Water Lily Read online

  “You were swimming in it.” Ann frowned and looked toward the front of the room. “You and Duckie both.”

  Darby stared at her cousin Duxelles. Big, blond Duckie had always reminded her of a Viking. She looked strapping and strong, but bacteria wouldn’t care. And Duckie had, in a rare act of kindness, rescued several wild colts from drowning.

  Darby’s mouth tasted sour as she recalled her fall from Hoku that same day. She’d taken in a gulp of that awful water that one of the firefighters had called junk soup.

  Darby pulled up the neck of her pink polo shirt to cover her lips.

  “Too late,” Ann told her, and though she was smiling, her eyes looked worried.

  Chapter Two

  Darby’s worries over water pollution floated away as soon as she rested her boot in the stirrup and swung into Navigator’s saddle.

  Cade had the rest of the day off. The young paniolo was not only Jonah’s hanai’d son—in Hawaiian that meant fostered or adopted—he was also one of the hardest workers on the ranch and had been up at dawn, pounding fence posts into the ground.

  Jonah had agreed Darby could ride with Cade into Crimson Vale to see if his mother, Dee, had returned to their tsunami-damaged house. Cade had tried to stay in touch with his mother, but his brutal stepfather, Manny Sharp, had made that difficult. Now, though, Manny was in jail.

  Jonah had told Darby to ride Navigator instead of Hoku. When she’d asked him why, he’d said, “All that wind and water left a few surprises in the valley. Count on that.” Now, Darby was glad she’d taken her grandfather’s advice.

  The air had turned muggy. A fine mist fell and slicked over drying mud, but she didn’t have to worry about her mount’s footing or anything else. Smart and steady Navigator did it for her.

  Cade rode Joker, his Appaloosa, down the slope into Crimson Vale, and Navigator followed.

  Darby’s body swayed in the saddle as she soaked up the music of the tropics. Rain tapped the dense foliage. Birds twittered, squawked, and sang e-e-vee. The distant roll and crash of waves drifted from the black sands of Night Digger Point Beach.

  When she’d first seen Crimson Vale, Darby had thought this junglelike valley, with vines sprouting trumpet-shaped morning glory flowers all through the thickly packed trees, might be a magical place. Now that she’d lived a few months on Wild Horse Island, she was sure of it.

  Violet shimmers danced in the rainbow that arched over a waterfall, dropping past black volcanic rock into a foaming pool of water.

  Cade led her out of this enchantment toward the dismal home he’d shared with his mother and Manny. Cade had lived there until he was ten, when Jonah took him in after finding an injured Cade walking down the road leading Joker. Jonah had taken the boy to be patched up by Tutu, Darby’s great-grandmother, and Cade had lived at ‘Iolani Ranch ever since.

  A quiver ran from Navigator’s body through Darby’s knees as a twilight-colored pony stepped into the path several yards ahead of them.

  Cade turned in the saddle toward Darby, his face excited. Darby halted Navigator alongside him.

  “Meet Honi, the pony,” he said, rhyming the words.

  The fairy-tale creature hurried forward to touch noses with Joker. Clearly, the two animals recognized each other.

  “Your mother’s pony?” Darby asked, and when the pony pointed its silvery ears toward her voice, Navigator began backing away.

  She’d heard that some horses were afraid of ponies, but she never would have guessed it of Navigator.

  Since she didn’t want to tackle the steep trail behind them in reverse, Darby drove the big bay forward. He obeyed, then halted, but the Quarter Horse looked off into the trees instead of studying the pony.

  “I should have realized that Manny was lying when he said Mom had stolen his truck and left the island. No way would she leave Honi behind.”

  Darby swallowed and tried to keep her face blank. Although she couldn’t help admiring the strongly built pony with its high-set tail, fine-boned legs, and lively brown eyes, everything Cade had said about Dee indicated she cared more about her pony than her son.

  “She’s a beauty,” Darby said.

  “Half Arab and half Welsh,” Cade said, and when the pony picked that moment to move closer to Navigator and lift her muzzle to neigh into his face, he added, “and all bossy.”

