“Unavoidably detained by the birthday boy, I’m afraid.” (There is a snort from Irene’s direction.) “But I’m here now, aren’t I? Where’s Olle?”

“He’s picking up the present right now. Kaiko’s trying to start the fire in the pit. Doris! Wesley! For goodness’ sake, go around back. You’ll get the rugs all wet.” Irene turns to me. “You’ll help them with the cake, won’t you? Doris wants to bake it all herself, but you remember what happened last time. And she has to let Wesley do at least some of the frosting.”

“Oh, sure, and I’ll just telephone Uncle Joe and convince him to end the Berlin blockade while I’m at it. Can’t you at least lay out a few preliminary spankings?”

Irene shrugs. “You’re on your own. I’ve got the pig to worry about.”

In the end, it all comes together. Nobody mentions that Doris’s cake is lopsided, or that Wesley forgot the frosting h in birthday, which is a miracle because Kaiko’s the kind of fellow who comes out and says whatever thought’s inside his head. Olle drinks too much, but everybody expects that, and anyway he never drinks too too much, if you know what I mean, at least around the children, whom he adores almost as much as their mother.

As for that suckling pig, well. Irene always was the kind of infuriating woman who does things impeccably, and this particular pig is practically perfect, down to the pineapple in its mouth. Kaiko got the coals going, so it cooked all day in its pit and the meat falls apart from the bones whenever you prick it with your fork. Now the fire dances in the night, and everybody’s laughing and happy, and it’s time to give Leo his present.

Olle does the honors, because Leo’s his son, after all, and because he went to the trouble to fetch this present all the way from the other side of the island early this morning, from a certain fellow we know who lives near Lihue with his wife and two kids. Olle sets the box in front of Leo, and the box topples over, and out pops a startled beagle puppy, eight weeks old.

Leo starts to cry.

The three of us ride home on the moped, Leo and me and the puppy on my lap. Leo’s named her Frankie and already loves her more than me. We’ve agreed she should stay at my place, because it isn’t right to keep a respectable bitch in a bachelor apartment above a tavern, and as we pull into my driveway, Leo casually suggests that maybe he should just give up the apartment altogether, since both pieces of his heart are living here. I hand him the leash and tell him to walk his dog.

While they’re outside seeing to business, I light a few candles and open a bottle of champagne and slip into something less comfortable. The cottage is small, as I said, but Irene keeps coming by with lamps and cushions and books and frying pans to fill it up like some kind of permanent residence. Each time she does this I think of a mother bird dropping worms in a nest. Outside, Leo’s talking to the puppy. The thought of Velázquez flashes across my mind and is gone, leaving behind a vapor of peace.

The door opens. Leo says, “I think a newspaper might not be a bad . . .”

I turn around. “A bad what?”

He closes the door and drops the leash. “Nothing.”

When Leo is fast asleep, I climb out of bed and develop the film from the birthday party. A gentle Hawaiian rain falls outside. Once the negatives are dry, I select a few I like best. There’s a beautiful one of Doris and Wesley carrying out the cake; you can’t even tell that Doris was yelling at Wesley because he was going too fast. I also caught Irene from the side while she watched Olle make one of his rambling, heartfelt toasts. The fire makes a fascinating pattern on her scarred skin. You can see the affection in her gaze, the tolerance that—it seems to me, anyway—is the heart of any marriage. I sometimes wonder if my father gave himself permission to go because he knew Olle was waiting in the wings, adoring Irene from afar, and that while Olle wasn’t perfect, he was kind and true, and he wasn’t going to leave.

Or maybe a wave is just a wave, and it was Sam Mallory’s time to die.

But my favorite picture is the last one, the one I took of Leo when Frankie overturned her box and made her appearance. If you don’t believe in love at first sight, then I recommend you look upon the face of a man who has just met his very own beagle puppy. Once the print’s hanging by its clothespin, I gaze at it for some time. He is utterly unaware of the camera; his expression is amazed and radiant. I have always loved the smooth texture of his skin, the elasticity of Leo, the way his face is capable of expressing the tiniest nuance of emotion. Velázquez was the opposite; you could not read a single thing on his face, not a hint of what he was thinking or feeling, his past or his present. That’s why I prize that photograph of him in my bed at the Hotel Scribe, because I happened to catch a rare moment of candor, when you could look into his dark eyes and see the real Velázquez, the exasperation and hope, his earthiness and his piety.

One more photograph, on which I don’t linger long. Doris took that one, because she’s curious about my camera, and I sometimes let her use it. Imp that she is, she snapped one of me. Me! When she knows I hate having my picture taken almost as much as I hate flying. Still, it’s a good photograph, if you judge it objectively. She’s got instincts, my little sister. (I still savor those words on my tongue sometimes, sister and brother.) I’m looking at Leo—you can just see his face in the corner of the frame—and my brow is furrowed slightly, my eyebrows pointing toward each other, though my lips are just turned up at the corners, as if I’m happy and puzzled at once. My dark hair is pulled back from my face, exposing my Mallory cheekbones, and in fact everything in my face screams of my father. That expression is the expression he’s worn in a hundred newspaper photographs, like the one taken long ago in Honolulu, as he watched his Irene deliver a public speech for the first time.

I set that one aside and tuck the photograph of Leo into my father’s leather diary, along with the others I like to keep with me on my travels, Velázquez and Irene and Wesley and Doris, and of course that old snap of Sam Mallory, from the first roll of film I ever took, staring out the window of that diner in the middle of California. I stuff the diary into my satchel, packed and ready for tomorrow, and at last I lift the covers and gently slide myself into bed, next to Leo.

Except I’ve already been replaced by Frankie, it seems. The beagle curls in a happy ball between us, breathing twice for each breath of ours, tiny heart beating.

I take the early ferry to Oahu the next morning, piloted by Leo. Frankie comes with us; Leo says she might as well learn the trade early. I fall asleep in the deckhouse, and Leo wakes me when we dock. A taxi sits nearby, ready to carry me to Hickam Air Force Base, where I’ll board a military transport plane to the Philippines, and then another to the Chinese mainland. Leo knows how anxious I am about these flights, far more than about taking photographs of General Mao’s brutal advance. He carries my suitcase to the taxi and tells me he tucked a bottle of Olle’s bourbon into my satchel.

“Send telegrams,” he says, “so we know you’re still alive.”

I nod. He kisses me good-bye. As I climb into the taxi and look out the window, I notice the other passengers glance curiously at him, their captain who stands with his back to the ocean, staring at this woman who’s leaving him. You can tell by his expression that he’s afraid she’s not coming back.

I tell the driver to stop the car. I open the door and walk back to Leo. I whisper something in his ear, and whatever I’ve said—I’m not saying what—I think it helps. His expression turns awestruck and full of hope. We kiss again like we mean it, and I return to the car, and the car continues on its way. I stare through the back window. He lifts his hand and waves, and that’s the last I see of him before we turn the corner, a single image printed on the film of my memory: Leo’s tanned hand spread against the blue sky.