My Kind of Town
My Kind of Town
Like John Wayne
>> Queen's Medical Center
Sitting in Lily's teal BMW in the circular parking structure, Grace Ah Sun stared at the three framed postcards spread out on her lap. All were signed "Bobo," but one in handwriting very different from the other two. Grace knew it well. For nearly 30 years it had penned her Valentines.
"This," Grace said at last to her daughter Lily, "is what I always suspected."
"How did you know?"
"Sheets had been attending the big, annual soap industry convention in Fort Lauderdale. I'd stayed home because you and Laird were in school, we'd just moved to Kailua, and I was pregnant with Lance. I remember that day very well. We were always a Star-Bulletin family because Sheets remembered when The Advertiser was anti-Hawaiian and anti-Japanese. It was part of the overthrow of Liliuokalani and later supported the plantation owners against the workers. So we got the Star-Bulletin, and I always read Donnelly. The day before Sheets was due home from the convention, Donnelly printed the news that Bobo had sent a postcard from Miami saying he was alive and well.
It wasn't so hard to put two and two together."
"How did you feel about that?"
Grace took a deep breath. "Honestly, after what Bobo did to me, I was glad he was... gone. And..." A long sigh. "...Lily, to know that your husband defended your honor..." The tears started again, spilling down Grace's cheeks, and the makeup that had been perfectly applied hours ago now looked more like a first-grader's finger painting, all streaks and swirls.
Lily handed her mother another tissue, took one for herself. "It is kind of romantic. I'd never imagined him as a Sir Galahad."
"I kind of thought of Sheets as my John Wayne."
The image of Sheets Ah Sun in a Stetson brought a smile to Lily's lips, but the comic relief was fleeting. Because as heart-wrenching as this had been, hearing from her mother that she was a child of rape, and then confronting her with the postcard proof, the wrench still had a few more turns to do before Lily was satisfied that she knew the whole truth.
"So you know that he had something to do with Bobo's disappearance," Lily said. "How did it happen? And when?"
"I really don't know. There were never any clues and I never asked."
"Thanks to Auntie Flo, Quinn and I figured out the when part."
Grace's eyes went wide.
"It was a night when Dad and Uncle Mits were going to play poker with Bobo in Waimanalo."
"I don't remember, dear. Sheets never let on."
"Apparently Uncle Mits did."
The same Uncle Mits who was just knocking on his son Quinn's door.
Don Chapman is editor of MidWeek.
His serialized novel runs daily in the Star-Bulletin
with weekly summaries on Sunday.
He can be e-mailed at dchapman@midweek.com