Going for Kona (22 page)

Well after nine p.m., I stumbled into town, making my way back down Ali’i Drive the way I’d left over five hours before. I had done it. “There you go, honey,” I whispered. “I’m sorry I couldn’t give you a better time, but you’re crossing the finish line with me.” I reached up for my locket. It wasn’t there. For a moment I couldn’t breathe, then I remembered it was in my numb left hand.

“Are you there, my love?”
I checked one more time, but I knew he was gone. It was just me out there, running alone, with nobody in the world aware that at that moment I was about to become an Ironman, that I would complete Adrian’s Kona dream. Nobody except for me.

Me and my kids.

Sam and Annabelle fell in on either side of me when I had a quarter mile to go. Despite my fears, nothing bad had happened to them in Kailua-Kona. I swung my head back and forth to look at them under the streetlights. They were somber. Sam had tears on his cheeks. I wanted to wipe them away forever, to tuck him and Annabelle into my heart where they’d be safe and never scared.

Only I could barely take care of me. I hurt. My thighs, front and back, were cramping. My damn left leg from knee to hip screamed in agony. My right foot felt like a bloody stump. I was weak and dizzy, and I wanted to throw up. I had nothing left.

No, I thought, not nothing. I dug for the last of my strength, that part I hid from even myself, the part I saved just for them. “Let’s finish like Adrian.” I found a smile for them, a real smile. I stuffed my locket and chain into my top one more time. I grabbed their hands, and we ran across the finish line together.

“Holy Mary Mother of God” was the first thing I said when I woke up the next day, hurting everywhere.

Annabelle lay beside me in bed. “Shhh.”

Sam was sleeping on his back on the couch with his legs bent over the arm. “Sam, I need your help.”

He didn’t answer, so I threw a pillow at him. Pain shot through my neck and shoulders. We both groaned.

I looked at the time on my Garmin. Eight o’clock. “Sam, I have a book signing and we’re going to be late. Get up and help me.”

Annabelle rose on her elbows. “Come on, Michele.” She slipped out of bed and came around to my side.

“Can you pull me to my feet, then let me lean on you to walk to the bathroom?”

She grabbed my hands in both of hers and pulled. I screamed softly.

“Mo-om, keep it down.”

“He’s no help,” I muttered.

“Tell me about it. If it had been up to him, we wouldn’t be here. When we made our connection in Los Angeles, the gate agent had to call for him on the intercom because he was in a bookstore reading a gaming magazine.”

This got Sam up, and he hollered at Annabelle. “I was on my way.”

Annabelle and I looked at each other, and she shook her head. We shared a smile.

An hour later the kids flanked me and the enormous and completely inappropriate arrangement of lilies sent by my parents as I signed book after book. My right hand was about the only thing that didn’t hurt. Brian hovered behind us, the happiest mother hen on the island. He’d been in cahoots with the kids on their travel plans all along. Both of them had sworn blood oaths to their other parents that I’d asked them to come, and then they’d bought tickets on miles. Brian met them at the airport in Kailua-Kona, and they stayed with him the night before the race. The man was just full of good surprises.

He handed me a cup of coffee and said, “I hope we brought enough books. It seems like everyone on this island wants a copy and a photo with the champ.”

My hand closed around the words “Kona Coffee Café” on the cup sleeve, and a sadness ripped through my core. Adrian. Well, he wasn’t here. I pushed the feeling away.

“I’m happy for you, Brian.” And I really was. I doubted I’d ever make a cent off
My Pace or Yours
, but if it injected money into Juniper, then it was the start of something great, and was the least I could do for him.

I looked up into a camera lens. ESPN. The producer walked up to me.

“Do you mind if we interview your kids?” he asked. “We talked to them yesterday. Brian said you’d be okay with it, and they really wanted to do it.”

“I’ll bet they loved that. Sure, go ahead. It looks like I’ll be busy for a while here.” I gestured at the line.

“Thanks, Mom.”

The producer motioned to the cameraman and they walked a short distance away with Sam and Annabelle. As I signed, I kept one eye on the kids. Annabelle grew shy in front of the cameras and Sam puffed up. I laughed. “Those are my kids,” I explained to the woman whose book I was signing.

“The girl looks a lot like you.”

I didn’t bother to explain that the fair-skinned, fair-haired beauty wasn’t my blood relation. I looked at Annabelle. “Why, thank you.” Then I froze.

A man had pulled Sam and Annabelle aside. He looked familiar but I couldn’t place him. He had plastic cups in his hands, and he gave them to my kids. Alarm bells went off in my head. “Brian, is he with us?”

Brian looked. “Never seen him before.”

