifted up her mother’s legs, over the charcoal slacks she wore, and onto the pink cardigan slung on her shoulders. The sweater was fastened with a brooch, diamonds that were as bright, as clean as the perfect polish on her mother’s pink nails.
Keira stared at that brooch, gaze blurring at the sparkle reflected against the overhead light, and she did not put much thought into the pound drumming in her head or the burning ache of her shoulder. She pretended to feel nothing, and Keira believed if she stared long enough at her mother’s polished appearance and that shining jewel below her throat, time would not press forward. She would not be in this hospital, sore and bruised.
Luka would not be dead.
“I’ve called the nurse, Keira. She’ll fetch you some pain meds.”
“I don’t want them.” She didn’t look at her mother when she spoke, didn’t move her eyes from that gaudy brooch until the woman came to her bedside. And when she lifted her eyes, shot a quick glimpse at the scowl on her mother’s face, Keira returned to the distracting blur that dulled her attention.
“You’ve really done it now, haven’t you?”
“Mother, please don’t. Not yet.”
“When would you recommend we discuss this mess?”
The nurse came in and her mother stepped back, let the woman in the blue scrubs fiddle around with Keira’s I.V. and push a thermometer in her ear.
“How’s your pain?” the nurse asked, smiling down at Keira; a soft grip on her hand. Keira tried to return the woman’s smile; she had a kind face, wide mouth, teeth straight, and hazel eyes that shone against the cocoa cream of her skin. But Keira could not bring herself to do much more than stare at her, blinking once before she shrugged. “We’ll need to monitor you tonight, and in the morning you’ll go down for your procedure.”
“What procedure?”
The nurse exchanged a glance with Keira’s mother before she patted Keira’s arm. “There’s nothing to be nervous about. Dr. Mitchell does terminations every week, and she’s very gentle.” The nurse picked up Keira’s chart and scribbled along the form, attention away from Keira’s open-mouth expression.
“Wait. What are you talking about? I thought I just sprained my elbow. What termination?”
Those slippers again, tiny feet that approached the bed and the dull ache in Keira’s chest smarted. “It’s fine, I’ll explain everything to her,” Keira’s mother said, nodding toward the door, dismissing the nurse.
Her nametag read “Renée” with a little accent over the first “e” and that kind smile dropped from her face. “You let me know if you want anything for the pain, okay, sweetie?”
Keira inched herself up, brushing off her mother’s attempts to help her and she moved her leg away from the edge of the bed when the woman sat down. She wouldn’t look directly in Keira’s face; didn’t seem interested in anything other than her long nails.
“You want to explain what the hell is going on, Mother?”
Finally, she rested her hands on her lap and when she looked at Keira, her eyebrows arched as much as the Botox would allow, Keira’s mother frowned.
“You’re pregnant. About five weeks.”
That revelation hit Keira like an anvil to the chest. She turned away from her mother’s frown and dates, weeks, flitted through her mind. When was her last period? When could this have happened? She took her pill religiously, every night at 8:00 p.m. like clockwork, and she and Kona were always careful.
The shower, she thought. The damn shower.
“Are they sure? How…wait, I don’t understand…”
“They’re sure. It’s one of the tests they ran when you came in. They had to know before they did the X-rays. You were down with the flu last month, remember? All those antibiotics.” Her mother rolled her eyes as though she thought Keira was the simplest, stupidest idiot she’d ever seen. “Antibiotics counteract the pill.” Keira could only stare at her mother, ignoring how deep her frown had pulled wrinkles on the side of her face. She didn’t care about the scowl the woman gave her or how her lip twitched with a curl. She was carrying Kona’s baby.
A baby?
It didn’t seem real; felt somehow like she was outside of herself; like this was a dream, a nightmare that was vividly, achingly detailed. She didn’t know how she felt. The news was raw, a gaping wound that bled as hard as Luka’s loss. Would this baby heal Kona’s broken heart? Would it be a small replacement for the brother that had been stolen from him?
Wait. Termination. The word felt dirty, bitter and when Keira realized what her mother wanted, what she’d already planned, that small glimmer of hope in her chest dulled.
“I’ve spoken with Kona’s mother.”
“You did what?” Keira had never wanted to hit her mother more than she did now. What the hell had she done while Keira lay unconscious in the hospital? It was clear that she was rerouting Keira's life, making attempts to change the course of how it would go. It didn’t surprise her in the least, but to reach out to Kona’s mother? Especially when their family was dealing with the loss of Luka?
“Steven saw her yesterday morning. She’d come to claim the body and arrange the burial.” Her mother waved her hand as though Luka’s death was a footnote to the point of her story. “I introduced myself and explained to her about your tests. We both agreed that terminating this pregnancy would be in both your and Kona’s best interest.”
