“WHATCHA GOT?” DANNY NOTICED ME STARING AT MY PALM.

I extended my hand.

Whipping off his glasses, Danny brought his nose to within inches of my find. Seconds passed.

“Flip her over.”

I turned the thing with my probe. “Look familiar?”

“Nope.”

“Think it’s something?”

“Everything’s something.”

“Profound.”

“Looks like metal. Where was it?”

“Enveloped in adipocere packing the basicranium, below the palate.”

“Good eye.”

“Thanks.”

“M’lady’s penchant for shiny things pays off. Let’s scope it.”

We did, at increasing powers of magnification.

The object was roughly five millimeters long by three millimeters wide by a millimeter or so thick, and appeared to be made of gold. Its shape was irregular, with a lopsided glob on one side and two tapering projections on the other.

“Looks like a duck with a wide-open beak.”

The image didn’t work for me.

I rotated the thing ninety degrees. Danny took another turn squinting through the eyepiece.

“Now it’s a mushroom with two pointy stems.”

I looked. “I can see that. Any idea what it is?”

“Not really.”

“A chip from a filling or crown?”

“Ehhh.” Danny scrunched his face.

“What? Ehhh?”

“Looks too thin and too flat.”

Danny’s eyes flicked to the wall clock. Mine followed.

Five forty-five. I hadn’t noticed the lab grow quiet. Or realized we were now alone.

“Quitting time?” I asked, knowing the answer.

Though Danny had been married almost twenty years now, he and his wife still coochie-cooed like newlyweds. At times I found their giddy-gooey-bliss act irritating as hell. Mostly I envied them.

“Quitting time.” Sheepish grin. Or horny. Or hungry. “Aggie’s making Salisbury steak.”

Danny sealed the mushroom-duck thing inside a baggy. Back in his office, he locked it in a desk drawer.

“Tomorrow we can pick Craig’s brain.” Craig Brooks was one of the three CIL dentists.

After removing our lab coats we headed out, Danny toward beef and gravy in Waipio, I toward gloom in Lanikai Beach.

Katy was on a lounge chair by the pool. I took a moment to observe her through the sliding glass door.

Katy wasn’t listening to her iPod, talking on her cell phone, surfing or blogging with her laptop. No book or magazine lay in her lap. Dressed in the same tank and drawstring pants she’d worn the night before, she simply sat staring out to sea.

In a word, she looked miserable.

Again I was swept by a feeling of helplessness. I knew only time would ease my daughter’s pain, and that a week had yet to pass since news of Coop’s death. I also knew the delivery of that news had been cold and impersonal.

Still.

Steeling myself, I exited to the lanai.

“How you doing, tough stuff?” A childhood endearment.

“Ready for the play-offs.” Flat.

“Where did you go today?” Dropping into the chair beside Katy’s.

“Nowhere.”

“What did you do?”

“Nothing.”

“Got any thoughts on dinner?”

“I’m not hungry.”

“You have to eat.”

“No I don’t.”

Score one for Katy.

“I’m sure there’s something in the kitchen that I could throw together. Danny bought out the market.”

“Whatever.”

“Or I could drive into Kailua for more sushi.”

“Look, Mom. I know you mean well. But the thought of food revolts me right now.”

You have to eat. I didn’t say it.

“Anything I can do to perk you up? A little Groucho?” I raised my brows and flicked an imaginary cigar.

“Just let me be.”

“I feel so bad.”

“Not bad enough to stay home.”

It felt like a slap. My expression must have said so.

“I’m sorry.” Katy’s hand fluttered to her mouth, froze, as though uncertain of the purpose of its trip. “I didn’t mean that.”

“I know.”

“It’s just...” Her fingers curled. “I feel such rage and there’s nowhere to point it.” Her fist pounded one knee. “At dumb-ass Coop for going to Afghanistan? At the Taliban for gunning him down? At God for letting it happen? At myself for giving a shit?”

Katy swiveled toward me. Though dry-eyed, her face was pallid and tight.

