⋯ ONE: PARADISE LOST! 

JACKIE KA'UHANE never expected her twisted fairytale ending to wind up like this. She has always acted with her gut in most of her life decisions, and for the best part of it, it had come off without a hitch. One simple hiccup however caused it all to crash and burn and now, she was paying for it. A dead-end relationship. How ironic, given how that term brought her to this cruel conclusion.

Her life had been, in a word, beautiful. Nothing could have compared to what she accomplished. Jackie thought back to her best friend, Rose Cameron. Back then, she was referred to as Rose Martin, and she was the greatest person Jackie could have hoped for. They had grown up together on the Cut. While Rose was better off and Jackie had to fight every day just to get a chance to eat, the girls made it work; Rose helped her and Jackie reciprocated however she could--which wasn't much. At least she counted herself lucky to even have a friend like Rose, as Jackie was sure she would have been dead a hundred times over if she went by her parents' rules and stayed away from any one of the Martins. Rose had saved Jackie and she never had a chance to repay the debt she owed her, until a few days ago. Thank Christ she was able to call Rose and let her know before it was too late. 

"Rosie, I can't explain now. I'm sorry. I-I have to go...see Luke. Yes, him. I know! I have to, Rose. My family is in this now. That's all I can say, but one day this will blow up to something way bigger than the both of us and I just know it will rope in my girls. Just, if that day comes and either one of my girls comes knocking, don't turn her away. I know where I come from and I know how you are now. It's much bigger than life status, Cameron. Do this for me. Remember how I looked after your son? How about when you asked how you could make it up to me, for endangering my life? Well, this is it. Take care of my girls. Bye, Rosie. I love you."

Jackie had a tearful explanation with her best friend, shaking and chilling on her end of the call. It had been mere minutes after Lucas had uprooted her peaceful life with a threatening text. A few words held more weight than the one pressed to her skin right now; her family's lives were on the line.  More specifically, her husband's, Daniel. She could already guess why. Lucas was jealous. After all this time, and all these blissful years, he decides to do something about it. Two decades pass and yet again, Jackie's happiness is blown up, all because of him.  She should have known--nothing good ever comes easy.

And so, the woman closed her eyes, whispering a silent prayer for her children, her sweet girls back at home, blissfully unaware of what situation their mother had dug herself into. Tears lined her thick, black lashes as she stared up at the perfectly circular moon drawn huge and bright in the night sky. The balmy heat was punctuated by the sleepy rush of Outer Banks waves colliding with the cold, grainy shore. Beyond her closed eyelids, his heavy breathing clouded her senses in the familiar earthy stench of her husband's prized island-grown 'herbs.' He was high. Typical. Her eyes watered, the smell overwhelming her with the salty tang of the surrounding sea.

An abrupt cold steel weight pressed against Jackie's heaving sternum. She froze, feeling a harsh laugh of condescension bubble in her throat. In the midst of her savage humor, her heart hammered erratically as she felt the barrel give a tiny tremble in movement. He was scared, if not hesitant. Hearing her laugh, he drew the gun closer, almost causing Jackie to stumble back over the rocky sand.

"Is this what you wanted for us?" Jackie wondered. "After all this time apart, you felt the need to bring me out here, home for what? Because I fell in love with someone else back in college, someone that wasn't you? Did you really expect me to come crawling back, Lucas, after all the times you beat me, all the times you ridiculed me when we were together?"

"I never said I was perfect, Jackie."

"You're right, you're not," Jackie said steadily. She felt strangely calm, standing on the edge of oblivion. The siren's call to death was just as sweet as the ocean's song that night. "And now you feel fucking guilty. You wanna take me from my family, my girls, so you can exact your sick form of revenge. All because you got jealous that my husband could fuck me better than you--"

Jackie didn't know he also held a bottle in his slacking grip until the warm liquid splashed over her face. She felt the blunt edge of the bottleneck crash into her face, a jagged fissure in the form breaking loose enough to slice a line across her cheekbone. Hardly flinching, the woman only grimaced. The dreadfully nostalgic feel of blood stung her face. She had struck a nerve, and here she was, reveling in it.

"I loved you!" Lucas was simmering in a drunken rage, his words slurred, monstrous. Nothing Jackie wasn't already used to. She shook her head, another lie.

