The dangling fig roots, although Julia agreed with Carly in that they looked more like Tarzan vines, added to the prehistoric feel of the tree. As they drew closer to the spot where Carly and Bryn had stopped, Julia realized the path didn’t end at the vines but turned toward the center of the tree, dipping down a short slope to a clearing at the base of the tree. Several logs in varying states of decay made haphazard benches underneath the tree’s canopy.

  The girls dashed down the slope and then began wildly whooping as they circled the tree trunk. Julia took her time choosing her steps down the slope. Reed stayed close, likely so she could catch Julia if she slipped, though she pretended to be studying the roots that overhung the path.

  When Julia stubbed her foot on a half-buried rock, Reed’s hand was on hers immediately. She let go as soon as Julia had righted herself, almost as if she were embarrassed that she’d caught her so quickly. Julia felt a heat flare inside her at the innocent contact. She wanted to reach for Reed’s hand again but this time she wanted to hold on.

  They reached the bottom of the slope and Reed said, “Not too bad, right?”

  Julia arched her eyebrows. “You came here with toddlers? How did they get down here without falling?”

  “My memory of that entire year is a little fuzzy to tell you the truth. They’d just learned to walk and I wasn’t sleeping much…I have a vague recollection of them scooting down the hill on their butts.”

  Reed went over to one of the nearest logs and slipped off her backpack. Julia followed, grateful to sit down and give her ankle a break. As Reed called the kids over, handing out triangle-cut peanut butter and jelly sandwiches along with juice boxes, Julia wondered again if there had been a wife in the picture at one time. Maybe Reed had decided to adopt kids alone, but she doubted that. She’d hinted that her life had changed course because of the kids. But had she gone into it alone and wanting this?

  Julia pushed the questions from her mind. She didn’t want to pry, and how kids had come into Reed’s life didn’t matter anyway. If anything happened between them, it would be a vacation fling—nothing more. They didn’t need to exchange life histories.

  The fact that she was even considering having sex with Reed was crazy. But she was certain Reed was drawn to her and there was no doubting her body wanted at least a kiss. Was she really up for more?

  Thoughts of having Reed’s hands on her had been nonstop since she’d bandaged her up after the fall. But the likelihood that she’d freeze up if they tried to be intimate made her want to stop at the fantasy alone. Still there was a chance she could relax this time—and actually enjoy sex—since there was no risk of a long-term commitment.

  “Here, I made you one too,” Reed said, handing her one of the triangular pieces. “I could only find pineapple jelly at the resort store. It tastes a little weird with peanut butter, but the combination kind of grows on you.”

  Julia took a bite, thankful to have food to focus on instead of sex. She’d skipped breakfast since Reed wanted to make an early start and her stomach had been grumbling for the past hour. “This is good.”

  “You must be hungry,” Reed said. “People only like my cooking if they’re starving.”

  “I don’t know if peanut butter and jelly qualifies as cooking.”

  “It does in my house.” Reed took a bite of one of the sandwiches and murmured her approval. When Julia shook her head, Reed said, “Let me guess: you’re secretly a gourmet chef?”

  “No. But I am a good cook. One of these nights, I’ll make you all dinner as a thank-you for taking care of my ankle.”

  “That was nothing. And you probably shouldn’t cook anything too good because I already like you more than I should.”

  Julia swallowed her bite, feeling a rush of delight at Reed’s words. “More than you should? Do you have a rule on how much you can like someone?” She couldn’t hold back her smile. Reed was charming, no two ways about it.

  “When I meet someone while I’m on vacation, yes.”

  The reality check hit Julia like a punch to the stomach. What was wrong with her? This wasn’t even a date and she was busy planning future family meals.

  Reed continued, “The truth is, I haven’t met someone I liked in a long time. I don’t go on dates very often but when I do…I never seem to click with anyone. And then the kids come up.” She met Julia’s eyes. “I’m probably breaking more of those dating rules, aren’t I?”

  “Good thing this isn’t a date.”

