A novel about mothers and daughters, about taking chances, about exploding secrets and testing the boundaries of family
During a certain summer in Maine, two young women, each unaware of the other, meet a charismatic man at a craft fair, become infatuated and have a brief affair with him, then move on. For Jane it is a way to obliterate the pain of a recent loss in pure raw passion and thus redirect her life. For Susie it is a fling that will give her troubled marriage a way forward.
Now, almost sixteen years later, the family lives these two women have subsequently created for themselves are suddenly upended when their teenage daughters meet as strangers on social media. The girls concoct a plan to spend the summer in Maine with the man who is their biological father. Their determination puts them on a collision course with their mothers, who must finally meet and acknowledge their shared past and then join forces as they risk losing their only daughters to a man they barely know.
Praise for Rosie Colored Glasses
“Without so much as dipping a toe into cliche territory, Wolfson’s heady descriptions of love will curl into readers’ souls. With a simplistic elegance to her prose, the author delivers a treasure of a read.”
—The Washington Post
“Takes the reader into the heart...[and] demonstrates the power and limitations of love and the ability of family to heal.”
—Library Journal
“Behind the beautiful language, the idea that children see their parents through rose-colored glasses will resonate with readers beyond the last page.”
—Booklist
“Tender and bright, a compelling novel of a young girl (who completely owned my heart) and the mother she adores and fears and needs so badly.”
—Luanne Rice, New York Times bestselling author
“Brianna Wolfson has done a marvelous thing. I followed Willow with a hopeful, breaking heart, reminded how all of us are different in so many ways, and yet so absolutely deserving of love.”
—Nancy Thayer, New York Times bestselling author
“A bittersweet, tender exploration of many kinds of love. This compelling novel, with unpredictable turns, reveals what love can save—and what it can’t.”
—Helen Klein Ross, award-winning author of What Was Mine
“Sparkling, insightful and honest, the Thorpe family’s powerful story will stay in my thoughts for a long time.”
—Phaedra Patrick, author of The Library of Lost and Found
“What a wonderful, emotional ride! It’s like the Ordinary People for the 21st century.... Such an achievement!”
—Robyn Carr, #1 New York Times bestselling author
Also by Brianna Wolfson
Rosie Colored Glasses
That Summer in Maine
Brianna Wolfson
For Lana, Michael, Trevor and Kate.
Home wouldn’t have been home without you.
Contents
Prologue
Part I Home
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Part II Jane at Home
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Part III Hazel in Maine
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Part IV Homecoming
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
That Summer in Maine
Questions for Discussion
A Conversation with Brianna Wolfson
PROLOGUE
ONE YEAR AGO
All mothers wish a perfect love story upon their daughters. The wish that their daughters will grow up wrapped in love and that one day they will go on to wrap others in love. They wish for their love to be simple and pure and uncomplicated.
As a single mother, Jane did everything she could to uphold that perfect love for her daughter, Hazel. At least, she’d tried.
Today, Jane gave birth to twin boys with a man she had recently fallen in love with and married. In the postbirthing haze, Jane could taste the salt on her upper lip where her sweat was now dried. The fiery heat deep within her body was starting to subside and her spine still felt sore and twisted. Jane held one twin against her bare chest while the other was tucked into the crease of her husband Cam’s arm. Jane motioned for him to come closer and embrace the start of their family. “I love you,” she said and kissed him and then the two babies gently. She looked up to see if she could find her daughter. The back of Hazel’s shoulder was just visible in the doorway as she stood cross-armed, looking away from the room. Hazel, at fourteen years old, looked both young and old for her age all at once standing there.
“Come in, honey, and meet your brothers,” Jane said gently.
Hazel turned around slowly, her black hair like a veil in front of her eyes. She shuffled toward her mother without lifting her feet and leaned over her bed. Jane brought her free arm up toward Hazel’s face and tucked her daughter’s hair behind her ear, revealing her eyes of different colors. Her lashes were damp, and her eyes—one green and one hazel—were clear and dewy. A mother can always tell when her child has been crying. Jane leaned over to kiss Hazel’s cheek, but her sudden movement startled her newborn, who let out a brief wail that ended when Jane returned her body to its original position.
Hazel’s shoulders fell. Hazel wanted that kiss. Perhaps needed it.
“Meet your brother Griffin,” Jane whispered to Hazel, tilting her arm ever so slightly so that her daughter could see her brother’s face. “And that’s Trevor over there.” Cam took a few steps toward Hazel and smiled with pride.
“I thought we were going to name him August,” Hazel challenged.
Jane chuckled.
“Last-minute change. Give them both a big kiss, big sis.”