She let out a hard laugh. "Well, if you did, do you really think that love would warrant you to one day indirectly kidnap me, hold me at gunpoint, and threaten to kill me?" Jackie raised an eyebrow, watching the shadows of indecision pour over Lucas's hardened, cold eyes.

Fighting to keep a grip on her words, her hands shook at her sides; fear slithered through the shield of her bravery, and she pleaded that he didn't pull that trigger. Pray that he didn't fall so far, only to seal Jackie's fate like this.

"Shut up--" Lucas finally uttered, his hand shaking around the gun handle as he blinked slowly through the fog of exhaustion and hesitancy.

"Does it make you feel better, baby?" she asked, and he flinched at that godforsaken pet name, despite himself. Jackie's internal cry crescendoed in warning as she pushed herself closer to the barrel. "To know that you'd leave my children without a mother, just like your boy doesn't have one, either? Isn't that a cute story? Let both our children suffer in the same way?"

"You know nothin' about that boy--" Lucas spat. The tension in his shoulders snapped his back straight, his breath coming through in ragged pulls.

"Don't I?" Jackie asked soberly. "I hope that Jesse doesn't end up like you; a washed up, waste of a man. Given how you are, Lucas, I seriously doubt he'd turn out anything better than you have. Rose would kill you if she found out what you've subjected her son to. Might even make her take him back--"

There it was. A dreaded, sick, almost inhuman satisfaction rooted deep inside Jackie as he saw the blackness in Lucas' gaze finally implode. As if in tandem, she heard an echo when she felt the bullet crack through the barrel of the gun. The pain was bright and demanding as she felt her vision bleed together in a muted, sickening fog of agony. Her ribs screamed as the bullet embedded itself between the ropes of muscles, through her skin, and cracked against her bones. She let the lullabies of the beach wash over her, taking with it her voice, her soul, her rapidly anxious heartbeat.

Lucas's stance twisted as the gun made its mark, violently throwing his body to the right, skittering pathetically over the sand. The alcohol in his system built well past healthy levels and wreaked dizzying, ringing chaos over his entire being. Jack Ka'uhane dropped like a stone on the sand.

A tense silence rippled through the air, nothing to break it but the harsh, laborious breathing of Lucas. His stomach churned, his skin prickled with shock trickling through him. Yet, as uprooted as he felt, no matter how destructive his rage was, Lucas did not feel the guilt he should have. The man, made a murderer, stared at the slow tide of red that seeped from under Jackie's body and into the pale sand, staining it with his sins. Unblinking, he collapsed to his knees.

The lunar tide was a taunting howl behind him, beating ceaselessly against his back as he worked to compose himself, hands running roughly from his hair down to his jaw, and back up against his eyes; pressing, pressing, pressing. Almost as if he was scrubbing the heinous crime from the back of his intoxicated mind's eye. But this wasn't just something Lucas could erase with his own bloodied hands. This was much bigger. His icy hands came to rest at his mouth, and he found himself caught in a maniacal fit of giggles.

"You brought this on yourself, Jackie!" he was screaming, the ocean a lamentable symphony to his spiraling taunts; a somber tribute to the innocence of a woman who only wanted the highest. The right thing for her family, her friends, and ultimately for him as well. "It's your fault! Ha!" he chuckled out loud, his voice pitching with insane desperation. "You should have loved me! You could have been happy with me, but what about now?! You wasted it, you wasted it! You wasted it."

Wasted... Wasted... Wasted everything!

What a vicious cycle of words running around in a nauseated game of ring-around-the-rosy. The cursed term increased in volume in his dazed mind, building to a crazed scream that drowned everything away.

His one-sided jibes had fallen to silence. However uproarious his thoughts had become in the weight of this shock, Lucas's voice came out into the balmy air soft and trembling. He turned, his hands scrubbing his raw palms. Blood spiking, Lucas paced over the sand in a fit of grave indecision for the next several moments. With every crazed turn, he dug himself deeper, his eyes locked onto Jackie's chilling form until it came to him.

