“But first, before you go we’re going to meet Eve and her parents, and then when you get to Maine, you are going to text me every day, and you are never going to forget who your mother is!”
“You’re such a loser, Ma.” Hazel sprang up to give her mom a big, sprawling, tight hug and then ran out of the room with a lightness in her stride her mother hadn’t seen in her daughter for a long time.
Hazel raced to the computer and opened the app to message Eve.
It’s happening! she typed. It’s really happening, sis.
Immediately, even though they weren’t leaving for another few weeks, Hazel packed up a duffel and left it in the corner of her room. And from that moment on, every subsequent message that Hazel received from Eve was a supernova. Each text blew everything that once was, wide-open. Started life anew. Illuminated every fiber of her being. And it was all happening in Hazel’s own personal universe.
For so long, Hazel had felt that her life was duller than it ought to be. Inside she felt alive and dynamic and energized. But outside she was forgotten and lonely and bored. She felt that there was something deep within her that was better than her life allowed for. Her days were thick and sticky with kids at school who knew nothing about her real life. Her evenings were clogged with taking care of the twins and trying to ignore the fact that Cam had become a fixture in her home.
She was ready for things to flow free and wild. She was ready for the exciting, magnificent life she deserved. She was ready for more family and more love. This was the start of her new life.
Hazel lay on her bed with her eyes closed, but not trying to sleep. She just let her excitement flow through her. She let the reel of vignettes of her life play in her mind’s eye. Finally, she was on the outside looking in and smiling. It felt as if she were finally part of the real story. And they would hold their hands to their hearts as she fumbled and groped her way there, but they would rejoice when everything gave way to the beautiful ending. She could finally feel the inevitability of her happiness.
Eve and Silas were her freedom. She felt a warmth emanate at the very thought of them.
She imagined what real sisterhood and daughterhood and fatherhood would look like.
She imagined what the cabin and the lake would feel like. What their room would smell like. What they would talk about and eat for dinner. How they would fill their days. How they would fill their bellies and their spirits. She imagined where they would go. The places they would explore. The feelings that would bloom.
Hazel considered that she didn’t even have to know Silas and Eve to know them. They were a part of her. She carried them with her every day. She clutched onto her pillow, love and excitement oozing out of her.
Hazel heard the gentle creak of her door opening. And then the slow pressing of feet into carpet. Hazel knew these sounds well from all those evenings of her mother slipping into her room with ice cream. But she wasn’t in the mood today. She kept her eyes shut and rolled over onto her side so that her back faced her mother as she approached.
The door clicked shut and without saying a word, Jane crawled into bed with Hazel. She slipped her legs under the covers, curled her body around Hazel’s in perfect contour, and tossed her arm over the flesh of her daughter’s hips. Hazel stayed still and kept her eyes shut. She recognized that this was more for her mother’s comfort than it was for hers. Perhaps it was even an apology. But she wasn’t looking for those things from her mother anymore. It was true that she had been starved of them, but now she had been fueled again from a force that was not inside this house.
“I love you, Hazel. You know that, right?” Jane said softly into Hazel’s ear, her hot breath cascading over the side of her face.
Hazel felt her body turn rigid.
“I know you’re excited to go. I’m excited for you. I just love you so much. It’s hard to imagine you away from home.” Jane gave Hazel a tight squeeze.
But the words were lost on Hazel. Hazel curled herself into a tighter ball, holding on to her own flesh and her daydreams of life away from here for comfort.
In perfect timing, Hazel’s phone buzzed and lit up. And Hazel popped her eyes wide open to check her phone. Of course, it was Eve. It was a picture she had taken of herself. One eye was pressed closed; the other one was big and wide and swirling and lined with dark black makeup underneath a perfectly curved eyebrow. She was sticking her tongue out the side of mouth, and her hair, although messy, looked shiny and perfect.
Hazel chuckled and considered which silly face she could send in return. She wiggled out from under her mother’s arm, and without turning over just said, “A little privacy please, Ma.”
And without saying a word, Jane uncurled herself from around Hazel’s body, slipped out of the covers and then slipped out of the room.
Hazel turned over just as the door was closing.
But before it shut, Hazel caught a sliver of her mother’s sunken shoulders. And then she rolled over and held her phone up in front of her face for a photo.
Hazel held the phone in her hands, waiting for a response from Eve. And when she got it, everything inside of her body went wobbly again.
8
JANE
The ninety-minute drive from their house to the War-ringtons in Connecticut was silent. Just a few days before, Jane had asked Hazel to get Eve’s mother’s phone number. Then Jane made an awkward call to this stranger with whom she unwittingly had something in common.
Susie sounded warm on the phone. She said she had recently learned about Hazel—and Jane—from her daughter. She immediately invited them all over for a visit.
When Jane, Hazel and Cam arrived, Jane didn’t even have to knock on the door of the house before it came swinging open. Susie and Parker Warrington came out immaculately dressed. Susie smoothed her skirt over her thighs before pulling Jane, Hazel and then Cam in for hugs in quick succession.
“Welcome to our home! It’s so lovely to have you.”
Susie was a lithe, slim-bodied woman with surprisingly pert breasts accentuated by her periwinkle sweater and her sparkling necklace. Parker had his hand soldered to Susie’s back. For such a strapping, handsome man, his eyes were surprisingly timid.
Susie and Parker had matching vacant smiles. There was a moment of quiet awkwardness.
“Come in, come in, please,” Susie urged, bulldozing any space for tension.
Jane locked eyes with her daughter as soon as they stepped through the doorway and into the foyer. It was the nicest home either of them had ever seen. The order of the place was immediately palpable. A home well run. A life predictable. Something Jane never strove for—perhaps even feared as a cherished principle. Jane couldn’t remember if she had yet uttered a single word.
“You have a beautiful home,” Cam said earnestly, sparing Jane from having to talk first. “Thank you for having us.”