Jane instinctively removed her shoes, and Hazel followed suit.
“Oh, you don’t have to do that,” Susie said through a chuckle and a dramatic wave of the arm before bending down to align them properly against the shoe rack. “The dining room is this way. Dinner is just about ready.”
Parker patted his stomach. “I don’t know about you, but I’m starving,” he said as if his words were scripted. A caricature of a dinner party host. “I’ll take you to the dining room while Susie finishes up.”
Parker removed his hand from Susie’s back for the first time. “Follow me.”
They moved first through a living room. A modern print—surely straight from the MoMA gift shop, or perhaps the real thing, judging by the signature at the bottom—hung on the wall, strategically aligned behind a modern cuboid sofa. The coffee table sat atop an animal pelt rug and was made of glass. The glass was pristine and didn’t have a single smudge on it, just a neatly stacked pile of coffee table books—Chanel, The Elements of Style, Modern Treehouses. It was the perfect juxtaposition of modern and bucolic. Chic and homespun. The magic of an interior designer’s touch. The reality of not having two babies with drooling mouths and crusty hands to touch the pristine glass-surfaced touch of an interior decorator.
Jane smiled at the thought of her boys. She imagined them crawling around that room, knocking the Chanel coffee table book right from its stack and then moving to the next lamp or vase or other delicate thing without pause. She loved those little imps. And their cheeks and their hands and their drooling mouths. Jane turned to look toward Hazel.
Hazel appeared to be in awe, but still comfortable in the space as she glided through it, her head swiveling around, her mouth the slightest bit agape.
“Susie loves this room. We barely even come in here—don’t want anything to fall out of place, now!” Parker said through a nervous chuckle and then continued. “The dining room is right through here. Have a seat. I’ll go get Eve.”
As she took her seat at the table, Jane caught a glimpse of the kitchen to the left. She could tell it was well equipped but sufficiently untouched, assuring her that no one spent much time in there. Without much more than a split second’s view, Jane could tell it was a kitchen with a cabinet of unused single-use appliances—pasta makers and fondue sets. A kitchen with a drawer for pens and pads, a drawer for take-out menus ordered alphabetically, a drawer for first aid, and one for tape and scissors and glue. All things in their correct places, and complete. A far cry from the kind of home, and life, she’d created for her family.
From her chair, Jane searched for any evidence of chaos or enigma. But there was none. Until Eve entered the room.
Eve ran toward Hazel with excitement and threw her arms around her half sister. Her hair was piled messily atop her head in such a way that revealed her long neck—surprisingly elegant for a fifteen-year-old.
“Hey, sis!” Eve exploded, placing extra emphasis on the word sis.
Jane replayed the inflection of greeting back to herself in her head. What was it there underneath those words? Was it sarcasm? Earnestness? Just a teenager’s way?
“That’s my mom,” Hazel declared nonchalantly. Jane said a warm hello, and Eve smiled back. “And, uh, my dad. I guess. That’s weird.” Hazel blushed a bit and Cam smiled through closed lips and waved.
Jane placed her hand on Cam’s leg and it immediately relaxed her.
Eve sat herself next to Hazel and pulled her chair and place mat closer, disrupting the uniformity of the place settings. “I can’t believe you’re here!” Eve declared and rested her head onto her half sister’s shoulder, as if they’d known each other their whole lives.
That inflection again. But Hazel seemed at peace. Happy even. As if it were only the two of them in the room.
Susie swiftly moved back and forth from the dining room, laying large bowls of salad, then vegetables, then pasta, and then a large plate of steak in perfect orientation on the table. Jane tried offering to help, but Susie seemed insulted by the inquiry.
“Go ahead and start without me,” Susie said, near short of breath.
“No, no,” Parker protested, one hand already curled around his fork and the other around his knife.
Susie returned to her seat with an exhale. “You really shouldn’t have waited,” she murmured to her husband. Susie’s long fingers fluttered rhythmically from the napkin on her lap, to her dress, and then to her hair, smoothing them compulsively. It was as if she was reassuring herself that structure and tidiness were available to her at any moment.
Everyone else at the table began passing dishes and scooping mounds of food onto their plates, but Jane found herself too absorbed by this woman to move. She wondered who exactly she was. There was a sense of drama about Susie. She seemed to be on the verge of tears that her overexpressive smile across a freshly lipsticked mouth could not counterbalance. Even though this absorption seemed arduous, Jane couldn’t stop it. Something about the way Susie’s eyes darted anxiously between the two girls, something about the way she rigidly forked her salad, something about her unease made Jane realize exactly who this woman was.
This was the woman that had ended her relationship with Silas. The woman Silas had slept with that night Jane was waiting to tell him about the baby in her belly. It had to have been her. And he must have gotten her pregnant, too. These girls must have been conceived within weeks of each other. There were so many questions, but none Jane could address now, in this moment. The words of the conversation swirled around her and then turned into nothing but a hum. Everything in the scene blurred except for Susie’s perfect face and hair and neck.
Susie looked up from her plate and met Jane’s eyes—Jane hadn’t realized she was staring, or that her grip had tightened on Cam’s pant leg under the table.
Jane wondered if Susie knew what she had done. She must have understood it now with the two girls in front of her—their faces so alike. It was impossible to ignore. You’d see one in the corner of your eye and mistake her for the other. The same thin shoulders. The same playful cheeks and rounded, delicate nose. The same shining hair. Eve’s lips were glossed and compelling, and her eyes were traced and retraced around the edges with thick eyeliner.
Jane’s Hazel looked so young next to this girl. Her makeup-less face and lips. The dimple on the right cheek. The nearly invisible scar above the right eyebrow from the time Hazel had fallen into the coffee table when she was just learning to walk. The barely discernible breasts and mismatched eyes.
But still, these two girls were related. There was no mistaking it.
Jane could tell that Susie had preempted any silence by leaning the conversation toward logistics. She detailed packing lists and itineraries. Jane could tell Susie wanted to maintain appearances. That she would never appear to acknowledge the awkwardness of things. Or want to discuss any intimate details.