At a loss for words, Lucas fished his beat-up phone from where he had stashed it in his back pocket. His fingers brushed the comforting orange plastic bottle of his fix, his saving grace from the torment, the nerves, the damaging memory. Palming the Ambien bottle, he turned it over in his hands, the label flashing in big black letters against the moonlight like a reassurance. With the phone in hand, Lucas popped the top and shook out two of the toxic pills. He tipped his head back and dropped them in, swallowing them swiftly, dry, watching the ghost of Jackie begin to seep from her remains almost instantly.

It was so tangible, so real in that moment; he yearned to run his hand through Jackie's hair. Lucas focused on the screen of his broken mobile device. Dialing one untouchable, foolproof number.

"Hey," Lucas muttered, overtaken by the delicious, drugged high that washed over his senses. The person on the line muttered a greeting, something to do with the late hour. "Sorry to keep you awake," he added half-heartedly. "I need your help. Somethin' happened. If you help me with this, I'll keep it quiet. Your status will be clean. But you have to do something for me in return."

"What do you want, Maybank?"

Luke Maybank smirked, clutching the phone closer. The shattered glass of the screen dug into his ear. "I wanna get the hell out of this shit hole of an island--"

"The Outer Banks won't miss a sewer rat like you. What did you do?"

"Fuck you. I know you're lookin' for that stupid plantation boat. I know how much it's worth if you find it. Five G's. If I help you, you gotta help me. Get me a cut of the loot."

The line vibrated with disbelieving laughter. The man swore. A lengthy loaded pause followed. Then, a crackling whisper as the other man on the line sounded like he was shifting. Walking a safe distance from prying, wondering ears. "What if I don't?"

"What if you don't?" Exasperated anger burst in his chest at the contemptuous nature of the man's words. "Well, I know about your wife, man. She has a good-for-nothing kid slumming on the southside; a piece of shit. I also know that pretty blonde princess you have isn't your little girl--"

"Sarah is -"

"Do this for me, and no one will know that Figure Eight is housing a half-breed slut, and a two-timing, cheating bitch in their royal court. As I said, your reputation is safe with me. Just get me the money. Deal?"

"Shit. Fine! Fine--" The man sighed through his teeth on the other line. "What did you do?"

"I killed Jackie Ka'uhane. I need you to put it on her deadbeat asshole of a husband. Daniel Ka'uhane. Send him to jail, and let the police press charges. Everything you can. Just make it stick. He needs to pay--"

"Jesus, pay for what?" The man knew about the peaceful, harmless Ka'uhane family; they were located overseas, nowhere near any of this. As far as he was concerned, they had never existed. Out of the Lion's Den. There was no reason to shove them back in because they were simply irrelevant. "How did Jackie get into this?"

"Doesn't matter. Can you do it?"

"Yes, but--"

"Dammit, Ward! Don't ask stupid questions. You're the golden boy here. Wherever you turn, people listen to you. You're God to them. It should be simple!"

"Not when there are innocents involved, Maybank. What about Daniel's girls? This will put them in danger."

"Fuck, I don't care! Daniel's gotta pay for his actions, everyone else is just collateral." On the beach, Luke aggressively sent sand glittering out in a spray as he kicked a jagged pebble into the lulling seas. His pulse sped and he trembled under his salty, clammy skin. His fingers itched to hurdle his phone against the enveloping onyx boulders, yawning for chaos.

"What the hell did this guy do to you, Luke?" Ward asked with sober inquisition.

"He ruined my life."

HOT AGONY sent her cringing awake, her hand shooting to cover her side instantly. Jackie let out a drawn groan, breathing heavily as she was faced with a bright dusting of stars above her. Through the pounding of her shocked heart in her chest, hard like a propeller blade, Jackie noticed how all the surrounding sounds of the beach were sucked away. Nothing but an eerie, buzzing silence ensued.

There was a hazy tinge to the air as she breathed shallowly through her booming pain. It was thick, tasting distantly of mud, cattails, and something she noticed was prodding her. Slender blades of overgrown grass pricked her neck. Her body had been thrown carelessly over a blossom of reeds so that they ballooned out uncomfortably through the spaces between her arms and thighs as she lay there, positioned in an off-handed spread-eagle form.

Jackie let out a soft, pained whine as she felt the sharp needle in her side burrow deeper; Luke Maybank shot her! "Bastard," she grumbled, heaving herself up, her body hidden deep within the overgrowth underneath the blanket of the sweltering evening.

