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had ’em add some fancy new tech equipment and plush seating too.” His eyes twinkled.

As they came to the end of the recitation, Daniel Ho’omalu took a last drink from his glass and then rattled the ice in it, an angry sound. “The law is gonna have to dismantle that family’s corporation to the ground this time,” he said, his voice a deep rumble.

“We’ll help,” David added with a look at his uncle.

Joel frowned. “That guy, Decker, who was on her boat. He said something to her before he left. ‘If this deal doesn’t go through, we stand to lose billions’. Something like that. You guys think he meant drug money?”

Daniel shook his head, his scowl even more fearsome. “No way. Money of that kind, to do with Hawaii? That’s land.”

“Oh no,” Melia said, her blue eyes wide. “A real estate deal of some kind. David, we have to tell someone.”

“Already took care of it,” Joel said. “Talked to the police at the hospital and a couple of suits. FBI, I think. They were real interested in his name.”

The Ho’omalus shared a look, and Joel realized with a shock that whatever deal the Helmans had been trying to broker, it would probably not be left only to the state of Hawaii to bring it down.

Well, this was, after all, a pretty special family.

Chapter Twenty-Two

To Do: A good tour director knows when to hang it up, and do whatever the heck she wants with the rest of her life.

Bella was delighted that evening, when Daro and Jason got out their guitar and ukulele after dinner and announced that they had a new song to share.

“It’s called ‘Ka Nani Girl’,” Jason said with a glinting smile at Bella. “Daro wrote the words, I wrote the music.”

Everyone turned to look at Bella, and she pressed a hand to her heart, a nearly painful pleasure swelling inside her. It was about her?

Then they began to play, the soft liquid notes lilting through the evening. Jason closed his eyes, and sang, his voice flowing like Hawaiian honey.

“My ka nani girl, every night she comes to me,

Dancing through my dreams, to climb upon my knee.

Smiling that sweet smile, her laugh a melody.

She calls me her papa, and gives her love so free.

“My ka nani girl, as I look at her now,

I’m hungry for the years that she was far away from me.

But I know she’ll be here, for the rest of my days,

Here in my Hawaii, and that’s enough for me.

“My ka nani girl, every night she comes to me,

Dancing through my dreams, to climb upon my knee.

Smiling that sweet smile, her laugh a melody.

She calls me her papa, and gives her love so free.

“And someday she will have a daughter of her own,

I’ll hold that little girl, and the years will fall away.

It will be the way I dreamed, but even better still,

For my ka nani girl will be sharing her with me.”

As the two men began the chorus, their voices softer, Bella heard an odd noise beside her. She looked over to see that her mother was weeping, one hand over her face as she tried to be quiet.

Bella leaned over, and gave her mother a fierce hug. “Shh-shh, Mama. It’s okay.” And it was, she knew now. She was a part of her new family and of this island, with no more room for resentment or anger.

“I’m sorry,” Grace choked. “So sorry, for both of you.”

“There’s one more verse, Grace,” Daro said, looking up and continuing to play his ukulele. “This part’s for you.”

Jason smiled at Grace, and began to sing again.

“My ka nani girl, you raised her fine and true,

And when I look at her, I see the best of you.

She’s finer than I ever was, more than I could hope,

Mahalo from my heart, I’ll share the rest with you.”

As the last notes of the chorus died away, Grace rose from her chair, and Daro did the same.

“I did do the best I could,” she said to him, her voice trembling. “But if I-I could go back and change that, oh, I would.”

“I could have been a braver man too, Grace,” he said. “I accepted my family’s shame for my own, for several years. It took me a long time, with Jason’s help, to see that I can be a father too.”

“Well, thank God for Jason, then,” she said and reached out to hug Daro. He hugged her back, patting her back and smiling at Bella with tears in his eyes. “That