“I know anger and self-pity are pointless and counterproductive and self-destructive and blah blah blah. And I’m really trying to pull out of my funk. I am. It’s just that, right now, life sucks.”

“I understand.”

“Do you? Have you ever had someone just blasted off the face of the earth? Someone you really cared about?”

I had. My best friend, Gabby. Cops I’d worked with and cared about. Eddie Rinaldi in Charlotte. Ryan’s partner, Jean Bertrand. I didn’t say it.

“Look, Mom. I know you’ve come here to do a job. And I know Coop’s death is not your fault. But you’re gone all day, then you get back all sunshine and Hallmark compassion.” She threw up both hands. “I don’t know. You’re in the zone so you take the hit.”

“I’ve taken worse.”

Wan smile.

Turning from me, Katy fidgeted with the tie at her waist, finger twisting and retwisting the string.

Overhead, palm fronds clicked in the breeze. Down at the shore, gulls cawed.

Katy was right. I’d dragged her thousands of miles, then dumped her in a place she knew nothing about. Yes, she was twenty-four, a big girl. But right now she needed me.

The familiar old dilemma knotted my gut. How to balance motherhood and job?

My mind flailed for solutions.

Work alternating days at the CIL? Half days?

Impossible. I’d come to Honolulu at JPAC expense. And Plato Lowery was anxious for an answer.

Take Katy to the CIL with me?

Definitely a bad idea.

I started to speak. “Maybe I could—”

“No, Mom. You have to go to work. I shouldn’t have said what I did.”

“It helps to stay busy.” Gently.

I braced for incoming. Didn’t happen.

“Yes,” Katy said. “It does.”

Suggestions leaped to mind.

No! yipped a wise sector of gray cells. Give her time. Space.

Rising, I hugged Katy’s shoulders. Then I went inside, changed to shorts, and strolled down to the beach.

The sun rode low, streaking the horizon and ocean tangerine and pink. The sand felt warm and soft underfoot, the breeze feathery on my skin.

Walking the water’s edge, childhood memories popped into my brain. Summers at Pawleys Island. My sister, Harry. Gran. My mother, Katherine Daessee Lee.

Daisy.

Triggered by the setting and my recent encounter with Katy, synapses fired images and emotions.

My mother’s eyes, green like my own. Sometimes radiant. Sometimes cool, refusing to engage.

A child’s confusion.

Which mother today?

A woman driven by social pretension? The newest spa, the trendiest restaurant, the charity event receiving current social column ink.

A woman in seclusion? Shades drawn, bedroom door locked, sobbing or silence within.

How I hated Daisy’s frantic party mode. How I hated her withdrawal into her lilac-scented cell.

Gradually, closed doors and distant eyes became the norm.

As a child I’d loved my mother fiercely. As an adult I’d finally posed the raw question to myself: Did my mother ever love me?

And I’d faced the answer.

I didn’t know.

My mother loved my baby brother, Kevin. And my father, Michael Terrence Brennan. I was eight when both died, one of leukemia, one drunk at the wheel. The dual tragedies changed everything.

But did they? Or had Daisy always been mad?

Same answer. I didn’t know.

I wanted a closeness with my daughter that I’d been denied with my mother. No matter the irrationality of Katy’s behavior or the unreasonableness of her need, I’d be there for her.

But how?

The cadence of the waves triggered no revelations.

Katy was gone from the lanai when I arrived back at the house. She appeared as I was washing my feet at the outdoor shower.

“You’re right. Moping is stupid.”

I waited.

“Tomorrow I’ll go parasailing.”

“Sounds good.” It didn’t. I preferred Katy safely grounded, not dangling a hundred feet in the air.

“Or I’ll sign up for one of those helicopter rides over a volcano.”

“Mm.” I turned off the faucet.

“Listen, Mom. I really am grateful for this trip. Hawaii is awesome.”

“And I’m grateful you’re here.”

“I took a dozen shrimp from the freezer.”

“Fire up the barbie?” Delivered in my very best Aussie.

“Aye, mate.”

Katie raised a palm. I high-fived it.

One dozen turned into two.