43
“I RAN around to the back door and let myself inside.”
“The handle, the latch, the raised edge around the rim.”
“I set my packages on the kitchen counter—”
“—and started at once for the living room.”
“When I got to the foot of the stairs, I was about to run right up—just bound up the stairs—but I stopped myself. I gripped the handrail for a moment, took a few deep breaths, the way I do when I need to steady myself. I put my hands over my face and tried to make myself breathe slowly, tried to make myself stop sniffling. When I felt that I had myself under control, I crept up the stairs.”
WHEN SHE WAS halfway up, she could hear Grandfather. His voice was louder than it ordinarily was, and his words came in bursts, as if he were rushing to get them out between breaths.
“I can see the lagoon now,” he was saying. “Beyond the reef. There’s a break in the reef. We could get through there, I guess. But it’s narrow. I think we’ll anchor outside. Spend the night outside. We’ll get a better look at it in the morning. Maybe you’ll feel stronger in the morning. You can come up on deck. See it all. I wish you could see it now. Eleanor—I wish you could see it now.”
From a change in the quality of his voice, Ariane realized that he had turned from the window, toward the bed. She heard him move to the bed and heard him settle onto it, sitting beside my grandmother.
“It’s everything we imagined,” he said. “More than that. The water is amazing, clear. Blue.”
Crystalline, she remembered from one of the guidebooks.
“The hills are green—”
—and soft, she remembered. They look like velvet from a distance.
“It’s as if they were covered with moss.”
You feel as if you could stretch out and lie down on them. And they would feel soft. You’d feel comfortable lying on those soft hills.
“I see a few houses. Here and there along the coast. Just a few. The beach is white, and—can you smell that? Can you smell the flowers on the breeze?”
The astonishing abundance of flowers, Ariane recalled. Everywhere on the island. Everywhere.
She heard nothing for a while. When he spoke again, his voice was thick and moist, obstructed by emotion.
“Here we are, Eleanor, here we are. Here we are.”
Rarotonga.
[to be continued]
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