The Aloha Quilt (7 page)

Suddenly Claire looked so unhappy that Bonnie wanted to hug her, but her arms were
full of shoes. “You’re settled now. You have Eric
and
a permanent address. You can plant all the bulbs you want and enjoy every bloom.”

Claire smiled wanly and carried Bonnie’s toiletries bag into the bathroom. “These
days I’m more into banyan trees and palms. But you’re right. I can cultivate my garden
with Eric by my side. That’s a blessing I’ll never take for granted.”

It was a blessing Bonnie had wanted to give Craig, but he had rejected it. He had
rejected
her
.

Bonnie knew she must have disappointed Craig in countless ways throughout the years,
in big ways and small, just as he had disappointed her. It was impossible, impossible,
for two people to live side by side for so many years without occasionally irritating
each other, without settling into a routine, without sometimes forgetting the magic
and wonder that drew them together in the first place. And yet some couples were able
to forgive each other those inevitable human failings and nurture the lingering sparks
of love until it burned steadily again, while others couldn’t, or wouldn’t.

Until Craig’s betrayal, Bonnie had counted herself among the more fortunate, those
whose love endured throughout the natural ebb and flow of life. When both couples
were young newlyweds, there was no sign that Eric and Claire’s love burned brighter
than Craig and Bonnie’s, that their bond was stronger, their devotion more complete.
They were all young people in love, eager to build a life with the one they had chosen.

Why Eric and Claire had made it and she and Craig had not, Bonnie did not know. The
explanation couldn’t be as simple as concluding that Eric was a good man and Craig
was bad, therefore the Markham marriage had been doomed from the start. There had
to be more to it than that, for Bonnie did not believe she had married a bad man.
She would not have married Craig if he had not been kind and loving to her, if she
had not believed him when he promised to love her and honor her for the rest of his
life. She’d had other boyfriends; she had
not settled for a bad man because he was her only option. She would have lived alone
before settling.

Had there been a point in their marriage, five or ten or twenty years before, when
she and Craig could have changed their fate? Had they stood at a crossroads unaware?
Would some other choice, some kindness offered or neglect remedied, have led them
to a happier place?

And why, when the marriage was so nearly over, when she knew all too well that it
was impossible to change the past, did she insist upon sifting through her memories
to pinpoint exactly when and where everything had gone so terribly wrong?

While Claire went downstairs to tend to some business affairs, Bonnie finished unpacking
and took in the view from her lanai. Waves crashed upon the sandy beach where couples
and families relaxed and played. In the distance, she saw two other islands surrounded
by aquamarine seas, forested and mysterious, one larger and one quite small. Between
the distant islands and the nearby shore, sailboats danced and darted in the wind
and surfers paddled out to catch the big waves. Sometimes white puffs indicated whales
surfacing; tourists watched from boats that kept a respectful distance. Bonnie watched,
entranced, the music of the ocean in her ears, gentle breezes bathing her in the light
enticing perfume of unfamiliar flowers. Even birdsong was different here, intriguing
chirps and melodies she had never heard before.

It was as if she had come to an entirely different world from the one she had left
behind, a world of peace and harmony where she would never know pain.

Reluctantly she left her reverie and joined Claire in her office on the first floor
to see if her friend was ready, at last, for a
serious chat about quilt camp. “We’ve done enough work for one morning,” Claire declared,
brushing off Bonnie’s protests that she had hardly worked at all except to unpack.
“You should learn more about Maui, especially since you’re going to be welcoming guests
and arranging evening programs for them.”

Bonnie was tempted to remind her that she would be doing the latter but not the former
since their first guests wouldn’t arrive until a few weeks after her return to Pennsylvania,
but she let it go. “What did you have in mind? A walking tour of Lahaina?”

“Later. First you should see the big picture.”

