Three weeks with my brother - Nicholas Sparks [58]
The island was roughly twenty-five miles in circumference, and, as in England, the vehicles traveled on the opposite side of the road than they did in the States. Though it took some getting used to, the roads weren’t crowded, and we zipped along, stopping here and there for pictures. Palm trees stretched as far as the eye could see, and we wondered if Easter Island had once looked this way. The thought saddened us. While Easter Island had been austere and lovely in its own way, the difference between the islands was staggering.
The Cook Islands are noted for black pearls, and both Micah and I stopped to buy some for our wives. In the past week, Micah had talked to Christine twice, and I’d talked to Cat four times. None of our conversations had lasted more than a few minutes. Their lives were more hectic than usual, but their routines the same; it amazed us to think of all the places we’d been since we’d last seen them.
There is something refreshing about riding with the wind in your face, and as we circled the island my mind wandered. Part of it was that Micah and I were on our own and without a schedule. I thought about our childhood; the places we’d lived and the things we’d done. I tried to imagine what my kids were doing, and pictured the way Cathy looked as she stood in front of the mirror in the morning.
Best of all, I never thought about work as I rode, even for an instant. For the first time in years, I finally began to feel as if I were on vacation.
Micah and I grabbed some bottled water, and stopped at one of the public beaches on the far side of the island. The beaches were coral-strewn, and the waves just beyond the reef rose high before crashing against them. Micah and I were the only ones there, and from the beach we couldn’t see any houses. With the exception of the faint sound of passing traffic on the road behind us, it would have been easy to believe we were the only ones on the island.
For a long time, we simply sat and watched the waves. The ocean was the color of faded turquoise, and even from our vantage point, it was possible to see through the water to the seafloor. Schools of brightly colored fish swam past us, our eyes traveling with them. Many of the South Pacific islands have their own native species; some fish found in Hawaii or Fiji can only be found there, and I wondered if I was seeing a species I would never see again.
“Now this,” Micah said, “is the reason we came to Rarotonga. Beautiful beach, beautiful weather, all by ourselves. Can it get any better?”
“It’s not exactly like our vacation to the Grand Canyon, is it?”
He grinned. “That was some trip, wasn’t it?”
“It was great,” I said.
“It was awful,” he corrected. “You’re just too young to remember it the way I do. By the end, we’d driven dad almost crazy. He’d drive all day, see a sight, and then we’d camp out in the Volkswagen at night because we couldn’t afford hotels. And don’t you remember we didn’t have air-conditioning? Here we were driving through the desert in the middle of summer, sun glaring through the windows and cooking us inside. We roasted day and night, and complained all day. And we wrestled until we were slippery with sweat, screaming the whole time. Dad was pretty grouchy.”
“Our dad?” I feigned disbelief. “Mr. DEFCON? You must be thinking of someone else.”
He laughed. “I think we remember those moments about dad so clearly because he was such a quiet guy. I barely even knew he was around half the time, and then all of a sudden, BOOM. Our dad isn’t dad—suddenly he’s this super-scary guy.”
“Do you remember when he brought us to the movie Alien on opening night because he heard it was the scariest movie ever made? Or when we watched Salem’s Lot on television? What were we? Eleven or so?”
“Something like that.”
“Would you let Alli see movies like that? I mean, in a couple of years?”
Alli, his stepdaughter, was ten years old.
“There’s not a chance. Christine would kill me. She