Where Wildflowers Bloom by Renee Tawa
Bill and his daughter Leilani live on an isolated nature reserve, but Bill wonders if she needs something more.
From the top of a cliff overlooking the Pacific, Bill watched the sixty-five-foot catamaran motor toward their island. Under the spring sun, he kept an eye on his little girl, Leilani, who was zigzagging through wildflowers so tall that they might have escaped from a giant's garden.
Bill, the island's ranger, wore a clean, pressed khaki uniform. He and Leilani lived alone on Bluff Island, a national park twenty-two miles off the coast of Ventura, California. Lately, the mainland - usually a forgettable mass on the horizon - had been pushing into his thoughts, as much as he tried to ignore it.
On the cliff, he and Leilani decided that the first person who spotted a dolphin could name it. In the turquoise waters, a long-beaked dolphin surfed the bow waves of the approaching tour boat.
"Banana!" Leilani yelled.
Unlike her dad, she spoke with great speed and moxie. On most days, Leilani had a bit of needlegrass or a ladybug or both in her long, black hair.
Bill brushed the needlegrass from her hair.
"Banana? What kind of a name is that for a dolphin?"
Leilani giggled.
Bill wondered what they'd do if they moved back to Ventura, back to that infernal traffic. Come up with names for passing Toyotas?
Every day, he put off the pressing decision on whether to leave the island so Leilani could attend school. They had moved here from Ventura after Leilani's mother died in a car accident three years ago. On that rainy evening, Bill and his wife, Kalei, had been coming home from a meeting when an SUV ran a red light. Bill swerved but wasn't fast enough. Kalei died in his arms.
Bill walked away with multiple fractures in his left leg and a slight limp. His injuries didn't bother him much, but he had the gait of an old man, hobbled by grief and guilt.
When the ranger's position opened up, Bill took it as a way to push forward, for Leilani's sake. He was thirty-three when he quit his job as a plant conservation scientist and moved them to the small caretaker's cottage on Bluff Island. The skinny volcanic island, six miles long, had no vehicles, concessions, or cell phone service. That first month, when Bill heard the whoosh of a gray whale's blowhole in the winter sea, he felt at home in the world for the first time since Kalei died.
He got used to the tour boat that arrived twice a week from the mainland, though he'd grimace at the smell of diesel fuel and coconut sunscreen, and pull his wide-brimmed ranger's hat low to discourage conversation.
Today, fourteen visitors huffed up one hundred and seventy-three stairs to the top of a craggy cliff face. The Santa Anas, known as the devil wind, carried the sweet scent of silver lupine, along with the briny sea air that was so often touted as an antidote to melancholy.
Leilani tracked a small streak of yellow zipping above the chaparral. She jumped up and down. "An orange-crowned warbler!" she told an older couple, explaining that the bird ate insects and berries.
Bill kept back. Look at the way she talked with adults, like they were peers and... In the distance, a familiar figure approached.
Oh, great, he thought. Katie. He tried not to limp when he met her halfway.
His sister walked like the former prima ballerina that she was, a graceful toe-ball-heel stride. He had last seen Katie at their mother's funeral eight months ago, when she had nagged him about moving back to Ventura.
On the island, she wore black leather pants and combat boots, her shiny, dark hair unruffled by the wind.
"Hey, Katie," Bill said, over the squawking seagulls. He ran his fingers through his graying buzz cut.
"It's great to see you, too, Billy," she said, mimicking his flat tone.
"Where's Rob?"
"In London. Working."
Katie and her husband lived on a five-acre ocean-view estate in Ventura that had an unused nursery. Bill had never been there, but his mother had described the place - and the couple's infertility treatments - in excruciating detail.
Katie got to the point. Did he get the forms from the Ventura school district?
She had sent paperwork to enroll Leilani in first grade that fall.
"Yep."
"You know the enrollment deadline is in three weeks, right?"
"I can read."
Katie sighed. She put a hand to her temple, a gesture Bill knew well.
Here we go, he thought.
"Listen, Billy, Leilani could stay with us for a while so you can take your own sweet time about moving back and getting settled. We could give her a good life, you know."
"She has a good life. And she's not up for fuckin' adoption."
"You know what I mean. Jeez, just because you're a hermit doesn't mean Leilani has to be one. She needs to be in school and around kids and -"
"You don't know what she needs. You don't know her at all."
