Our New Normal (ARC)

by Colleen Faulkner

  Books by Colleen Faulkner

  JUST LIKE OTHER DAUGHTERS

  AS CLOSE AS SISTERS

  JULIA’S DAUGHTERS

  WHAT MAKES A FAMILY

  FINDING GEORGINA

  OUR NEW NORMAL

  Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation

  Our New Normal

  Colleen Faulkner

  KENSINGTON BOOKS

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  Also by

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  1 - Liv

  2 - Hazel

  3 - Liv

  4 - Hazel

  5 - Liv

  6 - Hazel

  7 - Liv

  8 - Hazel

  9 - Liv

  10 - Hazel

  11 - Liv

  12 - Hazel

  13 - Liv

  14 - Hazel

  15 - Liv

  16 - Hazel

  17 - Liv

  18 - Hazel

  19 - Liv

  20 - Hazel

  21 - Liv

  22 - Hazel

  23 - Liv

  24 - Hazel

  25 - Liv

  26 - Hazel

  27 - Liv

  28 - Hazel

  29 - Liv

  30 - Hazel

  31 - Liv

  32 - Hazel

  33 - Liv

  34 - Hazel

  35 - Liv

  36 - Hazel

  37 - Liv

  38 - Liv

  39 - Hazel

  40 - Hazel

  41 - Liv

  42 - Liv

  OUR NEW NORMAL

  DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  119 West 40th Street

  New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2019 by Colleen Faulkner

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  Kensington and the K logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

  ISBN: 978-1-4967-1157-1

  First Kensington Electronic Edition: September 2019

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4967-1157-1

  ISBN-10: 1-4967-1157-2

  For my mother, Judith French,

  who taught me how to be a daughter,

  a wife, a mother, and a friend.

  All I am, I owe to her.

  1

  Liv

  I stand at the upstairs bathroom door, glancing down the hallway to be sure no one is coming. I tap lightly. “Hazel?” I whisper because my husband’s family’s summer cottage is old and voices seem to carry for miles. Especially bad tidings. I think every argument Oscar and I ever had in this house was overheard by at least three family members and possibly our closest neighbors, half a mile away.

  I wait, refusing to allow my mind to think of anything but what I’m making for dinner on the grill. Most of all, I don’t think of my sixteen-year-old self on the other side of this door. “Hazel?” I repeat, a little louder.

  “Mom! ” She manages to express her anger, displeasure, and disappointment in every parenting mistake I’ve ever made in her tone with that one word. The door opens, but only a crack.

  I see Hazel’s eyes. My eyes gazing back at me.

  “You look. I can’t.” Hazel pushes an object through the crack and slams the door.

  I clutch the plastic stick that my daughter has just peed on. I can’t bring myself to look at it. “Did you time it?”

  I hear her push against the door and then her voice comes from the direction of my knees. She’s sitting on the floor now, her back against the door, her knees drawn up. I know the position. Been there occasionally over the years when life seemed too overwhelming.

  “Yes. I timed it, Mom. It wouldn’t make much sense if I didn’t. Ten minutes. Ten minutes are up. Twelve, now.” She’s on the verge of tears, but she isn’t crying.

  I close my eyes for a second. I take a breath, steeling myself.

  Please, please don’t let it be positive, I pray. If it’s negative, I’ll go to church more often. I’ll donate more used clothing. I’ll adopt a stray dog, a stray jackal even. Just please don’t let it be positive.

  I open my eyes. And stare at the positive sign in the window of the pregnancy test. It’s bright blue, practically neon.

  “Mom?” says Hazel.

  “Pee on the other one,” I tell her, feeling light-headed. And angry. How could she have been so stupid—my straight-A-student daughter? “It’s a two-pack. Get the other one out of the box,” I order, no kindness or empathy in my voice. I’m pissed. And hurt. And scared to the tips of my toes.

  “I’m pregnant,” Hazel says miserably from the other side of the door. “It’s positive, isn’t it?”

  I press my hand on the door and lean against it, my cheek to the painted white wood, still clutching the pregnancy test in the other hand. “Just do it, Hazel.”