  “Right.” Reed glanced at Carly and Bryn, who had emptied their own backpacks and set up a picnic on one of the other logs. “Thanks for coming today. I almost forgot how nice it is to hang out with another grown-up.”

  After a stop at a playground in Hilo and then ice cream, they started the trek northward up the coast. Out one side of the car were distracting ocean vistas and out the other side was waterfall after waterfall coursing down brilliant green gorges. A light rain started after they pulled out of Hilo. Carly and Bryn fell asleep quickly and Julia thought of all the personal questions she wanted to ask Reed, starting with how she’d ended up with twins. Instead they talked about the landscape they passed and about places they’d lived. Safe topics.

  When the rain came down in sheets, Julia let Reed concentrate on the drive. She distracted herself by taking note of the places she could steal glances without drawing attention: Reed’s hands on the steering wheel, the curve from her shoulder to her neck and the shaved start of her hairline, the line of her jaw when she hummed along with the radio. If Reed glanced at her, Julia turned her interest to a passing car or a street sign. She needed to not let herself get any more attached than she’d already gotten.

  Out of the blue, Reed asked, “You aren’t used to being around kids, are you?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “You seem a little nervous around them. Especially when Carly wanted you to help her get off that climbing structure at the playground. She likes you—which is saying a lot. Most people can’t even get a hello out of her.”

  “Don’t tell Carly, but that was the first time I’ve ever picked up a kid.”

  “Seriously?”

  “I didn’t realize they were so light.”

  “Try carrying two at a time for a while.” Reed stopped the windshield wipers. They’d finally gotten to a patch of blue sky and the thick jungle vegetation on either side of the road was glistening in the sunlight. “I can’t believe that was the first time you’ve picked up a kid. No younger brothers or sisters? No babysitting jobs?”

  “My parents got married late in life. They didn’t think they’d have kids at all and then I came along. And definitely no babysitting jobs.”

  “What was your first job?”

  “I was a bagger at ShopRite. My dad used to say I was acquiring lifelong skills, but about all I learned was how to pack a week’s worth of groceries in under a minute.”

  “You never know when that might come in handy.” Reed grinned. “Are you close to your parents?”

  “I talk to my mom a lot. I can tell her everything. And if I needed help, my dad would go to the moon for me. But I don’t get to see them often. Overall, on the parent department, I got lucky.” She paused. “They’ve always supported me—even with the gay thing. My first semester in college I dated a guy and then my second semester I dated a woman, and my mom’s response was, ‘It’s good to test out your options. That’s why everyone loves all-you-can-eat buffets.’”

  Reed laughed. “Your mom sounds awesome.”

  “She is. It’s important to her that people are with the person they love. She had a lot of pressure from her family to marry a Chinese man—ideally someone from their church. When she fell for a tall, skinny redhead from the Bronx, my grandparents thought she’d lost her mind. They wouldn’t talk to her for months. It’s marginally better now.”

  “Your grandparents are still alive?”

  “Everyone in my family lives forever. My Chinese grandma says it’s the rice and my Irish grandpa says it’s the whiskey.” Julia smiled. “I think it’s because they’re all too stubborn to be the first one to go.”

  “Where do they all live?”

  “New York.” Julia paused, a sudden rush of homesickness catching her off guard. Although her parents had visited her, she hadn’t been back to New York in years. She made a mental note to call everyone soon. “So, what about you? What was your first job?”

  “Babysitting. Then lifeguarding.” Reed glanced at the backseat. The kids were still sound asleep. “I was the oldest of five so there was a lot of babysitting.”

  “Five kids? Is your family Catholic or Mormon?” Julia added, “Don’t take that the wrong way—both of my parents were raised Catholic. We never went to church when I was a kid, but I always wished I had a big family like my cousins. You don’t hear of people having that many kids unless they’re religious.”

  “They weren’t religious. My mom just always wanted a big family.”

  “Well, I’m officially jealous. How many brothers and sisters?”

