But as he waits in the old Victorian, arm across the back of the sofa, posture easy, he thinks forgiveness will not come so easily now.
He hears her Mercedes pull into the drive and Kona fleetingly thinks that she needs a brake job, that the squeak when she stops is getting worse than it had been two days before when she picked him up from the airport.
Her long, thin skirt sways against her legs as Kona watches her through the window and he grips the back of the couch, somewhat nervous, still angry that she’d kept this secret so long.
Keys on the table in the foyer and his mother stops short as she enters the living room, eyebrows up high when she looks at him. “Keiki kane? What are you doing here?” She drops her bags, worry etched in her face so that the wrinkles around her eyes deepen. “What’s happened?”
He doesn’t answer. Kona moves his chin, motions for his mother to sit across from him. She is tiny now; grown so thin and he worries about her. The professor is nearing her mid-sixties and she doesn’t cook for herself, doesn’t do more than shop and putter around in her garden.
Her back is straight as she sits on the glass coffee table, gazing over his face, looking, Kona suspects, for any hint of what has him so sullen, so quiet. “Yesterday in the Market,” he says, eyes lowered, glaring at her, “I saw Keira.”
The worry disappears and his mother’s posture becomes less rigid. “And?”
Kona dismisses the curiosity. He wants to measure her reaction, to see if a confession will come. “I spoke to her.”
“Kona, no.” She’s already abandoned her worry. She’s always hated Keira, even before the wreck, before Luka. He’d never known why and this flippant attitude that has her standing, has her picking her purse up from the floor and lifting her wide hat from her head, only confirms that her opinion has not changed. “It’s best you stay away from her. After all she did…”
“What do think she did, Mom?” His mother snaps her attention to him, a snarl curling her top lip, but Kona ignores it. “You think she’s responsible? Still? After all these years?”
“If she’d minded her own business…”
“She wanted to protect me. So… so did Luka.” He leans up, rests his elbows on his knees. “It was my fault. You never understood that. I led them there.”
“Don’t say that, son. No.” His mother comes next to him, takes his hands and some of his irritation is replaced with gratitude. She never thought he’d done anything wrong. His sins, his crimes, she always excused away as though they were the stupid behavior of a misguided kid, not felonies he’d willingly jumped into.
Then the flash of that boy in the Market returns to him and Kona pulls his hands away from his mother, stares over her head to the window and the fat blooms of hydrangea and roses lining the walkway outside. “It’s a funny thing; the women in my life getting into my business.” He looks back at her. “You’ve always messed with my business.”
She sits up straighter. “What are you saying?”
“You knew. You’ve known this whole time and you never told me.” They stare at each other, his mother’s eyes narrowing, playing a game, seeing whose tells will give away their hands. “He looks just like me, Mom. He’s me exactly.”
She stands, walks to the vase near the window, fiddles with the arrangement of magnolias and hydrangeas. “If he looks like you, it’s because you and your brother were so similar.”
His mother hated his anger, always said it was his father’s bad blood that had him lashing out. She’d never blame that defect on her family. And so she busies herself with the flowers, pulling out the stems, adjusting their height as though he hadn’t just accused her of lying to him for nearly sixteen years.
He couldn’t wait, felt his patience sliding through him. “Mom?” His tone is harsh, sharp and his mother jerks at the sound.
Finally she looks over her shoulder, and when she speaks her voice shakes. “I knew Keira was pregnant, son. Her mother told me the day after Luka…” She turns back to the flowers and the petals fall around the vase as her hands shake. “I didn’t want to hurt you.”
“By keeping my son from me?” Kona darts from the couch and in three strides, he’s behind her, fighting against himself to lower his voice to keep from punching something.
His mother faces him, twisting a dead flower in her hand. She stares at Kona’s collar, to the V-neck of his shirt and the silver chain that disappears underneath it. Then her eyes lift, are glassy. “By never telling you that the girl you thought you loved was carrying your brother’s child.”