  “Mom . . .” I hear her getting to her feet. “Peeing on another stick isn’t going to make me not pregnant.”

  And she’s right.

  She hands me a second positive test eleven minutes later.

  I push my way into the bathroom, and this time it’s my turn to slam the door. “Hazel.” It comes out as an exhalation. “How the hell could you get pregnant?”

  “Do I have to explain it to you, Mom?”

  She stands in front of me barefoot, in a tank and jean shorts, hands on her narrow hips. How will those teenage girl’s hips bear the weight of a child?

  I glare at her. “You know what I mean. It’s the twenty-first century. You got 1505 on your first try on your SATs. You have my credit card.” I’m practically poking her with the two pee sticks. “I don’t even care about the sex, Hazel. No, I don’t mean that. I care. You know how I feel about teens, any teenager, having sex. I wouldn’t want your brother—”

  “I don’t think there’s any fear of that,” she quips, backing up to the sink, leaning on it with her hands behind her. She has her father’s hair, a gorgeous dark auburn. My dark-brown eyes. Her father’s freckles, but my nose.

  “You know what I mean,” I say, whisper-shouting at her. “You’re too smart not to have used birth control.”

  “Apparently not,” she deadpans.

  I stand there staring at her, clutching not one but two positive pregnancy tests in my hand. She stares back, defiant. This is how she argues with me. She gets defensive in a smart-assy way, which makes me angry. Mostly because she probably learned it from me.

  I close my eyes for a moment and exhale. “Oh, Hazel,” I whisper. My voice cracks. “I’m so sorry, sweetheart.”

  She just stands there.

  I open my eyes, drop the plastic sticks into the trash can, and walk to the sink. She slides over a couple of inches to let me get to the faucet. I pump soap into my palm and lather my hands. The smell of peaches wafts from the foaming bubbles.

  “I can’t believe I’m going to have a baby,” she murmurs. “I’m going to be a mom.”

  I turn the faucet on with the back of a sudsy hand. “Not necessarily. You have options.”

  She moves away from me as if she’s afraid I’m going to slap her. “Mom, I would never have an abortion. This is Tyler’s baby.” She cradles her abdomen as if the baby is a full-te
rm eight-pounder, not a lima bean.

  Tyler. That little jackass. I could hardly stand the sight of him before I knew he’d knocked up my daughter. He’s the epitome of a lazy, goalless, sulky teenaged boy. A one-dimensional cartoon character. I’ve always believed there was a good reason why stereotypes exist.

  I rinse my hands. “I didn’t suggest you have an abortion.” Truthfully, if she’d said she wanted one, I’m not sure how I’d respond. It doesn’t matter because that’s clearly not what she’s thinking. “How late are you?”

  When she doesn’t answer me, I say, “How many missed periods?”

  “Jeez, Mom,” she huffs. “Three.”

  “Three?” I don’t shout at her, but only because I don’t want anyone beyond these bathroom walls to hear me. Three months, that means it’s a hell of a lot bigger than a lima bean.

  “I figure I’m between thirteen and fourteen weeks by the way they count it. First day of my last period,” she adds in a whisper.

  “More than three months,” I whisper under my breath. I close my eyes for a second and then open them. “Hazel, I wasn’t suggesting you have an abortion. I was talking about adoption.”

  She stares at me as if I have just slapped her. “Give away our baby?”

  I turn off the water and reach for the white towel with a loon embroidered on the hem. A leftover from the days when my mother-in-law was still living. Six years later and we’ve still got loon towels . . . and loon throw pillows, and loon bottle openers. Oscar and his siblings affectionately call the cottage the loony bin . . . for more reasons than one.

  I lean against the sink, taking great care in drying my hands. I feel slightly nauseated. How could this happen? How could Hazel be pregnant? This wasn’t supposed to happen to her. It wasn’t supposed to happen to me.

  How could this happen now, to me?

  I moan inwardly. Of course, I know this isn’t about me, it’s about Hazel. I know it rationally. Logically. But it feels like it’s about me. Because . . . I groan. “Hazel, you should consider the possibility of putting the baby up for adoption,” I say softly. “It would be the best thing for you and the baby.”

