That Summer in Maine

by Brianna Wolfson

  As Hazel moved her cursor to look at the final photo, a message popped up in the bottom corner of the screen that said simply Hey.

  It was curious that she was receiving a message at all, but the origin of the message was even more curious—Eve Warrington. Someone she didn’t even know.

  She clicked into Eve’s profile page to investigate.

  Eve Warrington lived in Connecticut and went to Wintor High School. She was in an open relationship with a girl named Abby Wasser, presumably her best friend. Cool. Hazel and Eve were also born just a few months apart.

  In her profile photo, Eve was seated on top of a brick wall with her arms long at her sides and head tilted to one side, sending her full, sun-kissed hair tumbling across one side of her face and over one shoulder. Her long legs were crossed in front of her. She was smiling, though not a lot. It was just enough to accentuate the pinkness of her lips. She had two bracelets on her right wrist. Hazel could tell it was the real stuff, nothing like the plastic jewelry she had. Eve was wearing a leather jacket that looked new and expensive and a shirt that was lacey and a little bit see-through at the top. The picture was taken from far away, but still Hazel could tell that Eve’s skin was clear and shining and her eyes were bold.

  Hazel clicked through the next set of photos. Everything about Eve’s life looked elegant and effortlessly curated. Her hair fell into any style with a messy grace. Her favorite style appeared to be a big sloppy bun tilted to one side. Eve was looking away from the camera in nearly every photo, which added to her cool confidence. Every picture made her look smart and just the right amount careless. Her gestures were big and daring and interesting and her limbs were long and tan. Through her loose-fitting clothes, Hazel could tell that the slope of her breasts and her butt were the perfect amount of round to contrast with the rest of her angular look. She appeared to be a person of extremes. A person without fear. It was mesmerizing for Hazel to behold.

  Next, Hazel came across a selfie of Eve. The camera was right up close to her face and the picture showed every feature big and prominent on the computer screen.

  Hazel gasped. It looked like her own face, only prettier. It looked like her own eyebrows, though fuller.

  The base of her throat suddenly felt hollow.

  The message box blinked again.

  I think we’re sisters.

  Hazel swallowed. It took effort.

  Well, half sisters.

  Hazel turned her attention back to the big photo.

  Her instinct led her to shout out. “Mom! Mo-om!” As she yelled, Hazel realized that she was out of breath. She clicked back through the photos, still panting a bit. “Mo-oo-om!”

  This time, she felt a deep sense of knowing. She knew Eve like she knew her own hands. It was intoxicating.

  Hey, Hazel responded to the message on the screen.

  She let the silence sit for a moment.

  Ha ha, yeah, it looks like it! she added nervously.

  Ha ha, yeah, Eve responded. Well, kinda looks like it.

  Hazel’s mother popped her head into the room. Her sense of urgency didn’t appear to match Hazel’s or her desperate yelps. “What, honey?” She seemed exasperated, in fact. “I was just about to go to bed,” her mother added.

  Hazel gestured for her mother to join her at the screen, and as soon as she did, her mother brought her hands to her mouth. Finally her mother’s reaction was appropriate in scale.

  Another message popped up on the screen, and Hazel’s eyes and body lit up even more.

  Our dad lives in Maine and I’m going to go visit him.

  Hazel watched her mother as she pressed her palms even harder into her mouth. The news appeared to surprise her mother as much as it surprised Hazel. She considered for a fleeting moment whether to ask her mother what she knew, but she let the feeling pass. Hazel wanted to keep this whole occurrence and all the feelings wrapped up in it to herself.

  I went for the first time last year and will be going back again this summer. Do you want to come with me?

  Hazel’s heart and body filled with a surprising longing she had never experienced before. She felt new and bold and optimistic. She felt light enough to float right out of the room.

  Definitely, Hazel replied before her mother could protest, and then tilted back in her chair and let the extraordinary possibility of her new life wash over her.

  “I have a sister,” Hazel muttered to herself.

  “I have a sister,” she said quietly again.

  She inhaled.

  “I have a sister,” she exhaled.

  Hazel was breathing this new information in. Breathing this new life in. Integrating it into her experience. Her very being.

  “I have a sister!” she shouted with so much glee and life Eve might have heard her just a few hours from Verona into Connecticut.

  4

  JANE

  Jane sat in shock next to Hazel as her daughter gave in so quickly, so effortlessly, so thoughtlessly to the possibility of going away. To another life. Another family even. At least temporarily.

  Jane had had no idea that Hazel’s biological father, Silas, had any other children. She felt stupid for not recognizing that possibility. But even if she considered that Silas could have other children, or even other girlfriends, what she failed to consider until now was that they would share some DNA. They would share flesh and blood in a way that connected one person biologically to another in the deepest of ways. In ways that could not be denied or overlooked or underestimated.

  When Jane had left Silas, that was her choice. She had disconnected and untethered herself from him. She had shut his world out and welcomed a new one: first with Hazel and then with Cam and then with the twins.