With the sudden movement, however, the needle inside took a sharp, merciless turn, finding home in her chest. The bullet found home in her lung, puncturing it, with no exit; with every shift of her body, every pull of the humid air, Jackie felt it twist deeper. In the next second, a thick, hot sludge began to climb up her throat, and the woman's eyes widened, doubling over in the shelter of the reeds. Before she could make sense of it, Jackie heaved, coughing up a puddle of crimson blood onto the dank ground.

"Shit," she whispered hoarsely, finally finished. Dense waves of vertigo stitched another rain of agony into her body; her arm wound loosely around the bullet sight. Her breath was leaden with copper, her chest wheezing as the bullet continued to fester in her lungs. She looked around hazily, studying her place of abandonment.

The steady knock of idle boats caught her eye. In the surrounding gloom, a number of sailboats lay in a nautical slumber, the murky waves of the marsh lapping gently at their sides. If there were boats here tied to the weathered dock, the motel must have a number of customers tonight. Vacancies usually stayed at a steady zero, with any interested parties looking for that routine, drug-induced drift; the musty suites continued to gather layers of dust and mildew. Not at all ideal under better circumstances.

Although, given the violent turn of her fate in the passing moments, Jackie felt her options had become too slim to be choosy. This motel was walking distance from the docks. She couldn't wait until morning; time was slipping away. Even as the thought of movement passed in her mind, a withering pressure pressed down on her shoulders, leaking down into her chest and cursing her bones. As much as she wanted to lay back down in the reeds, she knew three critical things: she was shot, bleeding out, and alone. She had to find help, and fast.

With those things blurring in her mind, Jackie started the slow trudge toward the muted, sagging building. Her feet dragged against the sand, knocked against the muddy pavement, and she tripped up. Her wound flared as a result, bringing Jackie to grit her teeth against her laboring gasps. Soon, the injured woman reached for the first door at ground level, eliciting a frustrated, drunken shout. A dull, frightening buzz settled over her senses, drowning out her exasperation. The bullet feels cold, a freezing numbness spreading out from the entry wound. The fingers of her left hand prickle as she curls her fist and knocks loudly. The monotonous buzz grows over her ears, overriding the response of the body inside.

Feeling herself pale, Jackie spurred on, soon finding no one present on the first floor of the crackhead palace. Vertigo burned over her frame suddenly and she fell against the rusted railing of the stairs bridging her way to the topmost level. Before she could lift her foot to place it on the first pebbled slab, Jackie found herself expelling, once again, alarming torrents of blood, aiming weakly over her arm.

Her arms shook all through her fit, yet Jackie heaved herself up the stairs, a renewed sense of desperation in her stumbling steps. She couldn't even bring herself to knock anymore, mutely throwing her deteriorating frame against the doors lining the breezeway, shaking erratically at the locked handles.

"Hello?" she cried, tears like cooling raindrops over her fevered, sculpted cheeks. "Hello!" With open palms, she began to slap against the molding wood of every door with a fervor that could have scared her. She couldn't die here, not at the hands of Luke.

Death was always a faraway concept for Jackie. Something to be tabled for a time after she reached a centennial milestone; when her children were safe, married, and having children of their own. Ideally, when she had checked off all the goals still cluttering her bucket list. Isn't that what everyone wants? Wasn't that the goal of this world, the life given to humans? You're given this extraordinary chance to write your own story, star in it, and build a happy ending. How ironic that humans, the ones specifically forged within the fiery pit by an evil asshole with horns, would be the ones to take that opportunity away.

Jackie Ka'uhane hadn't expected her expiration date to be uncovered today, rapidly approaching, faster than she ever wanted it to. Luke was upset that she had ruined his life. Bullshit, when he was the one that ruined hers when he squeezed that single, bloodied death-dealing trigger. At least he had missed so she could count herself a bit grateful that he gave her this fleeting hour to tie up loose ends. Or try to.

A bright sense of awareness lit up Jackie's wheezing, sore heart. She finally stumbled into the doorframe of the last motel room in the breezeway. Pulling in a stuttering breath, Jackie presses her shaking, blanched fist down on the peeling wood. Feeling a heavy stone settle in her chest, pressing the air out of her damaged lungs, she knocks again insistently.

