The Good Widow(37)
“Yes, I remember them now.” Jacob frowns, and I wonder if he read about their accident in the newspaper. So far, only our first bartender has connected the dots. “But if they’re the couple I’m thinking of, I don’t think they’ll be giving me a five-star review.”
Obviously he doesn’t know. He’s still speaking about them in the present tense.
“Really?” Nick and I say in unison.
“I probably shouldn’t say anything.”
“It’s okay, James confided that they were having some problems.” Nick jumps in and twirls the lie without skipping a beat.
“Ya, it sure seemed like that. I overheard them bickering before we even started the trail.” He pauses as if he knows what we’re wondering. “I have no idea what about—but you know, that didn’t seem that unusual to me—I’ve seen it all. Honeymooners duking it out, newly engaged folks just like you two, battling. Even in a place like this, it happens.”
Nick and I nod. I’m not sure if Nick really knows what Jacob means, but I do.
“Then once we started hiking—we weren’t even to marker one—she sat down. Said she was a bit dizzy. That she didn’t eat breakfast. But she didn’t want to stop. We both kept checking in, asking her if she was okay. And she said she was, but it was clear she was having a hard time. Finally, James told me they had to quit—that she wasn’t up to it.”
Nick bites his lower lip and balls his hands into fists at his sides. “Did they say what was wrong with her?”
“No, just that she was tired. I offered to stop the tour and escort them back to the bottom of the trail, but James refused, arguing that they weren’t that far up anyway. And Dylan agreed with him. So I let them go back on their own, just hoping the boss didn’t find out. Because it’s really against policy. But I could tell James wasn’t going to take no for an answer.”
Jacob stops talking, and a palpable silence descends until he starts again. “So was she okay? Was she just overheating or maybe even a little out of shape? Because this hike isn’t easy, especially on a hot day like that. Maybe she’d had too much champagne the night before? We see it all here.” He stops again and looks at Nick. Before Nick can respond, Jacob waves his hands. “Ah, I’m being rude. It’s none of my business anyway; we’d better get on with this hike!”
An hour and a half later, we reach the top. Jacob explains that we’re at the Kealaloloa Ridge and tells us we’re looking at the Kaheawa Wind Farm and there are thirty-five wind turbines stretched out before us that are visible from all over Maui. I take a deep breath as Jacob rambles about the history of the wind farm and decide that this time I don’t need Nick’s guided meditation to help me through. If I learned anything yesterday, it’s that I’m stronger than I’ve ever given myself credit for. I made it up this ass-blasting, thigh-burning, steep and rocky hike without a single anxiety attack. And I also accomplished it when she couldn’t. And I know how that sounds—that she got sick and I’m happy about it. And maybe that’s true. But I can’t help but feel competitive. She was sleeping with my husband, after all.
“You did it.” Nick walks up behind me, placing his hand on mine.
“I did,” I say as I look over the cliff’s edge toward the ocean below, letting the wind slice through my hair. I’m shaking, and my heart feels like it might burst through my chest. But you know what? I feel alive.
CHAPTER TWENTY
JACKS—BEFORE
I sipped my pi?a colada, the cool mix of rum, pineapple, and coconut tasting exactly like I imagined paradise would. My head still buzzed slightly from all the wedding festivities. I was no longer Jacks Conner. Now I’d answer to Mrs. James Morales. And rather than merely drooling over pictures of the cabanas at the Four Seasons hotel in Wailea, I was relaxing in one, the attentive pool boy popping by every few minutes to see if I needed a refill, a cool towel, or anything at all.
I’d never had anyone wait on me, and it felt surreal to be lying under the giant white cabana facing the pristine pool with the grand fountain in the middle, the deep cobalt ocean waters just in the distance. I hadn’t planned to be here. James and I were supposed to be in a Victorian room at a quaint B and B in Santa Barbara. The limited savings we had between us would have barely covered airfare anywhere, so we’d decided to go somewhere local and take a honeymoon later, when we could afford it.
But James’s mom had surprised us with this trip during her toast at the wedding reception, wryly joking that there was no way her son and his new wife were missing out on a proper honeymoon. The bed-and-breakfast we’d booked in Santa Barbara just wouldn’t do. The crowd had tittered and laughed, and I’d noticed James tense at the slight dig his mother had made, but it hadn’t bothered me. I agreed that we deserved a real vacation and would have charged it on a credit card if James had let me. We needed to bond as husband and wife. And if we didn’t go away now, I suspected we’d be one of those couples who never did.
At the reception, I’d been giddy and flushed from the champagne I’d been drinking, and I’d run over and hugged Isabella tightly, feeling thankful I’d inherited such a generous mother-in-law. Isabella flinched slightly when I squeezed her, but I wasn’t surprised. I’d quickly noticed that giving material gifts came easy for my mother-in-law—it was offering the emotional ones she seemed to struggle with. Hopefully, in time, that would change. I was used to an affectionate family—you could never enter my parents’ house without giving them each a tight hug. Once my mom embraced Isabella so tightly at Thanksgiving that I thought she might break her, the pinched look on my mother-in-law’s face something Beth and I had laughed about later.