  Darby let Navigator sidestep away, but the pony followed, reminding her of her friend Heather’s Siamese cat, which had always sought out the laps of people who preferred dogs.

  “Does she run wild out here?” Darby asked.

  She tried to revive her mental image of Cade’s house, but she’d only been there once. What she did remember was Manny shooting at the wild horses, Kit threatening to teach Manny a lesson, and the dark, rising sea shadow of the tsunami.

  “Mom lets her.” Cade’s tone was defensive. “She can find her way home.”

  “What does her name mean?” Darby asked, changing the subject.

  “Kiss,” Cade said, then hurried on. “Honi, go home. We’ll follow you.”

  Much to Navigator’s relief, the pony whirled on her back hooves and set off at a steady trot down the path.

  Amazing, Darby thought. The pony really seemed to understand Cade and she obeyed him, even though he’d been away for years.

  They followed Honi for about five minutes until she took off at a gallop, veering off the path and crashing through the foliage and down a slope thick with trees.

  “I know where she’s going.” Cade sounded boyish, and Darby’s spirits lifted along with his. “We’ll take it a little slower,” he assured her, and though Joker fretted and pulled at his bit, Cade kept him to a jog as they navigated the trail down the wet slope.

  The big Quarter Horse descended cautiously, and when Cade and Joker disappeared into a dense tangle of trees, Navigator didn’t hurry to catch up.

  “I hope you know where you’re going,” Darby said.

  In answer to her misgivings, the big bay detoured off the path, through a route so choked with vines he had to leap over them.

  Once more the air turned moist, warm, and thick. Darby opened her mouth to get more oxygen. She hadn’t thought about her asthma much lately, and had even caught herself going out and leaving her inhaler behind. That was another thing she would never have done back in smog-filled Los Angeles, but she rarely needed it these days.

  She probably wouldn’t need it now, either, but she’d just taken a deep, testing breath when Navigator carried her out of the trees.

  “Ohh,” Darby gasped.

  The pond was an oasis, even in a world of emerald green. Honi had waded into the water-lily-strewn water and Cade had drawn rein to watch her.

  “She’s eating water lilies.” He answered Darby’s unspoken question when she rode up next to him. “She’s always loved them.”

  Doesn’t your mother feed her? Are they safe? Is Dee too lazy to care?

  Darby held back the words. Obviously, Cade loved his mother despite her flaws. Insulting Dee would ruin their friendship.

  Darby let her eyes wander until they halted on something brown and furry. She went still, trying not to scare off whatever it was until she realized it wasn’t drinking at the water’s edge. In fact, it didn’t seem to move at all. The animal might not even be breathing.

  “What’s that?” Darby whispered. Even though she didn’t point, Cade caught the direction of her eyes. “A ferret?” she guessed. “Or a weasel?”

  “Dead mongoose,” Cade said.

  They brought their horses closer. Even though Darby felt sad at the unmoving little body, she looked closely.

  It was about two feet long, and its brown fur had dried into dull clumps. With its head tucked under its stiff body, she couldn’t see its face, and she was glad.

  The horses paid no attention to it, which probably meant, gross as it sounded even to her, that it didn’t have much of a smell. She had the feeling it hadn’t been there long.

  “I’ve never s
een a mongoose. But I remember Rikki-Tikki-Tavi.” She’d didn’t say it had been her mother who’d read her the story about a brave mongoose who’d saved the family that had adopted him as a pet.

  “Do you think it drowned and just got washed up here?” Darby turned toward Cade. She hoped he agreed, before another, uglier possibility took shape in her mind.

  “Must have.”

  Darby let out a breath. Cade would probably know. Besides, she’d seen too many creatures swept up by the tsunami, paddling to get free, not to know that was the most likely cause of the mongoose’s death.

  Even animals that survived the killer wave had been struck by debris or drowned in their exhausted struggle to reach land.

  Darby didn’t even know she’d been hyperventilating until her breaths slowed and Navigator shifted, feeling her relax.