  “Three brothers, one sister.” Reed seemed reluctant to add more. The respite in the rain had been brief, and she switched the wipers on again, concentrating on the wet pavement.

  “Are you close to them?” Julia noticed Reed’s jaw muscles clench as soon as she’d asked the question. It was too late to take it back. “I’m totally prying. You don’t have to answer.”

  “It’s fine. You’re not prying.” Reed stalled, concentrating again on the road. “My sister passed away a few years ago. She overdosed.”

  “Oh, jeez. I’m sorry for asking—”

  “Don’t be. You didn’t know and I should be able to talk about it.” After a long exhale, Reed said, “McKenna was the kid who was always the life of the party. Would talk to anyone—flirted nonstop with the boys—and had plenty of girlfriends too. Everything changed in her world when our mom died. She was a freshman in high school. The rest of us had already moved out…It was just her and my dad at home. I was in med school three thousand miles away and our brothers were in college. We should have been there for her, but none of us realized how much she needed us.

  “My dad was a mess. All he could handle was getting to work. He didn’t notice when McKenna stopped going to school. She dropped out, started hanging out with a different group of friends, and then it wasn’t long before she was on the streets looking for ways to get high.

  “And I was in my own world. I had no idea what was going on with her until my dad called one day asking for help. He’d reported her as missing. She’d been gone for three days and he’d been driving around the city all that time looking for her, asking all her old friends if they knew where she was…Then the police called. She’d gotten arrested for stealing a bottle of vodka. It was her fifteenth birthday.” Reed paused. “That was when it went from bad to worse. She was fourteen when our mom died and she got into heavy drugs less than a year later.

  “My dad tried so hard to turn her around. She was in and out of treatment programs for years. But she didn’t want to stop using. Not really.

  “Part of me always knew that one day she’d go too far. But in my head too far meant she’d hit bottom and we’d pull her up from there. Then she overdosed and that was it. She was gone.”

  “I’m so sorry, Reed.”

  “Me too.” She met Julia’s eyes briefly before turning back to the road. “I still have trouble talking about it. All I can think about is what I could have done…should have done…”

  “Her overdose wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t your fault that she dropped out of school and got into drugs in the first place either. You were three thousand miles away—how could you know what was going on?”

  “That year after my mom died I could have done something. I could have called her every day to check in. I could have taken some time off.” Reed’s voice faltered. She took a breath and continued, “Hell, I could have asked her to move in with me. She could have come to Boston and finished high school there…I was her big sister. I was supposed to take care of her.”

  Before Julia could think of anything to say, Reed pointed out the driver’s side window at a brilliant green gorge and a thread of blue water that seemed to have no end to its drop. “Can you see that waterfall? That’s one of my favorites. You can hike right up to the base of the falls. Once you get there, when you turn around, you have a perfect view of the ocean. But you can’t hear your own voice even if you shout. The waterfall is so loud, you can hardly hear yourself think.”

  “It’s gorgeous.”

  “Yeah. It is.” She paused. “On some level, I know I can’t blame myself. But I do. There’s so many things she never got to see—like that waterfall. I can’t help thinking that if she’d only known there was more out there…Maybe we should go back to talking about vacations we want to take. I probably broke another first date rule with depressing conversations.”

  “I’m pretty sure you broke more than one.”

  When Reed glanced over at Julia again, her eyes were wet, but she was smiling. “Good thing this isn’t a date. That’s what you’re thinking again, right?” She chuckled.

  On impulse, Julia reached across the car’s console and set her hand on Reed’s leg. Her heart was pounding in her chest and she could hear her pulse in her ears. Maybe she was making a mistake, but she had to reach out. Reed glanced down at Julia’s hand and then back at the road. Tears slid slowly down her cheeks. She didn’t make a sound, and she didn’t wipe them away. Somehow she seemed the stronger for the tears and for not caring if Julia watched her cry.