  But she knew it well from Hazel’s single green eye that Silas was in her daughter. That genes mattered. That they connected people. And that had to include this Eve person, whoever she was.

  Jane felt her breath escaping her.

  She nearly surrendered to the inevitability that blood was blood and nothing could replace that connection, but then she stopped herself. Certainly other factors were at play here. After all, Jane was blood, too.

  She thought back to all of those days and nights and nights and days alone when she soothed Hazel as a crying baby. When she fed her milk from her breast. All those times over the last fifteen years that she gave Hazel deep hugs and deep kisses and a bed to sleep in. Surely that counted for something. Surely passively sharing your DNA was not an equal trade for years and years of love and nurture and showing up every day. But maybe it was. Maybe it counted.

  Would Silas and this Eve share more with her daughter than Jane did? What else was there beyond the green eyes and brown hair? Was there temperament and personality and quirks and ways of thinking or moving that they all shared without even having spent any of that bonding time together? How would it change Hazel’s life to know these people? Would it change Jane’s own life for Hazel to know these people? Wouldn’t it ruin everything Jane had created? Or would it bring it to new life?

  How could she know? Could she know? Did she need to know? Or was this type of exploration something that young women had to do? Was this something all young people had a right to? Did she go through a similar quest when she was Hazel’s age?

  If Jane was being honest with herself, her confusion and pain wasn’t only directed at the thought of Hazel sharing that familial connection with someone Jane didn’t know. It was her own thought of not being good enough as a mother. It suddenly dawned on her just how reluctant she had been to believe that Hazel would one day become independent. But in so many ways, Hazel had already. How had Jane missed the signs?

  She suddenly was seeing her only daughter as a new person. Her own person.

  Until this moment, Jane had felt that Hazel was an extension of her. When she talked to Hazel, she felt she had been
talking to herself. When she felt warm and loving and happy with Hazel, she felt warm and loving and happy with herself. And when she felt anxious or angry or annoyed with Hazel, she felt anxious or angry or annoyed at herself. She felt all these things without realizing it.

  But now, sitting in front of this computer, seeing Hazel as someone who wanted to be anywhere else than with her, made her realize that something had changed. Hazel had become her own person with her own hopes and dreams and desires and wants and visions for her life.

  Jane didn’t know whether to mourn or embrace that truth. To stop Hazel or push her toward more.

  Even today, Jane still thought of her fifteen-year-old daughter as the six-year-old with ice cream caked across her cheeks, smiling up at Jane with a missing tooth and her unmatched eyes. Jane hadn’t acknowledged that her little girl was no longer a little girl.

  Should she allow Hazel to begin on this journey to find more of herself? Allow Hazel to discover things about herself that Jane didn’t even know? Should she enable Hazel with the freedom to see a new world? A new world that she couldn’t control? What kind of mother would her decision make her?

  Jane felt an overwhelming urge to keep Hazel closer. To ask her to stay. To tell her to stay. To bring her close into her arms and rock her and fall asleep next to her again. After all, she hadn’t even spoken to Silas in all these years.

  “Let me, uh, think about it, honey” was all she could muster. She knew it was inadequate, but she couldn’t fully put her thoughts, let alone words, together.

  “And, honey,” Jane continued through staccato breath and a swirling mind. “I’m here if you have any questions.”

  “About what?” Hazel inquired with more snark than Jane thought she deserved.

  “About your father. Who he is. Who he was.”

  “I want to find out on my own, Mom.”

  Jane turned to walk away without a response. There were times when she’d imagined how this conversation would go, and this wasn’t it.

  “Oh, wait,” Hazel jumped back in with a hint of desperation in her voice. “What’s his first name again?”

  Jane exhaled, disappointed. “It’s Silas... And it’s where you got your green eye.”

  Jane turned back around and retreated to her bedroom to collect her thoughts, but also to prevent herself from reaching her arms around Hazel’s body and never letting her go. And to stop the room from spinning. She lay down in her bed atop the sheets, interlaced her fingers and pressed her connected palms across her eyes. Just as her back sank into the mattress and her thoughts began to slow, she heard Cam turn the page of his book. He looked up.

  “What’s up, honey?” he asked sweetly.

  All of these words and feelings and ideas and reactions rushed through Jane’s mind. They ricocheted around her skull, and just when one would make it toward her mouth, another one would zip in front of it to take its place.

  The only thing that came out was “Oh, nothing.”

  “Doesn’t look like nothing,” he replied and put his hand on hers.

  “Just a headache,” Jane replied.

  She wasn’t really one for keeping secrets, but this felt like something between her and Hazel. Something for them to work through together. Just the two of them. Like the old days.

  5

  HAZEL

  It had been only a few weeks since first hearing from Eve, and the possibility of leaving was all Hazel could think about now. Her father was all she could think about. At school, at home, in her room, with the twins, at the dinner table, all of it. She couldn’t help it from oozing out of her at every moment. She thought about asking for more from her mother, but she enjoyed finally having ownership over the story of her life.