  “Or it could be somethin’ in the water.” Cade whistled shrilly. “Honi, get out of there!”

  The pony lifted her head about a foot above the pond’s surface but continued to chew on a water lily.

  The water. Mud, malaria, the sick kids in the office…

  “Honi!” Darby shouted with such force Navigator shied under her.

  The silver-gray pony stood knee-deep in the water. She was soaking in it. She was eating a plant that had been immersed in it.

  “Do you think the water poisoned the mongoose?” she asked, but Cade concentrated on unsnapping the leather strap that kept a rope coiled on his saddle. Shaking it out caught the pony’s attention.

  With a disgruntled snort, Honi’s head jerked up. She tossed her forelock away from her eyes and glared at Cade.

  “Can you rope her?” Darby asked.

  Cade ignored her, rolling his wrist before raising the rope and spinning it into a loop above his head.

  How did he do that? Darby wondered, but Honi wasn’t at all curious. She knew what came next and she didn’t want to be dragged out of the pond.

  With a long, splashing lunge, Honi reached the shore. She shook herself before breaking into a run, but even then she didn’t release the water-lily stem trailing from her mouth.

  “Come on.” Cade sounded grim, as if his fears were the same as Darby’s, but they didn’t talk about the possibility of tainted water as they headed toward the tan house standing at a slant on the hillside ahead.

  Honi dashed through the gully holding the taro field, but Darby and Cade rode around. Though the earthen walls protecting the plants had collapsed and once-green leaves were pasted flat by dried mud, it still didn’t seem right to trample the only evidence that real farming had taken place here.

  Darby looked up at the house Cade had once lived in and thought that the sheets of stucco that had shaken off the house during earthquakes had given it the patchy appearance of a giraffe.

  Just as Cade had predicted, Honi had come all the way home. She stood sniffing the wooden porch. Amid its broken boards, she found something to lip up and eat.

  As Darby rode nearer, she saw a few oat flakes.

  “Mom’s been here to feed Honi,” Cade said, noticing the same thing.

  Darby didn’t contradict him, even though she knew volunteers from the Animal Rescue Society had patrolled areas hard-hit by the tsunami looking for needy animals.

  “She’s either asleep or gone.” Cade’s voice sounded tight. “Let’s put Joker and Navigator in back before we check inside.”

  A slick, steep hillside rose behind the house. Before they came to it there was a small corral with a trough that held a few inches of rainwater.

  “I should stay with the horses,” Darby said. She really didn’t want to go inside Manny’s lair.

  “Suit yourself,” Cade said, but in the instant before he turned to go back to the front door, Darby saw disappointment in his brown eyes.

  Nice friend you are, Darby told herself. How bad can it be?

  “They’ll probably be fine,” Darby said to the empty clearing and hurried after Cade.

  As she came around the corner of the tilted house, Cade pushed open the unlocked door. “Mom?” he shouted. “Are you here? It’s me, Cade.”

  No one answered.

  Darby entered the silent house behind Cade.

  Almost silent, she thought as water dripped through a cracked glass pane, over the windowsill, and onto the floor.

  The refrigerator that had tipped over two weeks ago still lay there, but someone had brought in black plastic bags and they’d been piled, lumpy and full, against one wall.

  “She’s been back since we were here.” Cade considered an ashtray overflowing with stubbed-out cigarettes. His teeth clamped together. The skin pulled taut across the bump on his jawbone.

  He banged on the bedroom door. “Mom!” When there was no reply, he opened it a little and peered in. “She’s not here,” he reported. He disappeared inside and came back a moment later. “Her stuff’s still here. I told you she wouldn’t leave Honi.”

  “That’s good,” Darby said, but inside, she wasn’t so sure.

  Wouldn’t it be better if Dee got out of Cade’s life once and for all? He loved working as a paniolo. He was content as Jonah’s son and valued as a member of the ranch family.

  Of course, she was leaving out the part about loving his mother. Darby sighed, glad Cade was more interested in detective work than in her reaction to this place.

  “I don’t see Manny’s truck,” Cade observed as he looked through the slats of grimy blinds. “Maybe she took it into town. Mind if we wait here just a little while?”

