The Burning Island Read online

  “The media attention has been a challenge,” I admit.

  “It won’t last. They’ll find another story. They always do.”

  I fold my arms across my stomach and stare down at the toy-strewn carpet. “The damage is already done, isn’t it? Google my name, and all this crap comes up. That won’t change.”

  She shrugs. “It’s not wrong, most of it. You see things most people don’t, Charlotte, and that’s a fact. Maybe it’s time to stop worrying over it and just . . . settle into your own skin.”

  “Easy for you to say. No one ever knew about you.”

  She spreads her handiwork across her lap and loops yarn around her crochet needle with an unsteady flick of the wrist. “That’s true. Your grandfather and your father both died without any idea that I saw things. I didn’t talk about it with anyone.”

  “Not anyone?” I raise an eyebrow. My grandmother has always been tight-lipped with me about her abilities, sharing a few meager details of her experiences only when confronted with my own. Still, she must’ve spilled the beans to a few other folks along the way. “Come on, Grandma. I’m sure you mentioned it to someone. I mean, you told me.”

  “And I’m glad I did,” she says. “It was . . . a relief. It’s a burden, always trying to hide yourself, isn’t it?”

  I can feel this turning into some illustrative tale about self-acceptance and living in the light, but that’s not a story I want to hear. “The point is, you had a choice,” I say. “That’s all I wanted. A choice about who to tell and when.”

  “Oh, honey. You must know by now, we don’t choose what happens, only how we react.”

  “And how am I supposed to react?”

  “Don’t,” she says simply. “They’re saying good things about you, don’t you know that? That you have a gift. That you use your gift to help children.” Evidently, my grandmother hasn’t been reading the online comments sections of these articles, which accuse me of being a fake, a flake, and a “shameless publicity whore.” Still, it’s comforting to know that she’s not embarrassed by me.

  “They’ve been writing about Keegan,” I say softly. “I wish they’d leave him out of it.”

  That’s the worst part of the reporters: they keep asking me about my son.

  Your first child died of a brain aneurysm at the age of four, Ms. Cates. Did that impact your decision to focus your abilities exclusively on helping children?

  Like I can control it. Like my visions are something I can summon at will instead of a frightening, unwelcome visitation.

  I could tell them that I never wanted this. That if I could choose between an ordinary, boring life and one filled with images of dead or endangered children, I would choose ordinary and boring every time. But speaking to the press would only prolong my time as clickbait—and I’m certainly not speaking to them about my son.

  “I need some coffee,” I tell Grandma, rising to my feet before the lump in my throat can overtake me.

  In the kitchen, I find Tasha and Noah playing with alphabet magnets on the refrigerator. Noah places an A next to Tasha’s R, and she bashes it with a violent L. “This is the bad guy,” she explains, prying the A from the fridge and tossing it to the tiled floor on wicked L’s behalf.

  “That is one mean dude,” Noah agrees, glancing over as I pour the last of the coffee into a mug. “Rae just called,” he tells me.

  “Called you?”

  “She says you haven’t been answerin’ your phone.”

  “Oh. Yeah.” I take a sip of coffee and decide that it is old and lukewarm enough to require milk. “I guess I should call her back. Cancel our Girls’ Weekend.”

  Noah takes a Y magnet and dances it across Tasha’s knees. “Why would you cancel on her?”

  “What, you still want me to go? And leave you guys here with all these reporters?”

  He shrugs. “The reporters will clear out faster if you’re not here. Anyway, you don’t need a Girls’ Weekend. You need a Girls’ Week.”

  “What?”

  “I just spoke to Rae about it. It’s last-minute, but that’s how you guys always do things. She says she can get the time off. You should do this, Charlie. Take a week.”

  I’m too floored to fully comprehend the gift he’s offering. “You really think I can just walk away from the household for a whole week? Noah, I don’t think you know what I do around here.”

  He looks down at his feet, which I see now are clad in mismatched socks, and wiggles them playfully. “Whatever it is, it’s sure not laundry.” He offers me a good-natured grin. “Look, I’ll handle it, okay? It might be a li’l messy, but I’ll handle it. You need the time away. This whole situation is gettin’ to you.”