  Julia didn’t shift her hand off Reed’s leg for the next half hour. Carly and Bryn slept on and the sound of the windshield wipers and the rain took over where their conversation had ended. She’d never felt so close to anyone, not even Kate or Mo and certainly no girlfriend, and she’d never felt such a heavy grief for someone she’d never met. Reed had opened a window into her soul and then stood there shaking, not bothering to cover herself up, and Julia had no idea what to say or do next.

  The twins woke when Reed pulled off the highway onto a bumpy side road. “Where are we going?” Bryn asked, rubbing at her eyes.

  Julia was wondering the same thing.

  “It’s a secret,” Reed said.

  The dirt road passed a clump of houses and then made a few hairpin turns before ending abruptly at a small parking lot. Turquoise blue water lapped a short stretch of sandy beach flagged on either side with outcroppings of black lava rock. The parking lot had a few cars, a boarded-up ice cream stand, and plenty of scraggly trees that had dropped a mess of leaves everywhere. This clearly wasn’t one of the beaches that catered to the resort crowd with manicured paths and palm trees. And it was stunning.

  “I think I could sit in this parking lot all day.”

  “I promise the view is even better on the beach.” Reed got out of the car and popped the trunk.

  “Julia, unbuckle me first,” Bryn said from the backseat.

  “No, me first,” Carly whined. “Bryn’s always first.”

  Before Julia had opened the door to the backseat, the kids were screaming at each other. Since Carly was on her side of the car, she started with her first, but this made Bryn’s screams worse.

  Reed poked her head in on Bryn’s side and quickly unlatched her. She scooped her out of the car and swung her onto her back, then poked her head back in to grin at Julia. “Welcome to my world. They’ll be better after they eat.”

  “I’m not hungry. I want to get in the water,” Bryn hollered.

  The screaming didn’t lessen until they reached the sand and Reed opened the cooler she’d brought. She handed string cheese sticks and baggies of apple slices to the twins and then held the same out to Julia. “Gourmet cheese stick?”

  Julia smiled. “I love string cheese.”

  “You wouldn’t prefer dinner at a fancy restaurant with a waiter telling us about the day’s fresh catch?”

  “This view is hard to beat,” Julia said.

  “Good answer.” Reed reached into the cooler again and pulled out sliced salami, a box of crackers, and two bottles of water. “’Cause nothing here is gonna impress you.”

  “I’m already impressed.”

  Reed looked up at her and grinned. “Is that so?”

  “You sound surprised.”

  “Well, my food doesn’t usually have that effect…”

  “You’ve got room for improvement.” Julia laughed at Reed’s mock look of indignation. “But the rest of this day has been pretty amazing.”

  Before Reed could say anything, Bryn called out, “Last one in is the rotten egg.” She started a sprint toward the water, cheese stick held high.

  “Bryn Mawr, hold it right there,” Reed said. “You need sunscreen and a life jacket—unless you’ve learned to swim in the past twenty-four hours.”

  Bryn stuck out her tongue when Carly repeated Reed’s words and soon the fighting started again. When Bryn jabbed her cheese stick at her menacingly, Carly swung her bag of apples as a block. The apples connected with Bryn’s nose and soon both were shrieking as they pushed each other to the sand.

  Reed stood up and started toward them. She looked over her shoulder at Julia. “What were you saying about the view being nice?”

  “Maybe we should build sand castles while we finish our snack? I saw some sand buckets and shovels in the trunk…”

  Surprisingly, Bryn and Carly stopped crying at this. “I want to build castles with Julia,” Bryn said.

  “Me too,” Carly cried. “She always gets to do everything first.”

  “You can both do it. I’m sure Julia wants help from both of you.” Reed scooped the kids up from the sand and then pointed them toward Julia. “She has no idea that with us, you get what you ask for.”

  Julia met Reed’s eyes. “And all I have to do is ask?”

  Reed stopped, mouth agape, and then stammered for a moment about what she meant. The kids looked up at her, foreheads wrinkled in confusion, and Reed said, “I’ll go get the buckets and shovels. Julia’s in charge of sunscreen.”