The ESPN producer had come back to my table. “Is he one of yours?” I kept pointing.

He shook his head. “Nope.”

The man put one hand on the Sam’s shoulder, and another on Annabelle’s, and he guided them out of the tent. “You’re not safe. It’s not over,” Adrian had told me. My instincts shrieked in warning. This was it. I knew it was going down on Kona. I’d felt it out on the course.

I jumped to my feet and shouted, “Stop.”

The trio kept moving. I bolted from behind the table, nearly crashing to the ground as my left knee took my weight. The chair fell over in the grass and my table teetered. A gasp rose from the crowd.

“I said STOP!” I was screaming as I bore down on the man leading my kids away.

Three sets of startled eyes fixed on me.

“Mom, what is it?”

I winced and shifted all my weight off my knee. “Him,” I gasped, through the pain. “Get away from him.”

Annabelle clutched her cup in both hands. “It’s okay, Michele. We know him. From yesterday.”

“Now. Please.”

The kids stared at me, but they stepped toward me. The man did, too.

“Stay away from us.” I tensed, ready to pounce.

His head drooped. “Michele, I’m so sorry.”

Hackles rose on my neck. Images flashed through my mind. Bad images. This man, talking to Adrian, a woman in pink behind them. A glass window and a Taurus driving by outside. Pressed Dockers and anxiety.

I threw my arms around my kids and pulled them to me. I felt them squirm. Annabelle whispered, “Michele, people are watching. There are cameras.”

I narrowed my eyes to slits. “Do I know you?”

His breath gushed out. “Oh, shit, you don’t recognize me. I’m Connor Dunn. We met at your book launch. I was a friend of Adrian’s.”

Connor Dunn. The one who sent me the nice letter after Adrian died. The one whose calls I hadn’t returned, who corralled Adrian for a tête-à-tête the night before he died, who Adrian lied about.

“I remember you. I don’t want you near my kids.”

“Didn’t you read my letters?”

“One right after Adrian died.”

He shook his head. “I called you. When I couldn’t get hold of you after what happened to you and Sam, I sent you a letter, explaining. Look, I hate to do this here, but what I said was—”

I hissed at him. “Not another word.”

“It’s about Stephanie, Mom. He used to be married to her.”

The blood drained from my face, drop by drop, leaving a trail of icy cold behind. I started to buckle, but the kids held me up.

Annabelle put an arm around me and started patting. “You should let him tell you, Michele. He told us yesterday. We thought you already knew.”

A little voice inside me whispered, “It’s about the money. It’s about what Adrian did with the money.” I looked up at Connor. He didn’t have horns or a forked tail. I didn’t know what to think, what to do.

Sam made a rolling motion with his hand at Connor. “Go on.” Cheeky kid.

Connor closed his eyes on an inhale and opened them on an exhale. “Stephanie was not well.”

I snorted. “Not well is an understatement.”

“Yes, I’m sorry, you’re right. She had developed paranoid schizophrenia. She self-medicated with alcohol and refused the treatments that could have helped her. I met my wife, Angela, when I was separated from Stephanie.” He indicated a tall, thin woman who had appeared from nowhere. A woman who looked like an Ironman—and then I remembered. Yes, he’d told us she qualified when we met in August. “Stephanie blamed Angela for our divorce until she broke into my house one day and read a wedding card your husband sent me. He had congratulated me on marrying Angela and said he hoped my second time around was a personal best. Stephanie took back her maiden name and became obsessed with Adrian, that he had—in her words—pimped Angela to me and wrecked our home.”

I put my hand over my mouth and talked through my fingers. “Why didn’t you tell Adrian about it?”

“I did, at your book launch.”

I pressed my forearm against my stomach.

“I thought she would harass him, but I never dreamed she could hurt anyone. The police said the person who hit Adrian drove a truck, so it never crossed my mind it could have been her. I didn’t learn what she’d done until she came after you and Sam. You didn’t return my calls, so I wrote to you. I guess you never got it.”

There was a tall stack of mail on my counter back in Houston, so maybe I had. I exhaled hard, then with Annabelle’s arm still around me, I leaned close and whispered very softly in his ear. “Do you know if she blackmailed Adrian?”

He stayed close and whispered back. “What? No, I don’t know anything about blackmail.”

“Nothing about any money or payoffs?”

“No. Nothing.”

I took a deep, shuddering breath.

Sam’s eyebrows drew to a peak together. “What was that about?”

I licked my lips and avoided Sam’s eyes.

“See? We told you he was all right,” Annabelle said. She patted me again and squeezed.

I nodded slowly. I wasn’t sure if I felt better or worse. Adrian died because he was a joyful, open person. Because he shared that with a friend, because of his words. Because dark hates beauty and light and will snuff them out if it can.

