Page 61 of Talk Story

Makena the seal slept on, unbothered, her flippers tucked, her bulky, vulnerable body relaxed, trusting us to keep her safe.

I filed the prickle away—a thread I couldn’t yet see the end of—and let it go for now. The day was too perfect to chase a shadow.

Keone swam to me and gathered me in, the way he had a hundred times, and put his forehead against mine, our breath mingling in the old way.

“Move in with me,” he said. “Aunt Fae’s solid as a rock; the foot’s good as new. She’s got her own life now. She doesn’t need you minding her anymore.” His arms tightened. “And I’m done pretending I don’t want to wake up next to you every morning. Come home to our place, Kat.”

I gazed at Elle laughing on Pali’s shoulders. At the seal asleep on the rocks. At the sacred green valley behind us. And at the man holding me in the deep blue, a man who’d never let go or let me down—if he could help it.

For thirty years I’d believed belonging to people was dangerous, because they could leave. I still knew that heartache was possible, but I’d counted the cost.

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll move in.”

His face lit up. “You’re ready?”

“Yup.” I kissed him, there in the water, with the sun waning and our friends splashing nearby, and a sleeping seal keeping watch over the bay. “It’s time.”

Behind us on the dry sand, Tiki yowled as if summoning us to return—and the four of us laughed.

The seal slept on below the church’s vacant lot: silver and sleek, holding a future none of us could know . . . but that’s a story for another day.