Rip Tides Read Online Free Page A

yard. We’re squeezed into a tiny cottage with Lei’s dad and my son while we work on our house. It’s not the best time for guests.”
    “You have a son?” Her face brightened, eyes widening. She smiled, and he glimpsed the beauty she used to be and felt that sadness again. “I have a grandchild?”
    “His name is Kiet. He’s my son with my ex, Anchara.”
    “Oh. You didn’t invite me to that wedding.”
    “No, I didn’t. I’ll call Jared and let him know you’re here.” He didn’t want to get into any of this painful history. He reached for his phone and pressed a number for Jared.
    His younger brother, a firefighter at Kahului Station and recent transplant to Maui, picked up right away. “Hey, bro!”
    “Jared, Mom’s here.”
    A long pause. “Shit,” Jared said.
    “That was my thought.” Stevens cut his eyes over to his mother. She was groping through a backpack on her lap. He could tell by the trembling of her hands that she needed a drink or a cigarette—maybe both. “I’ll put her in the tent at our house tonight, unless you have a better idea?”
    “You know I only have a one-bedroom apartment.” Jared had taken over the lease on Stevens’s bachelor apartment in Kuau. It was close to the ocean and work, he’d said, and so far he’d seemed happy there.
    “Well, she’s gonna have to be out in the tent,” Stevens said. “We’re tight as sardines in the cottage, and the house needs another couple of weeks before we’re ready to move in. Anyway, can you come over tonight? Join us for dinner?”
    “I don’t think so.” Jared’s voice was bitter.
    Stevens turned away from his mother and hissed into the phone, “Come on, bro. You can’t leave me holding the bag on this.”
    “Like you left me holding the bag when you went to Hawaii five years ago? I dealt with her shit with no help for years after you left.”
    “Hey, now. It was time for you to step up, and if I were there, she’d always hit me up first.” Stevens’s voice was rising along with his emotions. Things had been so great since his brother had moved to Maui. Trust his mother to bring old tensions with her.
    “I’ll think about it. You don’t know what went down between us before I moved.” Jared hung up abruptly. Stevens slid the phone into his pocket and stood.
    “Jared’s not sure he can make it. I’ll take you home, Mom, if you don’t have any other plans?”
    “No plans,” she said, a note of relief in her voice. “That sounds lovely.”
    Stevens called Wayne briefly to let him know he was coming home early with his mother. Finally, he held down the intercom button, calling Brandon Mahoe at the front desk. “Taking the afternoon off. Getting my mother settled,” he said.
    “No problem, boss,” Brandon replied, and Stevens heard sympathy in what he didn’t say.
    He picked up his weapon and personal items as his mother stood, smoothing a tunic top she wore over skinny jeans and battered, cuffed boots that had been good quality at one time. She still managed to look classy, if a little run-down. He took her arm, and she leaned on him gratefully.
    He had a flash of memory: him on one side of her, Jared on the other. A big copy of The Jungle Book open on her lap. He and his brother had loved that story. She’d been stroking the hair off his forehead. Her voice was husky and hypnotic as she read. He remembered how happy he’d been. He could still see the curve of his brother’s forehead across from him, Jared’s mouth plugged with a thumb.
    They’d been happy, once, and she’d been a good mom before the drinking started, and escalated dramatically with his father’s death when Stevens was sixteen.
    He walked her through the room, acknowledging the nods from his men. He paused at Ferreira’s desk. “This is my mother, Ellen. I’m heading out. See you tomorrow.”
    “Mrs. Stevens,” Ferreira said, rising with old-fashioned gallantry to shake Ellen’s hand. “Nice to meet