This man, though, this man wasn’t the dark. My gut told me to trust him.

“Maybe we could start over. How about you introduce me to your wife?”

***

My last blog post was in, the book signing and filming was over, and I didn’t ever have to train again, except for fun. The feeling was bittersweet, but I was determined to enjoy it. Annabelle, Sam, and I decided to spread Adrian’s ashes out on the course. We drove a rented PT Cruiser along the race route searching for the perfect spot.

I smacked my hand on the steering wheel. “Hey. I need one of you to look something up for me on the race site.”

Annabelle rode beside me in the front passenger seat. She had her phone in her hand. “Ready.”

“Okay, go to the place where you can find racers by their bib numbers. I want you to look someone up by her number. She helped me on the swim and bike legs.”

Annabelle’s finger danced on the touch screen. The rental boxcar rolled along silently, and I admired the view of the lava fields from the comfort of the air-conditioned car. “What’s the number?”

“Twenty-two hundred.”

Seconds later, she shook her head. “It says that’s an invalid number.”

“Check your typing. Twenty-two hundred. Two two zero zero.”

“I typed it right. Invalid number.”

I knew that was the number my race angel had worn. I pictured her as I remembered her from the bicycle course: green eyes, RIP Adrian on her leg, 2200 on her back.

Annabelle bounced in the seat and pointed out the window. “Here. This is where we should scatter Dad’s ashes.”

I pulled to the side of the road, rocks and a blind turn on our left and a field of lava on our right. Blue water sparkled in the distance past the lava field. I didn’t remember it, and I had run past it twice. The run already seemed unreal. I reached up and touched my warm butterfly locket hanging from the chain I borrowed from Annabelle.

Sam leaned over the front seat. “Here? In the lava field?”

“No.” She pointed. “In the water. Dad would want to be away from the pack, somewhere only really amazing people would ever go. People like us.” She grinned. “And it’s beautiful out there.”

She was right. The sea sparkled like a disco ball, and I could see Adrian dancing from rock to rock, a giant kid, then turning to me and holding out both hands.

I switched off the ignition and grabbed the urn. I got out and hiked ahead of the kids with my muscles complaining the whole way. When I finally reached the water’s edge, I flattened my palm against the dry sand. It was a mix of colors, among them the black, red, and purple lava residue. Warmth spread from my hand up my arm.

“I love you, Adrian.”

The kids came up on my left and I looked up at them. “Do you want to take turns?”

They looked at each other, then shook their heads.

I uncapped the urn, slid off my flip-flops, and waded over the sandy bottom until the water lapped my thighs but didn’t wet the hem of my shorts. I looked back at the kids. They had moved to the water’s edge. Annabelle grabbed Sam’s hand, and they stood there holding on to each other. I took a deep breath and turned back to the sea.

“Adrian, I hope you’ll always have a following sea and a tail wind, and that the temperature is never over seventy-five. You’ll always be my personal best. I’ll see you at the finish line, my love.”

I scattered his ashes around me, watching them clump and mix with the water, then surge back and forth in a choppy path out to sea. I waded back to the kids with dry eyes.

“We have something for you.” Sam held up a package.

“Ah, you guys are so sweet. You didn’t have to.”

Annabelle shook her head. “It’s not from us.”

“Then who?”

“Dad got you something, and he told us about it and hid it and a bunch of papers in Sam’s closet because he knew you’d never go in there. Then he was gone, and at first we forgot.”

Sam stepped closer to me. “And when we remembered, we decided it had to be for a special occasion, because it’s something big. So we decided to do it after you got back from Kona.” He looked at Annabelle.

She held her whipping hair away from her face in a one-handed ponytail. “Except we got worried you wouldn’t, because there was nothing on your calendar.”

“What?”

“You know, Mom. You and Adrian always used to have a race, and after ‘Race Day’ it would say, ‘Rest Week,’ and then ‘Week One Kentucky Half Ironman Prep.’ And it would be one race after another.” He shook his head. “But not this time.”

“So we came.” Annabelle kicked the sand.

“Here you go, Mom.” Sam handed me the package.

When I touched the bright yellow paper, the sand and the sea and the black lava spun around me, and I stumbled. Sam grabbed my arm and guided me inland a few yards. I sat down on the sand and opened Adrian’s gift. Inside the wrapping was a framed picture of a smiling Adrian standing in a grove of oaks beside a pond. There was a sealed envelope tucked into the corner of the frame, outside the glass. I ripped it open. It held a deed, title insurance, and a letter. A letter from Adrian to me. The words covered the whole page in his narrow, messy script. I squinted in the sun to read it.