It's to her utter surprise that she finds Scooter Grubbs filling the pathway into the room. Behind him, she could vaguely see that the bed closest to the door was mussed, the bedside lamp flickering lazily in an effort to keep the space dimly lit. Jackie nearly collapsed with relief.

Under normal circumstances, Jackie wouldn't consider herself someone who eagerly sought out the resident marina rat's presence. Any brushes with the man were only in passing, never spending too long in the same space. He thought himself an outcast, banished to a slum in the nearest crack house, mixing with a number of unsavory crowds. Not too long after, Jackie began to hear of him through the distasteful, grating opinions of her friends at school. She didn't want to believe the rumors, but here Scooter was, in all his glory, proving each of their claims correct. And she couldn't be happier!

"Scooter Grubbs, thank God--!" Jackie exclaimed, her voice trembling with excitement. In her flash of excitement, black dots scattered over her view of the man and she felt her body pitch forward abruptly. Her state was getting more miserable by the minute, the time she thought she had disappeared with every taxing breath she forced into her lungs.

"Jackie? Jackie Malova?" Jackie shook her head, hearing her maiden name uttered from Scooter's lips. Despite her appearance, she grimaced at the ghostly reminder of the family that kicked her out on the streets. This forced her to make her own way, hell or high water.

"Ka'uhane, now." Jackie held up her left hand, red from the goddamn bullet soaking her ring finger and consequently the silver twisted band of her wedding ring. Scooter paled, his mouth forming a line of discomfort at the sight of her blood. She rolled her eyes internally as she placed her hand as firmly as she could to stop the rapid leakage.

Her shirt was plastered stiffly against her side, blooming as a sickening maroon rose, draining her of her precious life. The mute Scooter examines the source of the woman's sudden weakness.

He then utters a swift "Jesus!"

Jackie fell into his grasp. Sobering up, Scooter helped her quickly over to the other bed, perching her body up against the scratchy linen of the stained pillows.

As she settles, Jackie coughs, her shoulders hard and shaking in a way that brings Scooter to speak, unsettled. "What the hell happened, Jackie?"

"I-I was s-shot," she replied hoarsely, each word an effort. "Do you have a-a phone I could use?" To his utter astonishment, Scooter sees flecks of blood paint her ghostly pale lips, stark against her muting pallor.

He couldn't bring himself to nod at her soft question, instead heading to the grimy standard-issue powder room, disappearing briefly from her weary view. He came back, wads of hotel towels bunched up in his grip. Then, he stopped by the bedside table, snatching his ancient block of a phone; he gently placed it in her trembling hands without a word.

Jackie feels the starchy stiffness of the towels as Scooter presses them, all bunched in a loose wad, against her side. With the phone in hand, she dials one number; the digits feel comforting and soft. She breathes shallowly through her nose, tensing against the flare of pain shooting out of her wound, and Scooter's tending. Closing her eyes, she put the receiver to her ear, listening to the drone of the dial tone. She mentally reached out, hoping her call would be answered.

"Hello?"

Jackie smiled in relief, her wilting body melting against her brace of pillows. "Natalie?" she murmured, the whisper of a ghost.

Back on Maui, evening shadows had fallen upon the island. Dinner had been eaten. Natalie stood in her pajamas, her fingers gently tracing a foggy path against her fishbowl. A tiny, though pudgy goldfish chased her imprints, caught up in the silent game as her bedside lamp beamed a warm light into the small, aquatic home. She giggled to herself as her fish, Peanut let out a few happy bubbles while she drew circle upon circle on the clear, spherical glass.

The fifteen-year-old girl remembered who was on the other line, her voice drawing out in brief static bursts. She figured the reception at her hotel was shady; her mother had called to check in. Nothing out of the ordinary.

"Hi, Mama!" The girl pushes her body back onto the rose gold and cream canopy bed, watching the turtle decals wink at her from her ceiling in the lamplight. "How did the trip go? Where did you land this time?"

Her mother had been vague about the details of her trip, neglecting to mention the end location of her flight to her before she left. A small suitcase, a leather jacket, and a tense demeanor were all that Natalie saw as she said goodbye to Jackie. While she found her mother's behavior strange. Therefore, Natalie felt her mother was hiding something from her, and something wasn't quite right. Her stomach shook with unease when she heard Jackie's tone on this phone call. Still, probably nothing--

"Funny enough, I'm back home in Charleston. I'm here with a-a friend who wanted to save me the trouble of getting a... hotel room. I'm. . . Staying with him."