"And whose fault is that? You've always kept her at arm's length from us."
He couldn't argue with that. In high school, his sister had hung out with the popular kids and ignored him, but she had taken a sudden interest in his life after Leilani was born. Otherwise, Katie never asked about his volunteer trips collecting the seeds of native plants, and he had no interest in her work building high-end shopping malls.
Katie opened her leather Gucci backpack. She handed him a folder of papers from their mother's estate and a sealed envelope with his name on it.
"I found this with Mom's things. She never got around to mailing it."
Bill took the file and shoved the letter in his pocket. Their mother's death had been hard on both of them; his sister had new dark circles under her eyes.
"You staying for lunch?" he asked.
"I'd love to, but I have to get back to work. My chariot awaits," she said, with a sweeping gesture toward her chartered boat.
Katie touched his arm and looked toward her niece. "You've done an amazing job with her, Billy. She's..." Katie's voice wavered. "Lovely."
Leilani ran over when she spotted her aunt.
"Aunt Tee!"
"Hey, Lei-lei. Got something for you." Katie pulled out a sea-green Ariel costume from The Little Mermaid. "For Halloween. You'll be the most gorgeous Little Mermaid ever."
Bill winced. Jesus, would it have killed Katie to check in with him first about the costume? Leilani had been begging to go trick-or-treating, ever since he had explained it to her.
"Oooh," Leilani cooed, holding the costume against her T-shirt. "Pretty! What's a little mermaid? Daddy, can I put this on?"
"Sure."
Leilani wriggled into the shiny fish-tailed skirt and threw her arms around her aunt.
Katie hugged her and said she had to run. She held Bill's gaze for a moment before hurrying to the landing cove to board her private boat.
Bill watched her leave and ignored the tiny voice inside that wondered whether Katie was right. Maybe it was time for Leilani to be around kids her own age.
The same damn argument kept playing in his head. Leilani never talked about going to school, so what was the rush? She got plenty of socialization. Sometimes, a buddy's daughter would invite Leilani over for a sleepover or birthday party. Twice a month, they took a one-hour boat ride to the mainland for groceries and to meet with Leilani's homeschool counselor (who, during their last visit, had handed Bill a list of rentals near the elementary school, "just in case").
Later that day, Bill squatted to prune goldenbush from a trail corridor and felt his mother's note in his pants pocket. He unfolded it and wished he hadn't. Of course, she had slipped in a gut punch from the grave.
"William," she wrote, "are you SURE you're doing what's right for Leilani? What kind of life is it for a child out there on Neverland?"
Bill sighed. He and Leilani led a simple life, away from the troubles of the mainland. They didn't have a TV or computer, but they had solar power and two milk crates full of children's books that he kept replenished from Goodwill. With no clocks on the island, they read time by the sky and tides, and every morning, Bill threw open the kitchen's Dutch door to the sea.
The next morning, fuming at his sister's pushiness, Bill decided he and Leilani needed what they called "a walk around the neighborhood." In a biting northwest wind, he paddled their kayak about five hundred yards from shore, past giant sea caves. He watched the sky for bald eagles, listening for their slow, strong wingbeats. Leilani sang her grandma's favorite song: "Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, zip-a-dee-ay..."
The wind-swept sea spray chilled his hands. Sunlight pierced the bank of clouds when he saw a shadow of dull gray slip through the sea. Above the water, a pointy fin.
Fuck. His clammy skin prickled with goosebumps.
A hammerhead shark circled clockwise about twenty feet away. It probably weighed five hundred pounds and was strong enough to flip the kayak.
Bill bit his lip and tasted salt and blood. Damn, now the shark could smell blood.
He blinked away the stinging sweat from his eyes. "Hey, Leilani," Bill said, keeping his voice even, "a shark is hanging out with us. If something happens, dog-paddle to shore and call for help. Don't wait for me, okay? And tighten your life jacket straps."
He tossed her the dry bag with their two-way radio inside.
"Okay, Daddy," Leilani whispered, her eyes wide.
The hammerhead moved with relentless grace. It left a murmur of a ripple in its wake, rocking the kayak like a gentle hand on a baby's cradle.
The shark's razor-sharp teeth could rip the hull. If it did, Bill would fight it off with his paddle so Leilani could get away. What flitted through his brain was rip-a-dee-doo-dah, rip-a-dee-thank-God-Leilani-can-swim -
The shark rammed the port bow and spun the kayak around.