Hazel rolled her eyes and placed her lips on each baby and then huffed out of the room without another word. To Jane, her family finally felt full. But she could tell that for Hazel, something had emptied.
In her happiness of sharing this moment with Cam and welcoming her two new healthy babies, Jane had neglected to consider the impact on Hazel’s perfect love story. Cam came over and kissed her forehead.
“I love this family,” he said.
Jane let that sink in. Deep. And then wondered if he was including Hazel in his definition of family. And couldn’t deny a shift within her own heart. It had expanded and made room for two more babies. And these two new sons deserved their own pure, simple, uncomplicated love story. And Jane would give it to them wholeheartedly. She felt resolute and focused about it.
Indeed, she forgot to wonder what it would mean for Hazel’s happiness. For her sense of family and her sense of self.
PART I
Home
1
HAZEL
Hazel Box had been feeling self-conscious abo
ut the blackness of her hair lately. She had long gotten over having a different last name than her mom. She had even come to enjoy telling the tale about how her hazel eye came from her mother and her green eye came from her father, whoever he was, wherever he was. But the blackness of her hair was really beginning to get to her now. Every other member of her family was blond. The blond of Marilyn Monroe and stock photos of Midwestern families. The blond that could look white depending on how the light hit it.
Lately, sitting down at the dinner table had become an exercise in holding back tears.
“Food’s ready, honey!” her mother shouted from the other room.
Hazel flinched. She considered staying locked in her room and declaring she had too much homework, but her tummy grumbled. So she dragged her feet along the hallway and into the kitchen. She was disappointed to see Cam there, though she should expect it by now. Cam always tried to be home from work early enough to share these moments with the family. Still, Hazel couldn’t help but wish and wish there was a single day, any day, he’d have to work late and miss dinner.
As soon as Hazel slid onto her chair and tucked her knees under the table, all those gurgling feelings of disgust and resentment and faraway-ness began stirring around in her belly again.
“How was school?” Cam asked Hazel without looking her way as he finished setting the table. Hazel felt like she was too old to be getting this question but sensed that it was a thing Cam thought fathers were supposed to ask their children. A thing he was practicing for when the twins grew up.
“Fine,” Hazel responded, barely audibly.
Cam continued to shuffle plates and cups and forks and knives from their cabinets and drawers onto the table. Hazel paused. There was an effortless rhythm to Cam’s sound in the kitchen. It was different than the syncopated clanking that used to ensue—dish knocking against dish, cabinets opening and closing precariously.
Hazel tried to recall when Cam started moving so naturally through space. When his movements became so automatic, rehearsed. Cam pulled a glass out of the cabinet, filled it up with water from the sink and leaned against the countertop as he took a slow, casual drink. There was so much comfort there, she thought. Like that glass, that water, that countertop was his. Like this space was his. Like this whole home was his.
Her thoughts were interrupted by the twins chattering in food-stained T-shirts despite their bibs. Her mother ran over to give all of her children kisses. Hazel was last.
As far as Hazel was concerned, the day her mother married Cam was the day she lost a mother to a wife. And the day the twins were born was the same day she had become an orphan. It was only a year ago but it felt like so, so much longer. The day a family was created in her own home without any regard for the family that had already been living there. The family of Hazel and Jane. Mother and daughter. Just the two of them. Watching all the thin, delicate blond locks swaying as they reached for a plate or turned their heads to the side was only a reminder of the new family that existed that she was no longer a part of.
Cam sat down and carefully scooped a large spoonful of pasta onto Jane’s plate and then his own and smiled through closed lips. Jane rubbed Cam’s shoulder tenderly as he reached for the next bowl, and Hazel’s tummy did another flip.
Jane divided her pasta into small bits with her fingers and placed the pasta in front of the twins on each of their high chair trays. Griffin pinched his index finger and thumb precariously around one and brought it to his mouth. “Mmm,” he said, looking back at his mother for approval. Trevor smiled and then reached over into Griffin’s pile of pasta, eager for his own slice of the attention.
“Mmm,” he said, too, slightly louder than Griffin had.
Hazel was grateful that something had finally interrupted the awkward silence at the table.
Hazel served herself a spoonful of pasta and looked over at Cam.
“So-o-o, how was everyone’s day?” Cam said transparently as he tried to start some kind of conversation. His eyebrows were raised like two exclamation marks on his forehead.
Hazel considered rolling her eyes but instead turned her gaze down toward her plate and listlessly stirred her food with her fork. She was more nauseous than she was hungry now.
“Great, darling,” Jane responded after just a bit too long. “Just great.” She shoved a forkful of pasta into her mouth and began chewing as if that were the thing stopping her from extending her response.
Still, Cam smiled broadly as if someone had just told him something significant. Hazel rolled her eyes as discreetly as she could. She didn’t trust people that were so easily charmed.