  I’m not an idiot. Noah’s sending me off on a sudden vacation with my bestie isn’t just a loving gesture—it’s atonement. He feels guilty about his role in all this. “You don’t have to do this,” I tell him. “I’m not mad at you, okay? God knows, I’d love to get away, but you don’t owe me anything.”

  “Maybe I do. Me and my big mouth landed you here, after all.” He crosses the kitchen and takes my hand. “I had this dumb idea the truth would set you free. Instead, you’re stuck in the house hidin’ from reporters. I never meant for that to happen.”

  “It is what it is,” I sigh. “Even if you’d kept your mouth shut . . . sooner or later, someone would’ve figured it out. I couldn’t keep it under wraps forever.” I’m not actually convinced of this, but there’s no sense guilting Noah, not when he’s doing a perfectly good job of guilting himself.

  “Maybe it’s a good thing,” he says. “Next time you have a dream, people will listen.” He strokes my fingers with his thumb, traces the circle of my engagement ring. “I still think you should take a vacation, baby. Recharge for a week. Get your head in the right space.”

  “Noah, I have three weeks to get Outdoor Adventures a feature article. I can’t just disappear.” But I’m already warming to the idea, imagining a warm blue ocean and verdant island. I can hear Rae’s voice in my head: This is it. We’re going to Hawaiʻi. And I realize that’s exactly what we need to do. “A working vacation maybe,” I say slowly. “I think I could swing that.”

  I smile. Nestle my chin upon Noah’s shoulder. It’s a fantasy Rae and I have entertained ever since we were new mothers back in Connecticut, sleep deprived and juggling the relentless demands of our work and family lives. And it just might be far enough to escape the media circus I’m currently engulfed in.

  “Hawaiʻi,” I say. “We’ll go to Hawaiʻi.”

  “Hawaiʻi?” Noah repeats. “Really? But . . . you’ve been there before, haven’t you? You don’t want to try somewhere new?” From his expression, he was expecting something less glamorous—another Cleveland, perhaps. Some random place he’d never want to visit so he could feel benevolent but not jealous.

  Nope. When a mother is cut loose from her duties for a week, she’s got to go whole hog.

  “Hawaiʻi,” I say firmly. “Final answer.”

  three

  Outside our gate at the San Francisco airport, Rae flips idly through a celebrity gossip magazine, her brow furrowed over some finely chiseled Hollywood actor or whichever Bachelor contestant is currently seizing headlines. Age will never diminish her style. Her clothes remain chic, her springy Afro curls effortless. My heart lifts in happy recognition. The fact that we’ve both made it this far—meeting on a layover so we can share the flight to Hilo together—means we’ve already achieved the most important part of our plan. We’re together.

  “Rae!” I call, but she doesn’t hear me amidst the whining children, loud cell phone conversations, and flight announcements. I send her a text. Look up.

  She squeals at the sight of me, a high-pitched middle-school-girl squeal, and leaps to her feet. Several passengers glance over, probably expecting Justin Bieber or at least some paunchy, washed-up membe
r of a nineties boy band.

  “You made it!” Rae exclaims, not the least bit concerned that we’re making a scene. “Oh my God, get over here!”

  I drag my carry-on past a series of unmoving legs, apologizing when I bump a pair. Rae practically bounces as she waits for me, her face somewhere between thrilled and incredulous. I know the feeling. A weeklong Hawaiian vacation with your best friend is not a luxury most moms will ever get, and yet here we are, unencumbered by children or spouses. I’m still struggling to comprehend our outrageous good fortune, still half-expecting our flight to be indefinitely delayed for mechanical failure, because how can this be real?

  I ditch my bag and meet Rae in a giant, squishy embrace. “We did it! This is happening!” Hugs aren’t normally my thing, but she has worn me down over the years, has pushed past my stiff reserve and bestowed her affection so warmly, I can’t help but reciprocate. “How the hell did you get away from work?”

