Kauai is the destination of a surprise vacation Tully organizes for Kate and Johnny, returning them to the island where they spent their honeymoon. Its significance lies in the way a familiar place becomes an act of care: Tully gives her friends time away from work and parenting, and sends them back to a shared beginning as Kate faces a grave illness.

The Surprise Journey

Tully arranges for Kate’s parents to watch the children for a week and has a car ready to take Kate and Johnny to the airport. The couple come downstairs to find suitcases in the living room and learn that they are to pack bathing suits and sunscreen; Tully has disclosed no destination. Johnny protests that he cannot leave work because the station has Senator McCain on, but Kate’s father points out that Tully is his boss and has decided he is taking a vacation.

Kate and Johnny have never taken a trip away from their children. They spend the next hour packing, making lists, and gathering telephone numbers, then kiss the children—including Marah—thank Kate’s parents, and climb into the waiting limousine. Johnny remarks that Tully does nothing halfway; Kate says she already feels more relaxed, even while they are still in their driveway.

Returning to Their Honeymoon Island

The destination is revealed when Johnny finds an envelope containing their tickets. It is Kauai, the island where he and Kate went on their honeymoon. Kate closes her eyes and pictures the swaying palm trees and pinkish sand of Anini Beach, making the surprise more than an unspecified holiday: it takes the couple back to a landscape associated with the start of their married life.

In the limousine, Kate drapes herself across Johnny’s lap and thanks him for helping Tully kidnap her. The playful phrasing marks the contrast between the trip’s elaborate secrecy and its intimate purpose. Tully has arranged not only an escape from the household but a return to a place the couple already know together.

Care in the Shadow of Illness

The trip acquires particular weight in the story’s later scenes of Kate’s illness. When Kate is hospitalized, Johnny warns Tully that cancer in Kate’s brain has affected her faculties and that she may not recognize her. Tully’s response to Kate’s vulnerability is expressed through presence and practical care: after her final broadcast, she stays with Kate on her last night in the hospital, moves the other bed close beside hers, and plays a recording of the show for them to watch together.

Against that later crisis, the Kauai vacation shows another form of Tully’s care. She uses her position as Johnny’s boss to make the couple stop working, delegates childcare to Kate’s parents, and sends them away without burdening them with the planning. The return to their honeymoon island gives Kate and Johnny a brief interval centered on their life together, while the book’s later hospital scenes establish how urgently Tully’s friendship will matter as Kate’s condition worsens.