Leilani shrieked.
Bill raised a paddle and tried to whack the shark. Christ, that thing was fast. From his awkward seated position, he could only prod at it. His paddle flailed and splashed about with maddening inefficiency.
In the underwater darkness, after one last sweeping promenade, the shark slipped away.
Bill sprint-paddled back to shore and took a deep breath when he heard the creak of the cedar dock, the sound of home. Leilani was shaking when she got out of the kayak.
Bill knelt and held her tight. He told her that he had just bopped the shark's head to let it know they weren't food. The shark was fine and so were they, right?
"But what if you got hurt, Daddy?"
"Leilani, if something happens, you know how to radio the Coast Guard, and they'll send a helicopter right away. Okay?"
Leilani nodded, but she was quiet and jittery all day.
At dinner time, Leilani set the kitchen table while he stirred a bubbling pot of boxed mac and cheese. Bill reasoned that the shark came with the territory, and for chrissake, school shootings happened more often than hammerhead attacks on humans. So did car accidents, for that matter. Still, his stomach churned, thinking about what could have been.
That night, Bill tucked Leilani into bed and made up a story about an island sprite who rode a seahorse named...
"Jelly Bean!" Leilani chimed in.
The sprite jumped on Jelly's back in search of...
"Friends," Leilani murmured, half asleep. "They wanted friends."
His heart sank, pained by the longing in her voice. Well, he could work on the friends part.
Bill sat at the rickety kitchen table to write a letter to Mrs. Silva, a surrogate grandmother to Leilani. She had been their next-door neighbor in Ventura and had babysat Leilani on the night of the car accident. Mrs. Silva had raised three girls by herself while working as a cook in the high school cafeteria. In his letter, Bill wrote that Leilani was going through a hard time, and they would love for her to visit. He sent the letter out with the next tour boat.
A week later, Mrs. Silva arrived on the island with a shoebox full of homemade pastel de nata tarts. She was short, plump, and wore her salt-and-pepper hair in a sloppy bun.
While Leilani licked bits of flaky crust from her fingers, Mrs. Silva picked her up and helicoptered her around.
Leilani laughed and studied Mrs. Silva's oversized Donald Duck T-shirt.
"Do you have a duck?"
"No, honey," Mrs. Silva said, grinning. "I'm duck-less, sadly." She flapped her arms and squawked, which made Leilani giggle.
"Oh, look!" Leilani said, pointing to a crusty heap on the trail. "Red bird poop! Because the seagulls have been munching on crabs. And did you know that I'm going to be a little mermaid for Halloween?"
Mrs. Silva doubled over with laughter, taking off her big bifocals to wipe away tears.
Within minutes, Leilani and Mrs. Silva built a hopscotch grid from stones and twigs. Mrs. Silva two-footed most of her jumps. She yelled, "Yeah, babyyyy!" whenever she finished her turn, pumping a fist in the air. Leilani copied her and added a double fist pump.
A few hours later, Bill pulled his daughter away when it was time for homeschool and explained that Mrs. Silva was on her day off and needed some alone time.
Bill and Leilani walked to the island's eastern edge, past thickets of sagebrush, to count yellow flowers for a math worksheet. Leilani darted off trail after a side-blotched lizard and stopped short to sniff a scarlet flower.
"Daddy, what's this?" she called behind her.
Bill caught up and knelt in the brush. "Huh."
The flower looked familiar - something in the figwort family, something native... Could it be? Santa Cruz Island monkeyflower, Mimulus brandegeei.
His pulse jumped. Bill had dreamed of making such a find since he was in grad school. He told Leilani that the monkeyflower was supposed to be extinct, which meant that it wasn't around anymore - except now it was.
Her face lit up. "Why is it here?"
"I don't know, but we're going to find out."
After they finished homeschool, he would get a "Please Keep Out" sign from the storage shed and rope off the area. He'd radio his buddy, a botanist for the Bluff Island Conservancy. A team would come out to extract DNA from the plant and confirm identification. When would Leilani ever be so into plants again? School on the mainland might have to wait a bit.
Back at the cottage, Leilani peppered him with questions about the monkeyflower. It took Bill a while to get her settled at the kitchen table with her math worksheet so he could fix a loose tile on their roof.
At sunset, under a purpling sky, Bill and Leilani hurried to the dock to see Mrs. Silva off. The boat was pulling away early to beat a coming storm.
