We went to Maui in April, one year late.
David booked everything himself this time: the same resort in Ka’anapali and the same ocean-view room. He even rebooked the sunset catamaran and the Molokini snorkel trip. He printed out every confirmation and stuck them on our refrigerator with the pineapple magnet.
The MAUI. AGAIN. account had $12,900 in it by then. David had replaced the eleven hundred in cancellation fees from his own paychecks within four months, and then kept going.
On our fourth anniversary, we sat on the beach at sunset with our feet in the warm sand, watching the sky over Lana’i turn orange and pink and purple. A pod of spinner dolphins jumped out in the distance.
“Rach,” David said. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“When you walked up to me in Mom’s kitchen, in the middle of all that mess, what were you thinking?”
I thought about it. I remembered the bare studs and the dangling wires, the dust on his navy polo shirt, and his proud, oblivious smile.
“I was thinking that I love you,” I said. “And that I was about to break your heart. And that it was the only way I could think of to save us.”
David was quiet for a long time, watching the dolphins.
“It worked,” he said.
“Did it?”
“I’m sitting on a beach in Maui with my wife,” he said, reaching for my hand. “I think it worked.”
The sun slipped below the horizon. The sky went deep blue, and the first stars came out over the Pacific.
Somewhere in Naples, Linda was probably sitting on the balcony of her waterfront condo with Frank, in a home bought partly with the money from a kitchen her son paid to build.
I didn’t hate her anymore. I didn’t really feel anything about her at all.
A year earlier, my husband had sat across our kitchen table and told me a trip was a temporary luxury and family comes first. He was right about one thing. Family does come first.
He just had to stand in the dust of his mother’s gutted kitchen to understand who his family was.
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