Hazel looked toward her mother and wondered if she, too, had been charmed by absolutely nothing. And it appeared she was. She had her eyes locked on her husband and both her feet resting casually on his chair. What could she possibly be so impressed by?
Hazel rested her fork down on the table and continued to stare her mother’s way, wondering if she would look back. Willing her to look back.
And finally her mother did, as if snapping out of a trance.
“And how was your day, Hazel?” her mother asked sweetly.
Hazel was about to utter her usual response, “Terrible,” but then the twins started their nightly performance.
Griffin dropped a piece of pasta from his high chair and watched intently as it fell to the floor. He stared down at the falling thing, first quietly, curiously, at its failure to return. And then his legs began to squirm as he became increasingly agitated that the pasta remained on the floor. Ignoring the remaining dozen bits of pasta on the table, Griffin began to cry. At this point, Trevor had become enraptured by the scene. Cam sprang into motion and restored the single piece of pasta to its position among the other pieces of pasta. The crying stopped, and Cam assumed his position back in his chair.
Hazel rolled her eyes at how easy it was for Griffin to get even the tiniest attention he wanted. And then she rolled her eyes again as Griffin and Trevor each began to curl his tiny, still-glitchy fingers around another piece of pasta and threw it down to the floor with a gummy smile. The excitement of throwing the pasta was as delightful to them as the consequences were alarming. The crying began again. This time doubled. First Griffin and then Trevor wailed in his high chair.
No matter how many times Hazel had observed this scene, it always surprised her that the response to this chain of events was to start it up once again. As soon as the object—this time a piece of pasta, other times a pacifier or a toy—was returned to their hands, they would drop it once more. They would fill with joy as they watched the object fall and then become devastated when it stayed there. With each repetition, neither delight of the thing falling nor the distress of the thing remaining on the floor ever lessened. Surely they would have realized by now that their heartbreak could be avoided. But they never seemed to. As Cam bent over and picked up the pasta, returned it to the table for the second time, and both boys became elated once more, it occurred to Hazel that she had been misinterpreting the scene the whole time.
Their distress, suffering, their tears, created magic for them. It caused the chaos that then allowed order to be restored. It enabled the delight in dropping those things to become possible again. It proved their father to be a healing force in this world.
This was something she wished she understood, and felt, about Cam, too.
Suddenly, the whole idea of being at the dinner table seemed too pathetic to participate in; the act of raising a fork to your mouth and saying “mmm” even before the taste hit your lips. Or passing a pitcher filled with cold water extravagantly decorated with sliced lemons. Or placing a small bit of each part of the meal in front of the twins, only to have them slap their palms into it or throw it onto the floor. It was all so elaborate, so superficially charming, but ultimately meaningless. A ceremony with no purpose. It was as if they were following the script written about the meal of t
he loveliest, happiest family. But Hazel felt a gurgling refusal to participate in the show of it all.
“I have some homework to finish,” Hazel lied. “Is it okay if I go back to my room?”
Hazel’s mom reached her arms across the table and opened her palms. And Hazel put her hands in her mother’s, leaving her fingers and wrists limp. Her mother gave them a tight, tight squeeze and then brought Hazel’s hands to her lips and kissed them loudly.
Trevor and Griffin pressed their own tiny palms, messy from dinner, to their lips and smacked their lips clumsily together in a kissing motion.
“Mwa, mwa,” they said.
“You’ve trained them well, Mom,” Hazel said, smirking and rolling her eyes.
Jane relinquished Hazel’s hands.
“My children will never be able to give me too many kisses.”
Hazel slid her chair out from under the table and walked back to her room. She shut her bedroom door behind her and pressed her back up against it as if she had been chased in there. Her chest was rising and falling and she noticed that her hands had curled up into tight fists.
She slid her back down the door, the grooves in it providing a comforting massage, until she was seated on the carpet. She closed her eyes and tried to escape to somewhere else. Somewhere she felt part of something again. And just as she began to dream, her mother’s voice rang through the air.
“Hazel, honey. Give the twins a bath, won’t you?”
Hazel dropped her chin into her chest and left a brief moment of silence hanging in the air. Just long enough to let the slightest tension build.
“Of course, Mother,” Hazel shouted back, too emphatically through clenched teeth, and then dragged her legs along the same hallway she had just walked down and turned into the living room.
Hazel continued to the kitchen and scooped each twin up into her arms.
“Okay, you two, bath time.”
Hazel rested Griffin and then Trevor down onto the bath mat and turned the faucet to the right. Water poured out, first cold and soon just the right amount of warm. The twins chattered in near unison at the sound of rushing water.
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