From the stern, Mrs. Silva grinned and waved both hands at them. "See ya later, alligators!" she yelled.
The monkeyflower was tucked behind her ear.
Bill froze. A rush of rage pulsed through him. No, no, no. Christ almighty, was he dreaming? Leilani had found the world's only known monkeyflower, and their old friend had plucked it on a goddamn whim? In one thoughtless action, Mrs. Silva had knocked the wind out of his sails and collapsed the rigging. Bill's self-defenses, all the white lies he told himself, crumpled in a contemptible heap.
He took a deep, shuddering breath and tried to figure out his jumble of emotions: shock, tinged with something like shame. Yes, he was crushed that they could not save the monkeyflower, but if it showed up here, it may reappear somewhere else, on the island or off. He should have roped off the bloom right away. Had he been counting on the monkeyflower to help him buy more time on the island?
For too long, like a chickenshit idiot, he had leaned on the island as a place in the lee of heartbreak, of danger. He couldn't protect Leilani from sharks, from people, even if they meant no harm. So what the hell were they doing here? He could no longer justify holding Leilani back from a world in which she was sure to shine, just because life on the island suited his fragile heart.
The roiling sea splashed cold water on him. Wind-driven rain lashed his face. The dock creaked with menace; Leilani screamed.
"Daddy! Daaaaaddddy!"
Leilani was staring open-mouthed at the monkeyflower in Mrs. Silva's hair. She ran toward the boat, but Bill grabbed the back of her T-shirt and pulled her close.
That fall, on Leilani's first day of school in Ventura, Bill checked her ponytail for grass and bugs, and hugged her goodbye in front of her classroom. He had talked her out of wearing her mermaid costume. Instead, she wore a sunny yellow jumper that Aunt Katie had given her and a Donald Duck backpack from Mrs. Silva.
"We'll be okay, Daddy!" she said, beaming and joining the line of squirming first graders.
Bill managed a grin. He limped away and leaned against a chain-link fence, arms folded, grimacing at the odor of car exhaust from the rush-hour traffic behind him. A teacher herded the children into the classroom.
Leilani didn't move, not even when the teacher called her. She had cocked her head toward the cloudless sky to listen. Bill heard it, too, a voice they knew from their island - the song of an orange-crowned warbler in flight.
He choked up. She'd be fine. Look at her, a young sunflower, face turned to follow the arc of the sun.
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Bill, the island's ranger, wore a clean, pressed khaki uniform. He and Leilani lived alone on Bluff Island, a national park twenty-two miles off the coast of Ventura, California. Lately, the mainland - usually a forgettable mass on the horizon - had been pushing into his thoughts, as much as he tried to ignore it.
On the cliff, he and Leilani decided that the first person who spotted a dolphin could name it. In the turquoise waters, a long-beaked dolphin surfed the bow waves of the approaching tour boat.
"Banana!" Leilani yelled.
Unlike her dad, she spoke with great speed and moxie. On most days, Leilani had a bit of needlegrass or a ladybug or both in her long, black hair.
Bill brushed the needlegrass from her hair.
"Banana? What kind of a name is that for a dolphin?"
Leilani giggled.
Bill wondered what they'd do if they moved back to Ventura, back to that infernal traffic. Come up with names for passing Toyotas?
Every day, he put off the pressing decision on whether to leave the island so Leilani could attend school. They had moved here from Ventura after Leilani's mother died in a car accident three years ago. On that rainy evening, Bill and his wife, Kalei, had been coming home from a meeting when an SUV ran a red light. Bill swerved but wasn't fast enough. Kalei died in his arms.
Bill walked away with multiple fractures in his left leg and a slight limp. His injuries didn't bother him much, but he had the gait of an old man, hobbled by grief and guilt.
When the ranger's position opened up, Bill took it as a way to push forward, for Leilani's sake. He was thirty-three when he quit his job as a plant conservation scientist and moved them to the small caretaker's cottage on Bluff Island. The skinny volcanic island, six miles long, had no vehicles, concessions, or cell phone service. That first month, when Bill heard the whoosh of a gray whale's blowhole in the winter sea, he felt at home in the world for the first time since Kalei died.
He got used to the tour boat that arrived twice a week from the mainland, though he'd grimace at the smell of diesel fuel and coconut sunscreen, and pull his wide-brimmed ranger's hat low to discourage conversation.
