I dialed the number on the crumpled piece of paper you gave to me with Silas’s phone number on it.
He answered the phone, not suspecting anything at all.
I was matter-of-fact and clear.
I told him who I was and began to explain that you were my daughter.
He told me he had a feeling that I’d be calling and he was right.
I told him that I understood he and you had been chatting for quite some time and had arranged for a summer meetup. I challenged him with my tone. I wanted to see what he was made of. See if he could handle you. And also make clear who was the boss around here.
He was on his heels a bit. Silas was bumbling on every word. He might have been able to charm me the first time we met, but I was in control this time.
I reminded him that you were only fifteen years old and that fifteen-year-olds didn’t do much without their mothers. I didn’t leave much wiggle room.
Silas exhaled. Slowly.
And then he said something that warmed me.
He said that he never knew you existed but that he was excited you did. My heart simultaneously sank and lifted.
There was a moment of silence.
He shared that he always wanted a daughter, this time with more warmth.
I wasn’t ready to turn to go. But then he took me there.
He confessed that he messed up with this fatherhood stuff, and that he had been messing up for a long time and that he wanted the chance to redeem himself. He wanted a chance to get to know you.
I could feel, deep down in my bones, that he meant it. I really could, Eve. And not being in the picture wasn’t his fault. It was my fault. You deserved to be part of each other’s stories.
He said he wanted to know what a little Silas would look like.
I set the record straight and reminded him that if you were a little anything, you were a little me. I was smiling now. More comfortable now. I unfolded another piece of paper with some prepared notes.
I continued with some set questions. I asked if he carried sunscreen or kept liquor accessible and whether he had a nice bed for you to sleep in. And as he confirmed, I added little checks next to the items on my checklist.
And then finally I asked him what I really cared about. I asked whether he was a good man. He said he was trying to be. And then I asked him who your real father was. And he said my husband was. And that was the right answer.
I told him right then and there that he would see you next month and that was that.
I put down the receiver and then I cried big wobbling tears. I knew what I had to do. I knew what you had to do.
I’m sorry if it made a mess of things,
Mom.
* * *
And with that, Jane wrote:
Letter 8
Deciding to let you go
Jane
Dear Hazel,
After you asked me to meet your father, I retreated to my room to not only collect my thoughts, but also to prevent myself from reaching my arms around you and never letting you go. When I decided to let you go and envisioned you headed up there by yourself, forging your own path, I never felt more proud of who you have been, and who I knew you would become...
20
Jane put her pen down. Even as she just started to write this letter, she felt exasperated. She wanted to tell Hazel these things to her face. Not in a letter Hazel would probably never read. She wanted to tell Hazel she was sorry. So, so sorry. And she wanted to make it better as soon as she could. The silence between them now while she was at Silas’s was bigger and thicker than ever. Jane wanted, she needed, to reach across the gap and bring Hazel back close. Explain to her what she now knew. She wanted, she needed, to make it better. For herself and Hazel, and the rest of the family, all the same.
Just then, her phone rang.
“Hello?” Jane responded, nearly out of breath with relief.
“Mom,” Hazel said but didn’t say it warmly.
“Hello?” Jane asked again, with more urgency this time. She wanted to hear from her daughter so, so badly.
“I’m staying here,” her daughter said into the phone and then hung up.
Before Jane could say anything else, there was an empty dial tone on the other side of the phone.
She felt an impulse to call Hazel right back; at the same time she felt a compulsion to write in her book. She thought of the words Susie had written about how she felt like she was losing Eve. And Jane had felt the same. The very same. She felt she could record and revisit the ways in which she was making a mess of things. To write it all down in a place where Hazel could one day read it when they one day might reconcile. But she needed something now. Not someday. Now. She needed Hazel to have her perfect love story. And she desperately wanted to be a part of it.
She couldn’t leave this in anyone else’s hands anymore. Not Cam’s, not Silas’s, not Hazel’s, not Susie’s. No one’s. She had to reclaim her daughter, her life, their life, for herself. No more letters. No more thinking. No more contemplating.
It was time for her to start doing.
And it was time to bring a perfect love story to everyone else. To bring everyone peace. She picked up the phone and called one of the other women in this mess of a love story. She was sorry if she made a mess of things. But she was ready to turn it around now.
She couldn’t wait a minute longer.
She stood up and decided to take action into her own hands.
Part III
Hazel in Maine
21
With the crackle of tires against asphalt, the bus rolled out of the parking lot. Hazel looked out the tinted windows at her mother, who was becoming a smaller and smaller form in the distance, until at once she disappeared. Hazel felt a great ball of heat gathering behind her ribs and press up into her throat.
This was a feeling she did not recognize. Was it satisfaction or sadness? The vitriol of going or the guilt of leaving? The sense that she was transforming while everyone she knew remained the same?
With each rotation of the wheels of the bus, Hazel felt the increasing separation from everything she used to be and everywhere she used to go and everything she used to think. Hazel was, in the slightest increments, becoming distanced from the person she had been, while by those same slight increments becoming someone new.
She looked over at Eve, who had already covered her ears with her bright pink headphones and closed her eyes. The vibration of the seats and the hum of the engine had already put her to sleep. As Hazel looked at Eve, that ball of heat beneath her ribs began to cool. It was almost unbelievable that her life could have led her to this moment—to this seat on this bus next to Eve Warrington. Her sister.