The Last Handful of Clover - Book 1: The Hereafter

1.18 That Old Kilani Magic

June 6, 7:10 am

One benefit of their creaky old house was that Pil could always tell when his wife was stirring in their bedroom upstairs. He was always up early; a habit he had never shed from his days growing up on his foster family's ranch on the north coast of New Zealand. Pil had not been back there since he and Michelle left Hawaii, but some habits died hard.

Pil's journey from being an orphan Maori boy to a devoted Mormon husband seemed like an unlikely one, even to the man who had lived it. But whatever hand had guided his fate, Pil felt blessed. It had been an amazing twelve years with his wife, who was, by far, the best person he had ever known. He loved their church, their home, and their plans to start a family after he finished graduate school. It had all seemed so close to perfect.

That is, until violence had struck so unexpectedly, just three and a half short days ago.

As Michelle stirred upstairs, Pil went to the cabinet to get her favorite coffee cup, and realized that his hand was shaking.

Now that he no longer had work to do, such as cleaning and repairing Keith's house, Pil could see how on edge his nerves had become. Staying busy had kept his brain from chasing its own tail, but now that Keith was back home and they were alone in the house, he realized he had born more of the stress than he thought. Even the extra passion in the sex last night hadn't completely dispelled the dark cloud he now felt hovering over their lives.

As he did every morning, Pil waited until he actually heard Michelle on the stairs before he poured her coffee. He listened as his wife descended the last few steps and came into their kitchen; her face inches away from her cell phone, her hair still mussed from a restless night. As it always did, seeing her made him realize everything would be all right.

"Good Morning, m'lady," he said with a smile, as he pulled out her chair. Michelle sank down at the table with a yawn, still rubbing the sleep out of her eyes.

"You don't look like you slept great," he said. "I thought the old Kilani magic would have put you right to sleep." He winked at her, mischievously.

"Mmmmm...." she said, rubbing her face in her hands. "Yeah, I think we both needed that last night. You were such a beast." Finally, she looked up and caught his eye, and saw him raising and lowering his thick eyebrows in his poor imitation of Groucho Marx.

She smiled. Pil had seen little of that smile since the disaster last week. Since then, everything had been so dark, and each day had felt like a struggle just to get through. And if it had been that hard for him, he could only imagine how it had been for Keith and Michelle.

Pil had been at the Youth Crisis Line that night, training a new cohort of volunteers. He hadn't realized what had happened until he got the text on the way home. It was brief and terrifying: "Richard has been shot, and is dead. Keith is okay. We're at our house. Come as soon as you can." He'd almost driven off the road. When he arrived, he found Keith and Michelle sitting together on the living room floor. There was a detective with them by the name of Grayson, and a woman he later learned was a grief counselor in the city's employ. The hours and days since had been nothing but a blur of pain and mourning and the very necessary work that needed to be done when someone died. It had exhausted Pil, but it had devastated Michelle and Keith.

"That looked like an actual smile," he said, feeling the catch of emotion in his own throat. "It's nice to see something that feels normal coming back."

"I think that started last night. Which was lovely, by the way." She reached out to squeeze his hand.

"It was more than lovely, lady. It was necessary. I think it made us feel alive and real again, for the first time in days."