Today, fourteen visitors huffed up one hundred and seventy-three stairs to the top of a craggy cliff face. The Santa Anas, known as the devil wind, carried the sweet scent of silver lupine, along with the briny sea air that was so often touted as an antidote to melancholy.
Leilani tracked a small streak of yellow zipping above the chaparral. She jumped up and down. "An orange-crowned warbler!" she told an older couple, explaining that the bird ate insects and berries.
Bill kept back. Look at the way she talked with adults, like they were peers and... In the distance, a familiar figure approached.
Oh, great, he thought. Katie. He tried not to limp when he met her halfway.
His sister walked like the former prima ballerina that she was, a graceful toe-ball-heel stride. He had last seen Katie at their mother's funeral eight months ago, when she had nagged him about moving back to Ventura.
On the island, she wore black leather pants and combat boots, her shiny, dark hair unruffled by the wind.
"Hey, Katie," Bill said, over the squawking seagulls. He ran his fingers through his graying buzz cut.
"It's great to see you, too, Billy," she said, mimicking his flat tone.
"Where's Rob?"
"In London. Working."
Katie and her husband lived on a five-acre ocean-view estate in Ventura that had an unused nursery. Bill had never been there, but his mother had described the place - and the couple's infertility treatments - in excruciating detail.
Katie got to the point. Did he get the forms from the Ventura school district?
She had sent paperwork to enroll Leilani in first grade that fall.
"Yep."
"You know the enrollment deadline is in three weeks, right?"
"I can read."
Katie sighed. She put a hand to her temple, a gesture Bill knew well.
Here we go, he thought.
"Listen, Billy, Leilani could stay with us for a while so you can take your own sweet time about moving back and getting settled. We could give her a good life, you know."
"She has a good life. And she's not up for fuckin' adoption."
"You know what I mean. Jeez, just because you're a hermit doesn't mean Leilani has to be one. She needs to be in school and around kids and -"
"You don't know what she needs. You don't know her at all."
"And whose fault is that? You've always kept her at arm's length from us."
He couldn't argue with that. In high school, his sister had hung out with the popular kids and ignored him, but she had taken a sudden interest in his life after Leilani was born. Otherwise, Katie never asked about his volunteer trips collecting the seeds of native plants, and he had no interest in her work building high-end shopping malls.
Katie opened her leather Gucci backpack. She handed him a folder of papers from their mother's estate and a sealed envelope with his name on it.
"I found this with Mom's things. She never got around to mailing it."
Bill took the file and shoved the letter in his pocket. Their mother's death had been hard on both of them; his sister had new dark circles under her eyes.
"You staying for lunch?" he asked.
"I'd love to, but I have to get back to work. My chariot awaits," she said, with a sweeping gesture toward her chartered boat.
Katie touched his arm and looked toward her niece. "You've done an amazing job with her, Billy. She's..." Katie's voice wavered. "Lovely."
Leilani ran over when she spotted her aunt.
"Aunt Tee!"
"Hey, Lei-lei. Got something for you." Katie pulled out a sea-green Ariel costume from The Little Mermaid. "For Halloween. You'll be the most gorgeous Little Mermaid ever."
Bill winced. Jesus, would it have killed Katie to check in with him first about the costume? Leilani had been begging to go trick-or-treating, ever since he had explained it to her.
"Oooh," Leilani cooed, holding the costume against her T-shirt. "Pretty! What's a little mermaid? Daddy, can I put this on?"
"Sure."
Leilani wriggled into the shiny fish-tailed skirt and threw her arms around her aunt.
Katie hugged her and said she had to run. She held Bill's gaze for a moment before hurrying to the landing cove to board her private boat.
Bill watched her leave and ignored the tiny voice inside that wondered whether Katie was right. Maybe it was time for Leilani to be around kids her own age.
The same damn argument kept playing in his head. Leilani never talked about going to school, so what was the rush? She got plenty of socialization. Sometimes, a buddy's daughter would invite Leilani over for a sleepover or birthday party. Twice a month, they took a one-hour boat ride to the mainland for groceries and to meet with Leilani's homeschool counselor (who, during their last visit, had handed Bill a list of rentals near the elementary school, "just in case").
Later that day, Bill squatted to prune goldenbush from a trail corridor and felt his mother's note in his pants pocket. He unfolded it and wished he hadn't. Of course, she had slipped in a gut punch from the grave.