"Well, that's nice of him," Natalie replied lightly. "Tell him I said thank you for taking care of you."

Back in Kildare, Jackie felt her heart lift; her daughter was always so gracious and kind. The older woman didn't deserve such a child. She could hear Natalie gently cooing at Peanut, and she sighed. The stuffy temperature of the air cooled significantly, chilling her skin and she shivered.

Her vision of Scooter was marred by black spots gathering around the edges of her sight. As oxygen leaked out of her punctured lungs, Jackie spoke with near breathlessness. "I will, baby. Natalie, listen. "Something happened and I'm... I'm bound to be away for longer than I thought."

Natalie's line crackled in static; her mother's voice sounded distant, broken. Unbeknownst to her own knowledge, Jackie, with the effort of the call, had weakened substantially.

"Mom, I can barely hear you. Are you okay?" she asked, pulling a leg in as she sat up on her bed at attention. The girl subconsciously rubbed her pale manicured thumb into the skin of her smoothed sun-tanned leg, a sign of the tingling fingers of anxiety she felt. With her words, Natalie heard how they wavered, her concern getting the better of her.

"Yeah, honey. I'm fine." Jackie could feel blood slipping onto the pale stained sheets. Her throat closed and she cleared it with a soft cough; more blood seeped into her lips, dripping a bit off her chin. As tears gathered in her failing eyes, she knew. Her time was almost up. "I wanted to tell you... I love you, Savanna and Dad, so much. I know things are difficult right now, but...promise me that you won't turn your backs on one another. Especially Savanna."

Natalie felt her rapidly beating heart racing up her throat and into her mouth as her mother's words were chilling with a heavy terminality. "Mom," she choked. The burn of tears surfaced in her eyes and for some odd reason, she knew this call was going to ruin her entire life. Her fingers clung tightly to her cell phone as if it were her mother's hands. She begged her, miles away, to just keep talking. "You're scaring me. What's going on?"

Jackie looked at Scooter as the pain in her body diminished to a frosty mist that leaked over her body, like a fever spreading. Watching steadily, Scooter pulled his blood-stained hands away, shaking. She could hardly feel anything. A deep, somber apology was uttered by the man before her. He shakes his head. With that one expression, Jackie understood. It was too late now.

She is overcome by tears as her body trembles. Shutting her eyes against the blurriness of her vision, she couldn't think. Her body sank as if pressed by an unseen pair of hands. She was suffocating, her blood congealing in her throat, tight like a vice. Even so, Jackie had to reassure her daughter. However futile.

"Just promise me you'll never stop looking. Keep looking for the truth, even when others refuse to give it to you. Things are about to change a lot now, but I want you to remember that. Everything will be fine. I love you all so much."

Jackie Ka'uhane's eyes flutter closed as her chest heaves hollowly. As her body's fluids fill her failing lungs, the woman finally passes out. It's only a few moments before her chest stops its thin effort to breathe, her heart giving its last cursory beat. Her hand opened, releasing Scooter's phone. It clattered noisily on the beaten and weathered wooden planks below, a thunderstruck clash severing the melancholy room.

Jackie Ka'uhane was dead.

Natalie's phone goes dead with an incomplete call. She pulls the device from her ear, confused. Her mother's contact image blinks--CALL ENDED. Natalie couldn't understand what had just happened--she felt a strange anxiety creeping up her spine and knew she wouldn't find any answers on her phone anymore.

"Hey, kiddo! Lights out in ten. You got work tomorrow." Daniel knocked on the white wood of her bedroom door, startling her.

The girl froze. "Sure, Dad!" she called, distracted.

Natalie bit into her lip. She contemplated telling Daniel, but couldn't shake the feeling that she was better off keeping it to herself. She was unsure of how he would react to her news and was afraid of making a mistake by sharing it with him. She also felt that it was her responsibility to safeguard the secret and that it was in her highest interest to remain quiet. Not only was she the youngest, but she was also the most vulnerable. No one would take her seriously.

But she had to be honest. No matter what that meant for the sanity of her family, she would be. After all, with enough risk, there will be a reward. The question was, what would that award be?