TroubleinParadise by Cindy Jacks Page B

asked.
    “Nope.”
    Sheer anguish colored his face, a harsh, ruddy hue licking
at his cheeks. Eyes like granite, he swallowed hard.
    “Mika—” she began, but words failed her.
    She felt dirty, angry with herself, foolish. She couldn’t
stand his expression.
    “Nothing happened,” she croaked.
    “You went to another man for comfort, my cousin . How
do you think that makes me feel?” He nearly spat the words through clenched teeth.
    She couldn’t think of a response.
    “There’s nothing to say, Clarissa. Just get out of the van.”
    The use of her proper name cut her more than any knife
could. It spoke of a distance, gaping and unbridgeable.
    “Where are you going?”
    “Don’t worry, I’m not running to another woman if that’s
what you’re worried about.”
    Again his words cut her, but she deserved it.
    “Please, go.” He motioned for the door.
    She swallowed hard, nodding. “Don’t do anything stupid,
Mika.”
    “I need time to think.”
    “How much time?”
    “I don’t know. Just go inside.”
    Nothing left to do, nothing left to say, she unbuckled her
seatbelt and stepped out onto the sidewalk. Mika slammed the door and took off
without a backward glance.
    * * * * *
    The sun came up over Diamond Head. Bold brushstrokes of hot
pink and deep purple painted another glorious Hawaiian sunrise. Clarissa had
come to take them for granted most days, but not today. She stood on the lanai,
entranced by the subtle changes in the sky. The coolness heated little by
little to a warm orange glow.
    By sunset that evening, Mika still hadn’t come home.
Clarissa grew more alarmed the longer he stayed away. Melodramatic absences
were more her style. Sione and Michelle had called around seven to check on
her.
    “I’ll tell him I was here and that nothing happened. You two
really did just talk,” her friend said.
    “But he’s right.” Clarissa’s voice quavered. “I was thinking
about—”
    “Thoughts and actions are two different things, Kala. You
two didn’t act on what you felt. That should count for something.”
    Sure it counted for something, but she’d still been in the
wrong. They ended their call and Clarissa poured a glass of merlot. Panic and
fatigue battled for supremacy over her state of mind. Sinking onto the sofa,
she allowed the battle to continue with nothing more than a few gulps of wine
to calm it.
    A photo album sat open on the coffee table. Their wedding
album. One of the few occasions that brought her mother and father to the
islands for a visit. Somehow they’d managed to refrain from sniping at each
other, a minor miracle in and of itself. Not like their epic arguments from her
childhood.
    Most of the time, they’d save the knock-down-drag-out fights
for after Clarissa’s bedtime, as if the yelling and door slamming wouldn’t wake
her. She’d sit in the dark, frightened, listening to harsh words. Sometimes she
tried to look them up in the dictionary, but few of the words they hurled at
each other appeared in Webster’s . Not in the Oxford English
Dictionary either. Their cruel language was punctuated by dashed coffee
cups or dinner plates, which sounded distinctly different from a broken
wineglass or beer bottle. Once the words dissolved into her mother’s sobs and
her father’s silent retreat, Clarissa would focus on a poster of dolphins
frolicking in the Hawaiian surf—a gift from one of her father’s many business
trips.
    In the morning, they’d pretend nothing was wrong, though the
palpable tension made breakfast her least favorite meal of the day. Dinner was
a close second with mouths pinched into flat lines of disgust. Sad point of
truth, lunch at the school cafeteria became the only meal she could enjoy in
peace.
    Her parents divorced when she was seventeen. With an
adolescent disregard for her mother’s feelings, she’d asked Mom what had taken
them so long to split up. Her mom replied they’d stayed together for Clarissa’s
sake. At this Clarissa had burst