  “No problem.” Darby pushed some junk mail to the end of the couch, revealing fabric pocked with small, round cigarette burns.

  Cade perched on the couch’s arm, and all at once Darby saw what she’d been missing.

  Cade was only acting like nothing was out of the ordinary, like this was the normal state of things. In fact, Cade was barely controlling his disgust.

  Both fists were clenched as he said, “I can still smell Manny in this place.”

  “He’s in jail—”

  “For now,” Cade snapped.

  “Trafficking in antiquities is a pretty serious charge, isn’t it?” Darby asked. “And politically, you know”—Darby searched for the right word—“sensitive?”

  “I guess,” Cade admitted.

  “Think about it,” Darby insisted. “Hawaiians care about their culture. Most can’t stand the idea of one of their own selling off their history, their heritage. Any judge with good sense will put him away forever and—”

  Until Cade gently pushed away her index finger, she didn’t realize she’d been shaking it at him for emphasis.

  “Sorry,” she said, then tidied her ponytail as if it mattered.

  Maybe it was all wishful thinking, but maybe she was right. She was feeling pretty optimistic, until Cade muttered something she couldn’t understand.

  “What?”

  “I said, what if she takes him back?” Cade asked.

  “Why would she? Are you kidding?”

  “Why did they get together in the first place? I mean, I know what she says, but lots of single mothers do okay.” Cade stopped, as if he felt disloyal, then stood up and paced around the room.

  Cade’s right. Dee could have found child care and a job. Lots of single mothers do that, Darby thought. My mom did. Dee didn’t have to live with a criminal who beat her son. It was getting harder to keep her opinion to herself, but Cade was upset enough without her piling on his mother.

  “I can’t just abandon her, you know. Even though Manny was a creep, he fed her and stuff.”

  “I know,” Darby said.

  “But I can’t let her keep on this way, either.”

  Darby barely heard him, because she’d thought of something worse. What if there really was a plague? Dee could be out in the forest, alone and sick. But Darby didn’t need to add to Cade’s scary thoughts.

  A heavy silence fell between them.

  They must have waited an hour when Cade finally gave up.

&
nbsp; “I wish her cell phone worked. If she hasn’t paid the bill it means she’s broke,” Cade grumbled.

  He found a pen and stood ready to write a note on the back of an envelope, but then he looked at Darby. “What should we do with Honi? There’s rainwater in the trough”—he nodded toward the corral behind the house—“but is it enough? And if I leave her loose, she’ll go back to the pond and, well, that mongoose…”

  “Uh-huh,” Darby said. “That worries me, too.”

  Cade tapped the pen on the paper. He looked so confused, Darby tried to help him decide what to do next.

  “You’ve got a rope. Catch Honi and bring her home with us. Write your mom a note letting her know Honi is with you,” she said, pointing at the paper. “So she won’t worry.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Cade said, in a pretty good imitation of a western drawl.

  With a smile, Cade wrote quickly and lightly until he jabbed the pen point down in what looked like a final period. He picked up the paper and reread the note.

  He was clearing a space on the kitchen counter, when something big—probably Navigator—bumped the back of the house.

  Then, before Darby could make sense of Cade’s change in expression, he wadded the note into a ball and threw it against the wall.

  Chapter Three

  “What’s wrong?” Darby asked.

  “I can’t bring Honi back to the ranch. What if she’s already sick? And contagious?”

  Cade decided the best he could do for the pony was hook open the corral gate, so that she could drink from the trough. He put out the last of the hay, then said, “I’ve got to find my mom. I hate to ask Jonah for time off, but I don’t know what else to do.”

  Darby didn’t, either, not right then, but she’d think hard on the ride back to the ranch. Maybe she’d come up with something.

  They rode away from the tilted house. Honi walked as far as the edge of the ruined taro patch, but then she stopped. She stayed behind, waiting for Dee.

  Darby made it home in time to help Megan put together a big shrimp salad. That was a good thing, because the two of them were in charge of dinner that night.