What Claire had in mind, she explained before sending Bonnie back upstairs for her
sturdiest walking shoes, was a hike in the mountains to enjoy the spectacular views
of the coastline and the lush valleys of Mount Kahalawai. Bonnie grabbed a hat as
well as her camera, and soon they were driving north on Highway 30 past shopping centers
and resort hotels. To Bonnie’s surprise, Claire pulled into a parking place at a strip
mall. “Are we stopping for supplies?”

“No,” said Claire, smiling as she got out of the convertible. “I’m not subjecting
my car to those rugged roads. We’ll catch a ride from here.”

Bemused, Bonnie followed her through one of several identical stucco arches leading
to the various shops, passing beneath a green sign that announced in white letters,
SKYLINE ECO ADVENTURES
. Inside, a burly man in a dark blue shirt boasting the company logo took Claire’s
name and handed each of them a pen and a clipboard with a release form attached.

“A release form for a hike?” Bonnie asked, scanning the page of rather alarming warnings
that she should not participate if she were pregnant, suffered from various ailments,
or had been scuba diving within the past twenty-four hours. “ ‘Serious
injury or death may occur?’ We’re not climbing up the side of an active volcano, are
we?”

Claire breezily signed her name at the bottom of her own form, which she had apparently
barely read. “Of course not. It’s perfectly safe. This is a routine precaution.”

Dubious, Bonnie signed the form, but her misgivings spiked when the man led her to
a scale and asked her to step on it. “A weigh-in?” she protested, throwing a look
to Claire rather than glancing down and viewing the grim report. She was fully dressed
and had eaten a large breakfast, hardly the ideal circumstances to publicly announce
her weight. “Is this Fat Camp?”

Claire’s laughter pealed. “Don’t be ridiculous. You don’t need to lose any more weight.”

“We weigh everyone,” the man explained. “The harnesses have weight limits.”

“And you thought I exceeded them? Wait a minute—harnesses?”

“They have minimum weight limits too,” the man said, grinning. He collected their
signed forms, handed each of them a sturdy water bottle with the company logo on it,
and showed them to a cooler in the back corner. “After you fill your bottles, you
can wait for the shuttle outside.”

“Harness?” Bonnie echoed to Claire as they filled their bottles. Suddenly the word
Adventures
in the company logo seemed ominous. “What is this, mountain climbing?”

“We’ll be on a mountain and we’ll be climbing,” Claire granted, “but it’s not, strictly
speaking, mountain climbing.”

“Strictly speaking, what is it then?”

“It’s fun and it’s spectacular views and it’s a great lunch halfway through. Relax,
would you?”

Nothing was less likely to help Bonnie relax than Claire’s
cagey assurances that she should, but she followed her friend outside where eight
other men and women waited on the sidewalk. Some were older than she, some younger,
some in better physical condition, and some worse. She was heartened, a little, to
see that the rest of the hiking party was not comprised of twenty-something extreme
athletes, so when a large van pulled up to take them to the site, she climbed aboard
with everyone else. Her courage faltered a bit when she realized she was one of only
four to bother with a seat belt—clearly she was among risk-takers—but she returned
Claire’s cheerful smile and told herself that whatever Claire was hiding couldn’t
be that bad.

As they drove back along the same stretch of highway she and Claire had traveled earlier,
the hikers exchanged names and hometowns. One woman expressed surprise to hear that
Claire was from Lahaina. “Haven’t you done this dozens of times?”

“Twice,” Claire said. “It never gets old.”

The woman peered at Bonnie. “And you… this is your first time. Nervous?”

“Not really,” said Bonnie, wondering what had telegraphed her novice status. “Should
I be?”

A few people grinned, while others chuckled. “It’s safe,” a younger man reassured
her. “Don’t let the waiver scare you.”