"William," she wrote, "are you SURE you're doing what's right for Leilani? What kind of life is it for a child out there on Neverland?"
Bill sighed. He and Leilani led a simple life, away from the troubles of the mainland. They didn't have a TV or computer, but they had solar power and two milk crates full of children's books that he kept replenished from Goodwill. With no clocks on the island, they read time by the sky and tides, and every morning, Bill threw open the kitchen's Dutch door to the sea.
The next morning, fuming at his sister's pushiness, Bill decided he and Leilani needed what they called "a walk around the neighborhood." In a biting northwest wind, he paddled their kayak about five hundred yards from shore, past giant sea caves. He watched the sky for bald eagles, listening for their slow, strong wingbeats. Leilani sang her grandma's favorite song: "Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, zip-a-dee-ay..."
The wind-swept sea spray chilled his hands. Sunlight pierced the bank of clouds when he saw a shadow of dull gray slip through the sea. Above the water, a pointy fin.
Fuck. His clammy skin prickled with goosebumps.
A hammerhead shark circled clockwise about twenty feet away. It probably weighed five hundred pounds and was strong enough to flip the kayak.
Bill bit his lip and tasted salt and blood. Damn, now the shark could smell blood.
He blinked away the stinging sweat from his eyes. "Hey, Leilani," Bill said, keeping his voice even, "a shark is hanging out with us. If something happens, dog-paddle to shore and call for help. Don't wait for me, okay? And tighten your life jacket straps."
He tossed her the dry bag with their two-way radio inside.
"Okay, Daddy," Leilani whispered, her eyes wide.
The hammerhead moved with relentless grace. It left a murmur of a ripple in its wake, rocking the kayak like a gentle hand on a baby's cradle.
The shark's razor-sharp teeth could rip the hull. If it did, Bill would fight it off with his paddle so Leilani could get away. What flitted through his brain was rip-a-dee-doo-dah, rip-a-dee-thank-God-Leilani-can-swim -
The shark rammed the port bow and spun the kayak around.
Leilani shrieked.
Bill raised a paddle and tried to whack the shark. Christ, that thing was fast. From his awkward seated position, he could only prod at it. His paddle flailed and splashed about with maddening inefficiency.
In the underwater darkness, after one last sweeping promenade, the shark slipped away.
Bill sprint-paddled back to shore and took a deep breath when he heard the creak of the cedar dock, the sound of home. Leilani was shaking when she got out of the kayak.
Bill knelt and held her tight. He told her that he had just bopped the shark's head to let it know they weren't food. The shark was fine and so were they, right?
"But what if you got hurt, Daddy?"
"Leilani, if something happens, you know how to radio the Coast Guard, and they'll send a helicopter right away. Okay?"
Leilani nodded, but she was quiet and jittery all day.
At dinner time, Leilani set the kitchen table while he stirred a bubbling pot of boxed mac and cheese. Bill reasoned that the shark came with the territory, and for chrissake, school shootings happened more often than hammerhead attacks on humans. So did car accidents, for that matter. Still, his stomach churned, thinking about what could have been.
That night, Bill tucked Leilani into bed and made up a story about an island sprite who rode a seahorse named...
"Jelly Bean!" Leilani chimed in.
The sprite jumped on Jelly's back in search of...
"Friends," Leilani murmured, half asleep. "They wanted friends."
His heart sank, pained by the longing in her voice. Well, he could work on the friends part.
Bill sat at the rickety kitchen table to write a letter to Mrs. Silva, a surrogate grandmother to Leilani. She had been their next-door neighbor in Ventura and had babysat Leilani on the night of the car accident. Mrs. Silva had raised three girls by herself while working as a cook in the high school cafeteria. In his letter, Bill wrote that Leilani was going through a hard time, and they would love for her to visit. He sent the letter out with the next tour boat.
A week later, Mrs. Silva arrived on the island with a shoebox full of homemade pastel de nata tarts. She was short, plump, and wore her salt-and-pepper hair in a sloppy bun.
While Leilani licked bits of flaky crust from her fingers, Mrs. Silva picked her up and helicoptered her around.
Leilani laughed and studied Mrs. Silva's oversized Donald Duck T-shirt.
"Do you have a duck?"
"No, honey," Mrs. Silva said, grinning. "I'm duck-less, sadly." She flapped her arms and squawked, which made Leilani giggle.
