She wondered who this woman was. And who she was to Silas. The photo was intimate, and surely taken without fair warning to its subject during an intimate moment somewhere, sometime.
Hazel wanted to know more about this woman, her story, her relation to Silas. She couldn’t remove the picture from the wall without tearing it, so she lifted it up to check the back for any hints of anything. Any annotations or scribbles. But there was nothing but a neon orange date—April 11, 1995—in blocky numbers like those on a digital clock.
Lifting the photo revealed two other images. Two sonograms. Each was taped to the wall haphazardly, strips of silver duct tape cutting across the top of each in no particular angle. Hazel wondered why one would preserve something on a wall, without more careful attention to how it was displayed. But alas, there they were. Two eerily grainy images of babies in their wombs.
Hazel pulled them off the wall instinctively and held them next to each other. She felt overcome with a sense of knowing and connection. Without thinking much about it, Hazel assumed that these two images were of Hazel and Eve in the womb. She knew it so deeply in her bones. On the basis of no evidence at all, she felt so sure of it. Who else could they have been? Two teeny-tiny little girls growing big enough and strong enough. Two teeny-tiny little girls getting ready to join the world.
Hazel could feel Silas’s desire for fatherhood. His love for his girls, even though he wouldn’t meet them.
She turned the sonograms over looking for evidence but there was nothing. Just blank images. No dates. No names. No inscriptions. No nothing.
She imagined Silas, her father, proudly taping these two images next to one another. She imagined him placing two girls permanently side by side on the wall of his workshop, knowing that they would not be side by side in their own lives.
She imagined Silas peeking at these photos every day when he came to work on his furniture. She imagined him thinking about his two girls, now no longer little, as he worked. Hazel imagined her father thinking about his girls growing up and wondering whether they’d inherited his hair or his eyes or his comfort with tools. She imagined him wondering whether they would come together in any place or at any time that wasn’t on this wall.
Hazel imagined how he must have felt to have his girls here by his lake. In his home.
For the first time, Hazel felt confident that Silas may have wanted this summer to come. Yes, she thought and may have even murmured out loud. He probably longed for it. She was sure of it now, holding those sonograms in her hand.
Hazel held the images against her heart. She was too distracted by her fantasy of Silas to notice the faintly printed date in the corner of one image. It would have revealed her answer, even if she didn’t want it revealed. But she was too distracted by her fantasy to seek reality.
Hazel just returned them to their position on the wall and left the workshop with a buzz in her veins.
She had everything she was looking for in coming up to Grandor. She had everything she needed. She could make this her home. She would make this her home.
Hazel pulled her phone out of her pocket and dialed her mother’s number. The phone crackled as it rang, given the spotty cell service. Her heart was still racing from what she had found. The phone rang choppily again. Hazel strode toward the house as she held the phone at her ear.
“Hello?” her mother’s voice rang through.
“Mom,” Hazel said firmly.
“Hello?” her mother said again, presumably unable to hear her.
Hazel was close to the house now and the smell of dinner wafted toward her nose. This was it, Hazel thought to herself. The place where all of her meals would happen.
“I’m staying here,” Hazel said into the phone and then hung up.
Hazel ran into the house and straight toward her seat at the dinner table. She was still swollen with imagined love.
Part IV
Homecoming
32
HAZEL
Hazel’s insides were still rushing and pulsing and surging and glowing with her discovery in the workshop earlier in the day and her plans for a new life. A new family. A new happiness.
She had stayed at the lake...
She slipped her knees under the table and pulled her chair in tight. Silas walked over with a big bowl of pasta mixed with coarsely chopped vegetables scattered throughout and placed it at the center of the table. Hazel watched as his strong thick fingers set the bowl down. She watched as a single black curl slipped out from behind his ear and across his forehead. As Silas tucked his rogue lock back behind his ear with the side of his finger, Hazel caught his green, emerald eye in hers. She felt her cheeks get hot as she was met with the full force of his smoky, intense eyes. She smiled back warmly. Lovingly. Her father.
Silas returned her smile with a quick twitch of the eyebrow and returned to the refrigerator to finish putting together the meal. Hazel watched as his big heavy boots clopped against the hardwood floor. The old planks of wood surrendered just the slightest bit to Silas’s weight as he crossed over them. She felt another rush of heat fill her cheeks. How these floors must have known the feeling of his feet. How Silas must have known the give of the floor. This was his home. And soon to be her home, too. Hazel closed her eyes and slowly took in the scent of the meal. It was rich and full of love. She presumed it now more than she ever had before.
When she opened her eyes, Eve was already seated in the chair across from her. Her arms were crossed and her legs were pretzeled between the chair and the edge of the table.
“Hey,” Hazel said, trying not to let too much of her joy spill out with a single breath.
Eve rolled her eyes and tilted her head back. The messy pile of her hair flopped from one side of her head to the other. Hazel glided over the response and smiled back at her. Surely this was a thing that all sisters did.
Silas returned to the table with a plate of dark brown, perfectly sliced steak. The juice from the meat pooled below it and sloshed a bit as Silas set it onto the table. He took a seat and unlatched the cap from his beer. A gentle whoosh emerged from the bottle before Silas tilted his head backward and poured the beer into his mouth. Hazel watched the black stubble of sprouting hair on his neck undulate as the liquid moved down his throat. He slammed the bottle down against the table, perhaps a little too firmly.
“Dig in,” Silas said, without looking up at either of the girls. He lifted the plate of steak, served himself three pieces and returned the bowl to its place in the middle of the table.
By now, only Eve hadn’t spoken. Her expression had grown sourer and sourer since Hazel sat down. Eve was making her annoyance known by one indiscreet groan after another. By folding her arms and shaking her head at every move. But it wasn’t like Eve to stay quiet for long.
“I decided to become a vegetarian,” Eve said, head still dangling unnaturally to one side as gravity tugged on the bun.