Before long they pulled off the highway and stopped long enough for a guide to jump
down from the front passenger seat and unlock a gate. The van passed through the entrance
and waited for the guide to lock the gate behind them and return to his place—and
then they set off on a rough dirt road that bounced and jolted its passengers and
left Bonnie fervently grateful for her seat belt. “This—must be—the reason for—the
waiver,” she managed to tell Claire as the van lurched up an
alarmingly steep hill. Claire laughed, enjoying the ride. Claire had odd tastes sometimes.

Eventually the teeth-rattling ride ended halfway up the mountain at a small cabin
with a shaded deck. The hikers disembarked and seated themselves on benches in the
shade while the guide entered the cabin and returned carrying an armful of harnesses,
a jumble of black straps and gleaming stainless-steel. Another guide—thin, tattooed,
and multiply pierced—accompanied him carrying helmets.

“Just a precaution,” Claire said before Bonnie could ask. Bonnie gnawed her lower
lip and concentrated on the dark-haired guide’s explanation of how to adjust the fit
of the helmets. Troy bore a striking resemblance to the host of a popular reality
television show that required participants to bungee jump off bridges spanning tropical
gorges and eat all manner of nauseating foods considered delicacies in exotic cultures.
Bonnie hoped the disconcerting similarity ended with his appearance.

Bonnie submitted to the thinner, lighter-haired guide’s attention as he helped her
into her harness, tightened the straps, and showed her how to attach her water bottle
to the belt, cracking jokes all the while. She laughed along, a bit hysterically,
but froze when a particular word caught her attention. “What’s a zipline?” she asked.

The guide, Brian, laughed as if she had said something unbelievably hilarious and
moved on to help the next hiker. Bonnie caught Claire’s arm. “Zipline? What have you
gotten me in to?”

“It’s
fun
,” Claire insisted. “Anyway, you can’t back out now, not unless you want to sit here
for the next two hours, miss lunch, and ride back down the mountain in shame while
the rest of us rave about what a blast it was.”

Bonnie would willingly skip lunch, but the thought of waiting around at the cabin
in disgrace was more than she could bear. Heart pounding, she followed Claire aboard
another van, this one retrofitted with tank treads instead of tires. The second stage
of the trip up the mountain was steeper and rougher than the first, with switchbacks
upon switchbacks, but the tank treads seemed to find a surer grip, and Bonnie had
new worries to distract her from the possibility of a rollover.

All too soon and not soon enough, the van stopped near the summit, a few yards below
a large wooden platform with a ramp that jutted out over a plunging cliff. From a
complicated rig of cables and support beams, a thick, black cable hung suspended over
a lush valley, ending at a similar platform on the opposite ridge.

“Claire,” Bonnie managed to say as Brian and Troy led the group up the hiking trail
toward the stairs to the platform. “Look.”

“No, you look.” Claire took her by the shoulders and spun her in the opposite direction.
Bonnie drew in a breath—the endless blue ocean, the cloud-swathed emerald of Lana‘i,
the rainforests caressing fields of sugarcane, the resort town of Kaanapali seeming
very small and very far below. For a moment Bonnie marveled at the glorious view,
which was everything Claire had promised—but then she heard Brian calling the hikers
over for a demonstration and she remembered the cable flung into space across the
chasm.

“It’s only scary the first time,” Claire assured her, steering her to the end of the
line. Bonnie gulped and nodded. She wanted to back out. She wanted to argue that she
had signed on for a hike, not for this, but she couldn’t bear to disappoint Claire
or to shame herself in front of everyone else, even though they were strangers she
would never see again. If
someone else backed out, she would too, but she would not be the first, she would
not be the only.

She drew closer so she wouldn’t miss a word of the instructions. While Brian explained
what to do, Troy hooked himself up to the zipline and demonstrated where to put her
left hand to hold on to the harness, where to put her right hand to steer, where to
put both hands to signal that she was out of control and needed a guide to catch her
on the other side, and where not to put any hands unless she wanted them amputated
in a sudden and painful manner. Then Troy strolled to the edge of the platform, stepped
off into empty space, and flew across the steep valley, executing a flawless landing
on the other side.