The Ohana Part 36

"Nice of all of you to come," Sean began.

"We came because we were curious about our great Uncle Sean from Hawaii," a rotund man in his early forties volunteered. "We've heard about you all our lives."

The young woman who opened the door crossed her arms. "Nice of you to finally visit your poor relatives."

"Hush Megan!" A middle-aged woman in a floral print dress admonished. "Where are your manners?" She turned to look at Sean and offered her hand as she walked up to him. "Maureen Duffy Larson. I'm your cousin, your brother Seamus' daughter. The mouthy one there is my granddaughter Megan."

"Don't be so obsequious." Megan eyed him up and down. "He's only here because he needs something from us."

Sean took Maureen's hand. "Megan's right. I'm here because I need something from all of you."

"Didn't I tell you?" Megan smirked.

"Shut your mouth," a slender man with gla.s.ses scolded. He, too, walked over to Sean and held out his hand. "Ken Larson, the big-mouth's father. Excuse her. That college education you paid for has made her think she knows everything." He glared at his daughter.

Megan flopped into a chair with one leg flung over the arm. "I showed them the article about you in Town & Country a few years ago. I told them, 'Is this the rich uncle who ignores his own family and greases his conscience by offering us sc.r.a.ps here in Boston?'"

"Megan, will you shut up and listen to what he has to say?" One of the men said. He looked at Sean. "Richard, her brother."

Sean shifted his weight. "Is Sheila here? She's the one I've been talking to."

"That's me." A stout woman in her forties walked over to him and took his hand. "My mother talked about you all the time. Like you were some kind of prince."

"And you didn't even come to her funeral," another voice in the crowd said. "Not that you couldn't afford to come."

A murmur began and a young man in his twenties disengaged himself from the crowd and walked over to him. "Christopher Treadwell," he said without offering him a hand. "Bridgett's grandson. Not that you care."

"I'm sorry. You're right. I should have come."

"Right." Christopher gave Megan a look.

Megan curled her lip.

"I wanted to forget where I came from," Sean fumbled. "There were many painful memories here."

"We can accept that but you should have cared about your brothers and sisters who loved you." A middle-aged man walked up to him. "Jim Duffy, Seamus' son." He extended his hand. "Okay, maybe you didn't know us. But Aunt Bridgett was your sister. She wanted to see you again. You should have come at least once before she died. Or you could have sent her a plane ticket to Hawaii. I suppose it never occurred to you to do that?"

"It should have and I'm ashamed to admit I didn't think of it." Sean shook his head. "It's not enough to say I'm sorry, but I am."

"So don't expect us to greet you with open arms," Megan announced. "Of course some of my relatives are impressed with your money. But the rest of us don't care how much money you have, you're still a stranger."

Sean's inclination was to walk out the door right then and there. But he couldn't, for his granddaughter's sake. How strange life was. The fate of a girl he didn't even know a few months ago now lay in his hands. The family had exhausted all other possibilities.

"You have a right to be angry with me," Sean said. "I acted like I didn't have a family. Now I'm returning to ask you to help me save my granddaughter's life."

Sean's candor seemed to shame some of them. Maureen spoke first. "At least you're being honest." She looked at the rest of the family. "It's a Duffy trait to be sure."

Sheila addressed the group now. "I told you all about Uncle Sean's granddaughter. She has leukemia and needs a bone marrow transplant. A relative is the best bet for a match." Sheila turned to Sean. "Better late than never to acknowledge you have a family," she said. Then she did something Sean didn't expect. She hugged him.

Before he left Boston, Megan apologized. "I'm sorry I acted like such a brat." She looked down at the floor. "I never did thank you for my college education."

Sean hugged her. He had never been demonstrative although his family was. The week he spent in his hometown, he embraced more people than he had in his entire life. "It's okay. You were right, you know."

"You turned out to be okay." Megan smiled. "Uncle Sean?"

"Yes."

"I'm graduating from Georgetown law school this year," she said.

Sean looked at her with surprise. Who would have thought this young girl with her ponytail, baggy T-shirt, and blue jeans was almost a lawyer. "I'm impressed."

Megan played with her sandy brown hair. "I didn't mean to impress you. I just wanted you to know your money didn't go to waste. I did so well on my LSAT and my grades in college were so good, I was offered a full scholarship. I'm graduating in the upper ten percent of my cla.s.s and made law review." A proud smile lit her face. "I clerked for the Supreme Court last summer."

"If you ever want to come and work in Hawaii ..."

"No thanks." Megan said. "I want to be a children's advocate. I don't suppose I'll make lots of money, but I'll be helping others. Do you understand? I don't want you to think I was only interested in money. I'm interested in helping."

Sean blinked back tears. He hadn't cried since he was a child. "I'm so proud of you. I hope Ashley turns out as well."

Megan reached out and squeezed his hand. "Don't worry Uncle Sean. I'm sorry you didn't find a match among the clan, but no matter what, it was great everyone got to know you. Everything will be okay, you'll find someone."

Sean was tired. It had become his mission in life to find a match for Ashley. Funny, he was closer to this unknown grandchild than he was to his own sons. And he was determined to keep her alive. He spent a lot of time and money looking for possible relatives, even as far away as Europe and Asia, but to no avail. It had been seven months since the diagnosis; time was running out. He was alarmed at how much chemotherapy and medication had weakened Ashley.

His secretary buzzed and he pressed the intercom speakerphone. "Yes?"

"Mrs. Myers to see you."