  Hazel had a sister! A sister! There was so much to learn about her. And it didn’t hurt that she looked so cool with her messy hair and thick eyeliner and perfect clothes and perfect body and all kinds of friends. And Hazel had a father! A real father! One that shared her flesh and blood and, from what she knew, at least one green eye. He would be so different from her stepfather, Cam. He would understand her. Really, really get her. He might even be just like her. This could be the family she was meant to have.

  With every spare moment, Hazel would return to Eve’s Wassup? page and click through her photos. She would inspect Eve’s face in every single one of them. Her eyes, her hair, her cheeks, her chin, her nose. There was no denying that Hazel carried some of those features, too. Hazel would stand in front of the mirror and tilt her head as Eve did in her photo. Squint her eyes as Eve did in her photo. Curl her lips like Eve did in her photo. Pop her hip out to the side like Eve did in her photo.

  And with every spare moment in between that, Hazel would search Silas’s name on the internet and click around his website. She found pictures of markets where he was standing all tall and sturdy next to his furniture. The pictures were mostly small and blurry and it was hard to discern his features. His eyes, his hair, his cheeks, his chin, his nose. She wondered what she got from him, aside from that one green eye. She thought about asking her mom if she had any more photos of her father, but Hazel also wanted to wait to see him for the first time through her own eyes. She wondered why her mother never talked about him more often. But Hazel would claim that story for herself soon enough, she hoped. She would take control of her relationship, her bond, with her father.

  Hazel thought about how she would ask Eve and Silas all sorts of questions about themselves. Favorite songs. Favorite movies. Whether they were right-or left-handed. Whether they slept on their backs or their bellies. Whether they also hated bananas but loved banana taffy. They would have weeks and weeks of getting to know each other in Maine, she hoped. And she hoped they’d find many, many, many things they shared. And sure, they all grew up in different homes with different people, but those were only things on the outside. Hazel was looking to share the things on the inside. Looking at Eve’s and Silas’s photos and trying to piece the person behind each profile together, Hazel couldn’t be sure. But she hoped. She hoped for all of it.

  These were the things she had to hold on to. To connect with. But she wanted more. She was so thirsty for more. She had had this feeling in a vague sense for quite some time. She knew there was something missing from her life. She knew there were gaps to close. An emptiness to fill. But now she had a solution. Now she had a way. And it had long full hair just like hers.

  Did you talk to your mom yet? Eve’s message popped up at the bottom of the screen.

  Hazel’s belly fluttered with the feeling that someone cared.

  Hazel typed and deleted just about a dozen responses before landing on I’m working on it.

  Okay, cool, Eve replied.

  Hazel began crafting the next response back, but before she could pick one, Eve replied again.

  My mom said you and your mom and dad should come by for dinner, if you want.

  Good idea, Hazel responded, this time without needing much thought.

  Anything she could do to layer on the requests and concessions to her mother, to increase her chances of going.

  I’ll tell you what she says, Hazel typed and ran out of the room to set it into motion.

  “Mo-ooooo-om,” Hazel yelled out and walked toward her mother. “Eve says we can all go and have dinner at their house.” She finished her sentence just as she arrived at her mother’s feet with two great stomps.

  “That’s very nice of them,” her mother replied. “Why don’t you and Eve schedule a day for us to go? It would be great to meet them before the end of the school year.”

  But this was only a small step toward the thing she really wanted. She was focused on getting to Maine and nothing else. Perhaps this was a move in the right direction, but the final outcome hadn’t been realized yet.

  Hazel didn’t even have to verbally pester her mother with the question of whether Maine was
part of the plan. Hazel had been asking hour after hour, day after day. All she had to do was look at her mother up close, right into her eyes, and her mother knew the question she wanted answered.

  “I’m thinking about it,” her mother would say.

  And Hazel would storm off and sulk.

  It happened for days until one day something in Hazel really erupted when her mother said, “I’m thinking about it.”

  “Are you serious?” Hazel challenged.

  When her mother didn’t respond, she asked again, this time louder and with more heat behind it. “I said, are you serious?”

  “I’ll think about it,” Jane replied, just as seemingly nonchalant as the first time she said it. But how could she be so casual about Hazel’s entire sense of identity? Her ticket out?

  “I’m going, Mom. I don’t care what you say.”

  “Honey, just let me think about it, okay?” Hazel detected a quiver in her mother’s voice this time and decided to pounce. She wasn’t going to let her mother ruin something else for her.

  “There’s a lot to do first,” her mother replied.

  “What are you even talking about?” Hazel wasn’t prepared to let anything come between her and her new life.

  “Look, Hazel. These people are strangers to us. They may not feel like it to you right now, but they are.”

  Hazel could tell Jane was trying to say calm, but Hazel wasn’t having any of it.

  “Well, call them, talk to them. Go visit them. I don’t care. I have to go and you have to find a way to let me, Mom.”

  Her words were coming out more desperate now, but she didn’t care.

  “You don’t want me here and you don’t want me to go! What do you want from me, Mom?!”