“You both agreed?”
“Of course. You are too young to be a mother, and that poor woman is dealing with far too much to be saddled with the role of grandmother. Trust me, you’ll thank me one day.”
Keira felt like a puppet. Her mother pulled the strings, twisted her this way and that until she danced, until she moved toward a long stage, one that her mother had set with checkpoints of expectations. She wanted to clip those strings. She wanted to clip them and wrap them around her mother's neck.
She knew the open mouth, then the closed, hooded look she gave her mother was full of anger, but Keira didn’t care. Kona’s mother and her own, were thinking about this child’s impact on their lives; they wanted to snatch the decision from both of them, and Keira wouldn’t have it. “Are you out of your fucking mind?”
“Watch your mouth, Keira.”
The laughter, when it came, moved up her belly. It was loud, rude and highly un-amused, and it hurt with the dull ache that tasted like bitterness. “You tell me you’ve decided that you want me to kill my baby, and all you can think to say is ‘watch your mouth’?”
That laughter turned cold, stripped into the smart burn of tears Keira let fall over her face. She took to holding herself around her middle, trying to comfort the small person growing inside her, the one she hoped would be a salve over the anguish of the past week. She wanted Kona. She needed his arms, his strength, his protection from the world and her mother’s cruelty, that she’d come to depend on so desperately. Brushing off her mother’s useless touches, Keira rubbed her face dry with the back of her hand. “Where’s Kona?”
“You don’t need to worry about him right now. He’s got enough trouble.”
Keira knew her mother meant to disregard her question. She didn’t want Keira asking about Kona or caring what happened to him and when the woman moved away from her, sitting back in her chair as though she wouldn’t give Keira any news on what happened to her boyfriend, she grabbed her mother’s wrist and jerked her forward. “Where is he?”
Keira was past caring about the shock on her mother’s face or the way the threatening scowl she wore blared a warning that she’d soon lash out, strike. “Orleans Parish prison,” her mother finally said, extracting her wrist from Keira’s tight hold. “He’s been arrested for accessory to murder. He was there when those boys were killed and won’t be getting out anytime soon.” The tears came so hard now that Keira could feel a knot working in the back of her throat and still her mother continued, voice impassive, uncaring. “His mother agreed that telling Kona anything about the baby would be a bad idea right now. He’s just lost his twin because of his own irresponsibility, and by the time he’s out, the procedure will be complete. No need to rub salt in wounds.”
The woman smiled, a pleased, contented expression that told Keira this baby, the loss and the irrevocably broken lives could be pushed under the rug, brushed aside as though none of it really mattered. Taking a breath, steeling herself for the argument she knew would come, Keira lifted the sheet from her lap and dried her face. Then, mimicking her mother’s unaffected tone, she smiled. “There isn’t going to be any procedure.”
“What?”
“I’m not having an abortion. How in God’s name did you ever get my consent?” She narrowed her eyes at her mother, knowing instantly that there had been more under-the-rug brushing. “You waited until I was out of it, didn’t you? You had Steven hush things over and then what? Told Dr. Mitchell that I’d consent? My God, mother, how low would you go to get your way?”
“I’d do whatever it takes, Keira. I’d do anything to make sure you don’t throw your life away like I did.” Keira’s mother sounded weak, pathetic, but behind the low whisper of her wordslay the ever-present threat, the grasp of reason, purpose that only made sense to her mother. “Why do you think I’m so hard on you? I push you because I want you to make smart choices.”
The sad thing was, the woman honestly believed that. Keira’s body hurt. Her tears had clogged up her sinuses, had her breathing through her mouth and she wanted her mother to leave. She wanted her to know that the only thing that mattered to her was this child, its safety, and the hope she believed it would bring to their lives.
“No, Mother, you push me so I do what you want me to do. And when I don’t, when I show the smallest bit of free will, you smack me around until I fall in line.”
Her mother shook her head, frown heavy. “If I’ve been harsh, it’s because I want you to realize your potential. I want you to use your limited attributes.”
And there was the crux of so many of the issues Keira ever had with her mother. She blinked at the woman, measured the set of her impassive expression, the cold shift of her eyes, and Keira was left helpless, struck dumb by the cruelty her mother held in every blink of her eye and unrestrained expression. Keira would always be nothing more to this woman than a visual shell, nothing of substance, a pretty picture fashioned through instance and urging.
“My limited attributes? You mean my face? My body?”