"Send her in." Sean wondered what brought Jackie to see him. Since learning he was her father, she had kept her distance, even though he and Ashley had become close.

When the door opened, he was surprised. "Meg?"

Meg was an ageless beauty in her sixties who refused to dye her hair, electing to let it turn silver. Their affair seemed so long ago. And he had come to realize he was more in love with the idea of Meg rather than with Meg herself.

"Please sit down," he gestured to a chair.

Meg sat. "Please sit down, too. You're going to have to."

Puzzled, Sean did as she suggested. "I don't understand."

"I hoped this moment would never come, but it has." Meg fiddled with her purse. "Have you found a donor for Ashley yet?"

"No I haven't."

"Have you exhausted all possibilities?" she pressed.

"We're still trying to dig up possible relatives in j.a.pan, Ireland, Germany, or Portugal. No luck so far." Sean stroked his forehead. "She doesn't have much time."

"There's one other possibility."

"Who?"

"Our daughter."

Chapter Forty-eight.

Bangkok, Thailand, 1978 Although George Han hadn't seen his nephew Johnny in two years, the first thing he did was slug the college boy so hard, blood ran out of his mouth.

George ma.s.saged his fist. A man in his sixties carrying six or seven more unwanted inches of soft flesh around his waist shouldn't have to resort to violence. But sometimes it was the only way to get through to kids.

"That was for your mother, college boy." George jabbed Johnny on the shoulder.

Johnny backed up and touched his bleeding lip with his fingers. He was a mess. His filthy clothes hung in rags on his skeletal frame, his greasy hair was a tangled bush, his face sprouted a scraggly beard and mustache, and he couldn't stop the tears from making tracks down his smudged face.

"You look like you spent a year in jail instead of a month."

Johnny shuddered. "It felt like ten years." He shuffled his dirty bare feet.

"They take your shoes?"

"And everything else."

George sat in a rickety wooden chair. "What were you college boys thinking?"

"We weren't."

"You got that right." George sat back and rested an ankle on his thigh. "This ain't a business for college boys. Selling a little dope is one thing. Coming to Thailand to buy two hundred pounds of drugs to send to Hawaii puts you in a whole 'nother league."

"We thought we'd make a lot of money."

"You're lucky you're not dead."

Johnny put out his hand, palm up. "Uncle, I appreciate what you did..."

George stood and grabbed Johnny by the remnants of his T-shirt. "You listen to me, what you did was insane." Releasing the boy, he slapped him on his face. "You, none of you, got what it takes."

"We arranged transport and greased its way to Hawaii."

"But you couldn't even get it to the ports now could you?"

Johnny's lip quivered. "We were double-crossed."

"And you didn't expect that?" George scratched his forehead. "What kind of people did you think you were dealing with anyway?"

"Farmers. We went directly to the farmers and bypa.s.sed the middlemen."

"And those ignorant farmers are now selling the same crop they sold you to someone else." George shook his head. "They knew what they were dealing with the moment you paid them and left."

"That was the deal, straight up. We negotiated a price, took the stuff, and..."

"And walked right into a trap that landed you here in this h.e.l.lhole."

Johnny sniffled. "What else were we supposed to do?"

George leaned forward, hands on his knees. "Put a bullet between their eyes."

Johnny's eyes widened and he stepped back.

George leaned back in his chair. "You couldn't do it, could you? They knew it the minute they laid eyes on you. What you should have done was gotten someone who could and would. Or you could have held them hostage at gunpoint until you were sure the stuff was on its way going to where it was supposed to go."

"We didn't expect violence."

"You didn't expect violence!" George snorted. "What do you think drug smuggling is...a game? Don't you understand what and who you're dealing with?"

"I guess not."

George stood up. "Your little escapade cost me $25,000."

Johnny looked at the ground. "I'll pay you back."

"Sure you'll pay me back." George spat on the floor. "Pay me back by staying out of trouble for good."

Johnny looked up. "Uncle, is it true? I mean were you really..."

"Don't believe everything you read in the papers."

"I wanted to be the man like you. I didn't want to be like my dad, stuck in a nowhere civil servant job. I wanted respect."

"You don't know what you're talking about." George put his arm around Johnny's narrow shoulders. "Your father's the real man. He never got tempted by the money. He worked hard at Pearl Harbor all his life. It's harder to do what he did. He stayed the course, took care of his family. Stayed out of prison."

"But you're rich."

"You ever heard the old saying you can have everything and nothing too?" George walked his nephew out the prison doors. "Some prisons don't have walls."

George boarded the flight back to Honolulu with his nephew. Settling in his seat, he picked up a magazine and flipped through it. His nephew fidgeted in the seat next to him. Not surprising. He had admitted he lived on drugs during the month he was incarcerated in Thailand. It was going to be a painful trip back home.

As the plane began to taxi down the runway, George wondered how he managed to get so lucky despite the fact he had made his fortune illegally. He never did hard time, just a short stint in a federal country club. Now he was legitimate. He didn't need to take risks anymore.

If there was one area of his life he was unlucky, it was his personal life. Bitterness and jealousy ruled his household. He wondered if it would have been different if he had found the courage to marry Mary.

George's problem was he lacked courage. In a way it was the key to his success. He never dreamed of doing anything as foolhardy as Johnny. How ironic that his strength lay in his weakness-his cowardice. He learned to use people to do the things he could never do himself. It was better Johnny didn't learn that lesson while he was still young. He needed to live a good, clean life. It wasn't easy to always look over your shoulder. Worrying and pretending was what he had done all his life. Who needed to live such a life?