  She wrinkles her nose. Rae works in chemical sales, and though she regularly closes big deals and earns impressive commission checks, her job always seems to be last on the list of things she wants to talk about. “I told them I had a funeral to attend,” she says. “They were very understanding.”

  “A funeral? For who?”

  “My favorite aunt,” she replies without skipping a beat. “Lung cancer. All those years of smoking finally caught up with her. The doctors thought she’d have more time, but it took her down fast. Probably a blessing.” Rae has always possessed the kind of clear-eyed and straight-faced lying skills Noah and I can only dream of. “Auntie didn’t have any kids, so it’s on me to handle her affairs this week.”

  “You’re a wonder,” I declare, shaking my head in both envy and admiration. “Soon as we hit the Big Island, I’m buying you the fruitiest, girliest drink we can find.”

  “Says the woman who won’t touch alcohol.” Rae laughs and nudges one of her curls back into line. “Are you really gonna leave me drinking all by my lonesome?”

  “Someone has to stay sober to fend off all the drooling men. I mean, look at you.”

  This is not flattery. At forty-five, Rae looks ten years younger, with smooth, coffee-colored skin and a backside that rivals that of any Kardashian. When she walks into a room, males of all ages take note, and the ring on her left hand—a ruby, not the traditional diamond—does little to discourage their attentions.

  “Hmph,” Rae says with a pout, “I was hoping for a partner in crime, not a chaperone.”

  I grin. “Guess that depends on the crime. You know I’ll always have Mason’s back.”

  We’re joking, of course.

  Despite her talk and flirty attitude, Rae’s been happily married for fifteen years. She and Mason are my model for monogamy. They saw me through my own predictable-in-retrospect divorce, held me together after the death of my son. Whenever Noah and I hit bumps in our relationship, I look to Rae and her husband as a reminder of what’s possible.

  “Mason knows I need this,” Rae says, settling back into her chair. “Not gonna lie, it’s been getting to me, the whole work-life balancing act. The money’s too good to leave my job, but . . . some days I kinda wish they’d fire me.” She grabs her water bottle and gossip magazine from the seat beside her, clearing me a space. “Noah said you’re a little frayed at the edges yourself.”

  “Yeah. Hawaiʻi could do us both a world of good.”

  “Just don’t go posting photos of us all over Instagram,” Rae says. “Wouldn’t be respectful to my dead auntie.”

  I laugh. “That sounds like me, exposing all your secrets on the Internet.” Rae knows perfectly well my Instagram account is set to private and I haven’t used it in ages—she’s always after me to post more. And Noah doesn’t even have an account. We are, according to Rae, the most social media–shy couple she knows. “If you don’t blow your own cover, I think we’ve got this one in the bag,” I tell her.

  “I’m on it.” She rubs her hands together. “Kalo Valley, here we come.”

  “You know it’s not all play for me this week,” I remind her. “I have that piece I have to do.”

  Rae makes a face. “As long as you have some outdoor adventures instead of just writing about them. What’s your article on, anyway?”

  “I’m profiling Dr. Victor Nakagawa.”

  She gives me a blank look. “Who?”

  “He’s a volcanologist who runs triathlons,” I explain. “I got his name from my editor at Meyers Rowe.”

  Eager to ride the wave of my recent publicity, my editor Isaac called again on Wednesday, pushing hard for another book. “A memoir,” he suggested. “About visions and kids and all that. It’ll be a huge hit.” I hedged, told him I was headed for Hawaiʻi, that I had to knock out a big Outdoor Adventures article and hadn’t even chosen the topic. I wasn’t ready to talk book deals yet, I said. The next day, in a helpful-with-ulterior-motives move, Isaac sent me a name.

  Victor Nakagawa, he texted. There’s your article. Now let’s get started on your next book!!

  Isaac, with his typical nose for a story, was onto something. Last month, fifty-year-old Victor Nakagawa placed first in his age category in the Big Island’s Ironman competition, making him a local hero. Add to that a day job at the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, and he’s perfect Outdoor Adventures material. All I need from Dr. Nakagawa is a couple of good lava anecdotes to nail the swashbuckling-scientist angle, and I can knock this story out of the park. The only downside is knowing that I’m in debt to Isaac—sooner or later, he’ll come to collect on the favor.