Her mother touched her chin, fingers soft and surprisingly kind against Keira bruised skin. “We’ve worked hard to make sure you grew into that face. How many times have I told you…”
The slap came sharp, loud: Keira’s palm against her mother’s hand, and the woman stepped back, shocked, surprised that her daughter had lashed out. “Limited attributes?” Keira said again, raising her voice. “My face, my body, what I look like? Not what’s in my heart? Not if I’m kind or good or generous? Not my mind, God, no, you don’t care if I’m smart. You just want me to smile and agree with whatever asshole you find suitable enough for me, right?” Her mother took another step back, glaring at Keira as though she didn’t recognize her. “You don’t care that I live and breathe and exist for music. You don’t care if I’m the valedictorian a hundred times over or if I know Chaucer or Shakespeare or the stories a thousand years old that have changed what I feel, what I believe in. Those aren’t attributes to you, Mother.
“You only care that I’m pretty, and all I’ve ever, ever wanted for you to say to me is that I was pretty smart, pretty talented, pretty kind, anything, Mother—anything more than just plain pretty. But you can’t do that. You don’t know how. You live inside your little box where everything is white and traditional and frozen in a time that died long ago.” Tears streaming over her cheeks, Keira wiped them away, annoyed, worked up. “You don’t struggle. You don’t need. You don’t want. And all you care about is that I become a carbon copy of you. But I won’t be. I can’t be. There is too much of my father in me, and he taught me something you could never beat out of me; he taught me to love blindly. He taught me that there is magic in music, that every single important purpose in life is about finding that magic and holding it inside you. And I took that magic and embraced it, and it led me to a boy who is nothing like you, who is loud and large and beautiful. I love him. I love him more than breath, and I will not walk away from him, and there is no way in hell I will kill his baby.”
Her mother kicked up from the chair, sending it sliding behind her. “You’re being irrational, Keira, just like your father. I knew this would happen. I knew it the second that boy walked into my house. That’s why I did what I needed to.”
That ache in Keira’s chest shifted, dropped like a stone into her stomach. “What are you talking about?” Her mother looked over her head, to the I.V., over at the monitor that timed Keira’s heartbeat, and she knew, just by the way her mother avoided her glare, how she rubbed her fingers on the bedrail, that the woman had somehow set the entire mess in motion. “What did you do?”
Shoulders lowering, her mother still refused to look at Keira. “I heard you talking about North Rampart, and I knew what he was doing.” A small glance at Keira’s face and then her mother’s voice rushed out excuses, rationale that probably sounded sensible in her mind. “I knew it was something you didn’t need to be around so I left a message with Steven’s golf buddy Detective Wilson. He took care of everything else.”
Keira let her eyes dip closed, unable to look at the woman for another second. “You called the cops.”
“I was protecting you.”
Her mother’s protection had cost them all, Kona’s twin the most. When she opened her eyes and spoke, Keira’s voice sounded flat, resigned. “You killed Luka.”
“I didn’t do a damn thing to that boy.” The bedrail raddled against the mattress when her mother hit it. “Kona killed Luka the moment he decided to be a thug.”
“Get out.”
“I most certainly will not…”
“Get out of my room,” she told her, voice even, steady, brimming with a threat. Keira watched her fingers, the rough calluses on the tips from playing, and she wished she had her Gibson. She needed the calm it brought her. Her mind was set and she promised herself she wouldn’t look at her mother again. The lies, the betrayal, the smothering dominance the woman had always settled over Keira felt too thick, too full. “Get out. Now.”
She didn’t rage at her mother liked she wanted. Keira didn’t even enjoy the way the woman’s chin wobbled or how she visibly released her calm. But Cora Michaels didn’t move, seemed incapable of doing anything more than stare at her daughter as though she was finally seeing her clearly for the first time. But it was a reaction that had come too late for Keira, an honest expression of respect she no longer needed or wanted.
Three slow pumps onto the call button and Keira’s nurse entered the room, that bright smile vanishing when she watched Keira and her mother staring back and forth. “I want her out,” she told the nurse. “I don’t want to see her anymore, and I damn sure do not want an abortion.”
“She’s your mama…”
“I don’t care.” Again, she closed her eyes, moving her fingers to her temples, trying to ease the pound there. “I’m legally responsible for myself, and I don’t want this woman or her husband anywhere near me.”
Two small steps and her mother reached for her. “Keira…”
“Get. Out.”
And for once, the woman listened. For once, she didn’t exhaust herself exerting her will over her daughter, and when she walked out of that hospital room, Keira felt the heavy weight of her mother’s presence leave with her. It moved from her shoulders slipping from her chest and finally Keira could breathe.
A yellow brick wall greeted Keira as she waited in the Orleans Parish Prison lobby. The clerk copying her driver’s license moved the card between her plump fingers as though she was looking for a flaw, some small indication that Keira’s I.D. was a fake.