"Oh, look!" Leilani said, pointing to a crusty heap on the trail. "Red bird poop! Because the seagulls have been munching on crabs. And did you know that I'm going to be a little mermaid for Halloween?"
Mrs. Silva doubled over with laughter, taking off her big bifocals to wipe away tears.
Within minutes, Leilani and Mrs. Silva built a hopscotch grid from stones and twigs. Mrs. Silva two-footed most of her jumps. She yelled, "Yeah, babyyyy!" whenever she finished her turn, pumping a fist in the air. Leilani copied her and added a double fist pump.
A few hours later, Bill pulled his daughter away when it was time for homeschool and explained that Mrs. Silva was on her day off and needed some alone time.
Bill and Leilani walked to the island's eastern edge, past thickets of sagebrush, to count yellow flowers for a math worksheet. Leilani darted off trail after a side-blotched lizard and stopped short to sniff a scarlet flower.
"Daddy, what's this?" she called behind her.
Bill caught up and knelt in the brush. "Huh."
The flower looked familiar - something in the figwort family, something native... Could it be? Santa Cruz Island monkeyflower, Mimulus brandegeei.
His pulse jumped. Bill had dreamed of making such a find since he was in grad school. He told Leilani that the monkeyflower was supposed to be extinct, which meant that it wasn't around anymore - except now it was.
Her face lit up. "Why is it here?"
"I don't know, but we're going to find out."
After they finished homeschool, he would get a "Please Keep Out" sign from the storage shed and rope off the area. He'd radio his buddy, a botanist for the Bluff Island Conservancy. A team would come out to extract DNA from the plant and confirm identification. When would Leilani ever be so into plants again? School on the mainland might have to wait a bit.
Back at the cottage, Leilani peppered him with questions about the monkeyflower. It took Bill a while to get her settled at the kitchen table with her math worksheet so he could fix a loose tile on their roof.
At sunset, under a purpling sky, Bill and Leilani hurried to the dock to see Mrs. Silva off. The boat was pulling away early to beat a coming storm.
From the stern, Mrs. Silva grinned and waved both hands at them. "See ya later, alligators!" she yelled.
The monkeyflower was tucked behind her ear.
Bill froze. A rush of rage pulsed through him. No, no, no. Christ almighty, was he dreaming? Leilani had found the world's only known monkeyflower, and their old friend had plucked it on a goddamn whim? In one thoughtless action, Mrs. Silva had knocked the wind out of his sails and collapsed the rigging. Bill's self-defenses, all the white lies he told himself, crumpled in a contemptible heap.
He took a deep, shuddering breath and tried to figure out his jumble of emotions: shock, tinged with something like shame. Yes, he was crushed that they could not save the monkeyflower, but if it showed up here, it may reappear somewhere else, on the island or off. He should have roped off the bloom right away. Had he been counting on the monkeyflower to help him buy more time on the island?
For too long, like a chickenshit idiot, he had leaned on the island as a place in the lee of heartbreak, of danger. He couldn't protect Leilani from sharks, from people, even if they meant no harm. So what the hell were they doing here? He could no longer justify holding Leilani back from a world in which she was sure to shine, just because life on the island suited his fragile heart.
The roiling sea splashed cold water on him. Wind-driven rain lashed his face. The dock creaked with menace; Leilani screamed.
"Daddy! Daaaaaddddy!"
Leilani was staring open-mouthed at the monkeyflower in Mrs. Silva's hair. She ran toward the boat, but Bill grabbed the back of her T-shirt and pulled her close.
That fall, on Leilani's first day of school in Ventura, Bill checked her ponytail for grass and bugs, and hugged her goodbye in front of her classroom. He had talked her out of wearing her mermaid costume. Instead, she wore a sunny yellow jumper that Aunt Katie had given her and a Donald Duck backpack from Mrs. Silva.
"We'll be okay, Daddy!" she said, beaming and joining the line of squirming first graders.
Bill managed a grin. He limped away and leaned against a chain-link fence, arms folded, grimacing at the odor of car exhaust from the rush-hour traffic behind him. A teacher herded the children into the classroom.
Leilani didn't move, not even when the teacher called her. She had cocked her head toward the cloudless sky to listen. Bill heard it, too, a voice they knew from their island - the song of an orange-crowned warbler in flight.
He choked up. She'd be fine. Look at her, a young sunflower, face turned to follow the arc of the sun.
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