  Evidently I’m not the only one impressed by Dr. Nakagawa’s bio, because Rae perks up at my description of the man. “A scientist who does Ironman? That swimming, running, biking thing?”

  I nod. “I talked to him on the phone yesterday. He was flattered I wanted to write about him. He put me in touch with our B & B and promised us a behind-the-scenes tour of the volcano observatory. We’re supposed to meet him tomorrow.”

  “Huh.” Rae strokes her chin. “I’m into the volcano thing, but those super-athletic dudes can be a little much.”

  I shrug. “He’s obviously very accomplished. Shouldn’t be a hard article to write.”

  Though I haven’t had a lot of time to research Dr. Nakagawa given the haphazard nature of our trip, I’ve done some basic digging. Run his name on Google, and you’re inundated with legions of his scholarly articles and competition results, charts citing his work for the U.S. Geological Survey, images of him presenting at conferences and crossing finish lines. The only downside to Nakagawa is my own ignorance of his field. After wading into a few of his baffling papers, I’ve had to brush up on my Earth science, cram for our interview like it’s a test.

  “Star athlete and badass scientist—sounds like a good story,” Rae says.

  “Not as fascinating as your reading material, though.” I gesture to the gossip mag on her lap. “What are you reading the Squealer for? Did Jennifer Lawrence get a boob job? Is Ryan Gosling behaving badly?”

  Rae gives me a long look. “You want celebrity news? Page twelve.” She slaps the magazine into my hand.

  My heart sinks as I flip through the pages. I know what I will find. Not Rihanna or One Direction or Ariana Grande. Not even the latest nanny to break up a Hollywood marriage.

  It’s me.

  Psychic Mom Just Wants to Be Left Alone, the caption says, which is both accurate and ironic. There’s a picture of me stepping into my Prius, one hand up to the camera, though you can still see my face, dark hair framing green eyes and a sharp chin. Not a terrible photo, at least. The grainy image masks my crow’s-feet and flyaway hairs. I scan the article quickly.

  Her amazing abilities have saved the lives of three children and attracted national attention, but Charlotte Cates, 42, prefers the quiet life. “It’s not easy for her, having this gift,” a source close to the mother of two repo
rts. “She wants to be there for her children, but there are other children out there who need her. That’s a big responsibility.”

  For years, Cates tried to keep her powers on the down-low, but her uncanny ability to help kids in trouble made headlines this month after her daring rescue of a twelve-year-old boy in an Arizona canyon. The story has surprised several of Cates’s friends and colleagues, who say they didn’t know about her psychic skills.

  “She never talked about it,” a former coworker told the Squealer. “This is a whole other side of her nobody knew.”

  A secret identity and a superhuman power? Sounds like a real-life superhero to us!

  I look up at Rae, cringing. “Oh, God. The Squealer’s covering me now? This is worse than I thought.”

  “Can’t say I’m too thrilled about it myself,” Rae says pointedly. “I mean, really? I have to read about your special ‘gift’ in the freaking Squealer?”

  I stare at my feet. Rae has every right to be upset. I’ve never discussed my abilities with her, not in so many words, but I should’ve. “I’m sorry. This isn’t how I wanted to have this conversation.”

  “Which conversation is that? The one where you finally flat-out admit you’ve got some cool psychic shit going on?”

  My voice drops several decibels as I glance around the gate to see who might be listening. “Yeah, that one.”

  “You could’ve just said,” Rae tells me. “It’s not like I haven’t had an inkling. You’re always dropping these little hints, but whenever I try to bring it up, you get all squirmy. I pretty much knew, though. Ever since that time with Zoey, I knew. Remember that? When my baby girl broke her ankle? You saw it coming. You dreamed it.”

  “Then you’ve known since the beginning,” I say, and it makes me feel a little better. My premonition about Rae’s daughter was the first, a dream that came just months after my son died, when I finally stopped taking sleeping pills.