She still felt sore, achy, and the fresh bout of morning sickness that Leann was convinced was psychosomatic had Keira feeling woozy and uncomfortable, like her skin had been pulled taut over her bones. Only three days out of the hospital, three days since she’d determined never to see her mother again, and Keira sat waiting for a suspicious jail clerk to tell her it was okay to walk through those heavy metal doors to speak with Kona. Keira didn’t know what she’d do or where she’d go the next day. She only knew she had to see Kona. She had to tell him about the hope growing inside her.
“Miss?” the clerk called, and Keira jumped to her feet, pulling her I.D. and a visitor’s badge under the glass in the metal dip of the desk. “Ten minutes until the end of the last visiting period. You’ll have a half-hour with the inmate and then I need that badge back.”
She’d arrived twenty minutes earlier, scribbled her name on a faded form attached to a clip board. Keira glanced at that list, spotting a name that filled her with unease and the rumble in her stomach only got worse. “Lalei Alana.” Kona’s mother, and then, under that name, “Koa Hale,” his grandfather.
Keira closed her eyes, not eager to see either of them. It wasn’t fear of what they’d say to her that had her ready to bolt from the room, but the heavy weight of guilt she felt. Luka had gone with her to rescue Kona. He’d gone willingly, eagerly, but he’d gone because Keira had called him. He’d gone because, like Keira, he wanted to rescue Kona. That wasn’t an excuse. Luka had still ended up dead, and Keira didn’t think Kona’s family would thank her for leading Luka to that death.
A screech from the large metal door that opened to the visitor’s area brought Keira’s attention away from the Admin desk and when she saw Professor Alana walking through it towards her, several thoughts came to her. The first was that the woman looked older. The death, the burden of burying your own child and the empty future of another seemed to wear on her; it was written in the unkempt wrinkles on her linen shirt and the loose fitting hang of her worn jeans. She had always walked with her chin uplifted, shoulders back and her stance elegant, but the woman who caught her eyes, who slammed the door shut behind her, slumped her shoulders, took sloppy steps toward Keira.
“You have a lot of nerve coming here,” Professor Alana swatted at her eyes, brushing back the hair falling from her loose bun. Keira didn’t jerk away from her when she gripped her elbow, or when she pulled her toward the back of the lobby. “He doesn’t want to see you.”
She wouldn’t believe it. In all honesty, Keira didn’t care if Kona hated her right then. She knew telling him about the baby would change things. She knew him; she knew how he’d blame himself for Luka’s death. He needed a glimmer, and Keira wanted to give him that. “I don’t care, Professor Alana.” She twisted out of the woman’s grip and stepped away from her. “I need to talk to him.”
The woman lifted her eyebrows, her gaze working over Keira’s face and then she sighed, sitting on the seat to her left before she opened the purse on her lap. “This is about that baby.” She kept her eyes downcast, her fingers rustling through her purse until she withdrew her checkbook. A swipe of her pen and the woman tore out a check, shoving it at Keira without a word.
Five hundred dollars. Alana thought her grandchild’s life was worth five hundred dollars. She spotted the scrawl in the memo line, and Keira crumbled the check between her fingers.
“To fix Kona’s ‘lapse in judgment?’”
“What else would I call this?”
Keira’s heart would not soften, despite the bags under the professor’s eyes or the dark circles that told her sleep had not been easy for her. She understood the heartache, felt echoes of her own father’s death in the shadows beneath Professor Alana’s eyes, but she wouldn’t be written off. She would not let her mother or Kona’s decide the course of their lives. He had a right to know about their baby. Despite his possible anger at her, despite the gut-wrenching loss she knew he must be feeling, he still had to know that hope would come to them.
“I don’t want your money. Take this.” She waved the wrinkled check back at the professor, then slipped it in her back pocket when the woman only glared at her, top lip twitching.
Professor Alana grabbed Keira’s arms and shook her twice. “I will not let some stupid bitch ruin my son’s future. You say a word to him about that damn baby and I will destroy you, little girl. I promise you that.” Her fingernails bit into Keira’s skin, and she tried to break away, to pull out of the woman’s touch. “You’ve already taken one son from me, you will not take Kona!”
“Kaikamahine, enough.” Koa came behind Professor Alana, pulled her away from Keira and as he held his daughter against his chest, patted her back, the old man’s kind eyes went glassy and soft. He gave Keira a weak smile, an expression Keira thought was forced, but sincere. “Kona’s waiting, makamae, go see him. He needs to see a friendly face.”
Keira walked away from Kona’s family, from the small sobs working out of his mother’s chest and the gentle kindness softening his grandfather’s features. But she couldn’t help thinking, as she walked through that metal door, that the guilt she felt would swallow her whole.