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CHAPTER ONE

A spen Kincaid's throat was thick with emotion.

At the restaurant the night before, Dad had been perfectly fine in his serious, tender way.

That morning, she’d been awakened by a call from a police officer. Dad had been riding his bicycle, something he did along the narrow roads near their apartment every single day.

A teenage driver, not paying attention, had swerved into him.

Aspen had made it to the hospital just moments after he did and had waited in the ER until a nurse called her back, telling her to hurry, hurry .

Aspen had run, skidding past doors and machines and doctors until she reached the room.

Now, she stood at Dad's bedside and took his hand, trying not to react to the scrapes and cuts on his face and neck, to the way his breath wheezed. This was the man who’d raised her and loved her so well. His kind brown eyes were rimmed with red. His tan face was pale. She brushed his hair back, feeling soft strands and gritty sand left from the fall.

She lifted a prayer and tried to smile. “How you feeling?”

Before he could gather enough breath to respond, a white-coated doctor and four other people crowded in, one pushing a machine.

“You’ve got five minutes,” the doctor said. “Then we need to do this.”

“Do what?”

“Intubate. One of his lungs collapsed, and the other?—”

“What are you waiting for? Do it.” Panic rising in her chest, she stepped back. “Why did you wait?”

The doctor only nodded toward her father, who said, “I have to talk”—he took a wheezing breath—“to you first.” He gasped, and she felt the pain of it, inhaling and exhaling with him as if she could infuse him with her strength.

“We can talk after, Dad,” she said.

He shook his head.

The doctor squeezed her arm. “He insisted.” A flicker of sadness filled his eyes, but he masked it quickly. “We’ll be back in five minutes.” He followed the others from the room, leaving the machine that would keep Dad alive until he recovered.

“Dad, that was foolish.” Aspen tried to keep her tone kind, despite her frustration. “You should have let them do what they do. What could be so important?—?”

“I need to tell you…” Another wheezing breath, then another.

The tears she’d barely held back slipped down her cheeks. “There’s nothing that can’t wait?—”

“…about what happened…to your mother.”

Her mother?

Aspen’s heart pounded.

Because those words told her two things in an instant. First, that Dad didn’t believe he’d have another opportunity to talk to her.

And second, that he’d been lying to her all her life.

Aspen had heard a lot of words to describe her mother over the years, certainly more than her father had ever intended for her to hear. Unkind words from extended family who visited on occasion.

Cracked.

Deranged.

Psychotic.

But when Daddy talked about Mom, it was always with a kind, gentle tone. Your mother was unwell, Aspen.

Funny how, in all those words, what she remembered wasn’t the adjectives used to describe the woman who’d given birth to her, the woman she had no memory of.

It was the verb.

Was.

Your. Mother. Was.

Past tense.

Daddy had told her that, though no body had been found, she’d been presumed dead for years. He’d claimed not to know what happened to her.

Aspen leaned closer to him, squeezing his hand, refusing to be angry in what could be their last moments together. “What about her, Dad?”

“The house,” he said. “You’ll get the house.”

In all their years in Kona, despite his restaurants’ successes, they’d never lived in a house.

“The apartment? What about it?”

He shook his head. “I’m sorry.” He took a shallow breath. “I didn’t do right…by her. Or you. Don’t…” He gasped for breath.

“I’m sure you did your best.” Her voice squeaked. She leaned down and kissed his cheek. “You’re a good, good man. I’m sure whatever you did, you felt you had to.”

Tears dripped from his eyes and soaked into the pillow beneath his head.

He licked chapped lips and tightened his hold on her hand until her fingers ached. “Wanted to…” His words were interrupted by raspy breaths.

“What do you want me to do?”

He shook his head and pressed his hand to his chest. “Me.” He shook his head, tapped his chest. “Find her. Do what I never…had the courage…to do.”

“What do you mean? Is she alive?”

He opened his mouth to speak, but a cough choked out the words, the sound tearing through her soul like a dull knife against tough meat.

The nurses hurried back in. One propped him higher, speaking words Aspen couldn’t make out over his coughing and the dull roar whooshing through her brain.

Another nurse gripped her shoulder. “You need to step out.”

“No.” Her father’s eyes filled with terror. “You don’t… I have to?—”

“Ma’am.” The doctor’s voice drew Aspen’s attention. “We’ve got to do this now. I’m sorry.”

She tugged her hand, but Daddy held on and tried to speak. He didn’t have the breath.

“You’re going to be all right.” Somehow, she didn’t think it was fear of death that put that panic on his face.

“Now, please.” Someone tugged on her arm.

“I love you, Daddy.” She pulled her hand from his and moved into the hallway. She watched the scene through the open door, barely glimpsing her father beyond all the medical personnel trying so hard to save his life.

It was too late.

Three days later, after he’d been airlifted to the trauma center in Honolulu, her father slipped into eternity. In his last moments, unconscious, the tube no longer down his throat, a smile graced his lips. She imagined him in that thin space between this life and the next, getting his first glimpse of the Savior he’d loved and trusted as long as she could remember.

As awful as her grief was, Aspen knew her daddy was at rest.

She feared she never would be again.