It took a long time for it to sink in the warm, shallow lagoon, and when it did the strut of its nose wheel collapsed, so that the plane tipped gently forward onto its nose cone, only the tail still breaking the surface. The landing lights remained on for a while, outlining the plane’s dark, broken silhouette and making a lovely, luminescent fairy ring of turquoise and white in the black, still waters. Then they blinked out.
TWO
June 8, 2004, Hulopo’e Beach Estates,
North Kohala Coast, Big Island of Hawaii
At eighty-two, Dagmar Torkelsson was less inclined to melancholy than many people with half her years. She rarely dwelt on old regrets or might-have-beens, or on the losses, physical and emotional, that came with age. But on this particular afternoon, seated on the memorial bench that she herself had purchased for the community’s cliff walk in the name of her long-dead brothers Torkel, Magnus, and Andreas, her thoughts were of the past; of Torkel and Magnus in particular.
The path, as usual, was deserted despite the twelve sumptuous homes in the walled, gated community. Few of the residents did much walking there, which was fine with Dagmar as long as a portion of their homeowner dues continued to go for upkeep. The existence of this lovely path had been the final selling point that had convinced her to purchase there, despite the obscene price (which she could certainly afford, but which offended her sensibilities all the same). Hugging the rims of rocky, surf-splashed coves where green sea turtles could often be seen just below the surface of the water, it wound for a quarter-mile, mostly out of sight of the homes. In all the years she had lived there, she could count on the fingers of her two hands the days she had failed to stroll it, even when her arthritis required a cane or sometimes-hateful, clumsy thing-a walker.