  Now she looks as if I slapped her and her unborn child. “How could you, of all people, say such a thing?” She strides toward the door, her long legs slender and tanned. “I’m not going to put my baby up for adoption. Tyler and I are going to have this baby and get married and—”

  “Get married?” I know I should be more empathetic. Undoubtedly she’s in shock. Teenagers don’t always make the connection between sex and the possible end result. Not even smart ones. And she’s got to be scared.

  But I can’t help myself. I take the trash bag out of the can and tie up the white corners to take outside to the Dumpster, as if I can alter anything by hiding the evidence. “You’re not being realistic. You and Tyler are not getting married, Hazel. You’ve been dating him for less than a year. You . . . you’re sixteen years old.”

  “I’m going to be seventeen soon,” she corrects me.

  “You’re going into the eleventh grade,” I counter. “You can’t even drive alone until next week. You . . . you have a whole life to live before you get married. College, a job.” I open one hand, almost pleading. “What about wanting to be a physician? You’re going to make an amazing doc.” And you don’t need an albatross like Tyler around your neck. I think it, but I find enough self-control not to say it.

  “Tyler loves me.” She yanks open the bathroom door. “We’re going to have this baby and get married and, and we’ll—we’ll figure the rest out.”

  I follow her into the hall, carrying the trash bag. “I have to tell your father,” I call after her, still trying to keep my voice down.

  “I don’t care who you tell,” she flings back, making a beeline for her room.

  I stand there in the hallway, my arms at my sides, the trash bag dangling from my finger. “Hazel, honey. We need to talk about this. We need to—”

  She slams her bedroom door behind her.

  “. . . Make a plan,” I finish under my breath. And then I go downstairs to tell my husband that his sixteen-year-old daughter has a bun in the oven.

  Downstairs, I find our eighteen-year-old, Sean, sitting on the couch playing a video game on the massive TV in the family room. He’s wearing a headset with a microphone. He’s oblivious to the world around him: me, the family crisis that is bubbling up around him, and global warming. I tap his bare foot with mine. “Where’s your dad?”

  He glances at me for a split second and then his gaze is fixed on the game again. Zombies stagger across the screen, practically life-sized.

  “Your dad,” I repeat louder.

  “Outside.” He doesn’t take his eyes off the game on the ginormous TV Oscar and his brother insisted we have here at the cottage.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I see blood spatter across the screen and I wonder for the millionth time if I should have limited Sean’s video game time when he was younger. Would he have more friends? Be less awkward in social situations? Would he have had his first date yet? But it’s kind of late to worry about it now, isn’t it? And he is headed to college to pursue a bachelor of science degree in interactive media and game development. It took me a while to learn how to say that. I didn’t even know such a thing existed until he came home from school last year telling me he wanted to design video games for a living.

  I leave him to his zombies and go out the back door onto the deck where I drop the trash bag into the Dumpster on the side of the house. If only destroying the evidence would destroy the reality of the situation.

  I gaze out at the breathtaking beauty of my surroundings: blue sky, blue-green water, bright warm sun. The kind of beauty that you feel in your chest.

  The house was built on a bluff overlooking a cove, one of many in mid-coast Maine. Oscar’s grandfather built the house, raised his children here. A lobster fisherman turned merchant. Eventually they moved to a bigger house, inland, one that wasn’t so cold in the winter, but the family kept the property as a summer place and a reminder of their past. Now Oscar and his brother and sister share it. We’re all assigned different weeks and weekends in the summer. This was one of our weekends, but we basically have an open-house policy with first come, first serve on beds. Oscar’s sister and her family were supposed to be coming tonight, but they canceled at the last minute this morning, which turns out could be a good thing, considering the calamity at hand.

  I walk across the deck, taking in the beauty of the sky and the cove below, water so blue it hurts my eyes. I spot my big bear of a husband down the grass slope in one of the colored Adirondack chairs we had all given each other one Christmas. He’s sitting in his red chair, which he always sits in, even when no one else is here. Which I think is sweet. He’s reading. It’s his favorite thing to do when we come to the cottage.

  I walk slowly across the lawn, a hundred thoughts bombarding me at once. Hazel is going to have a baby. My baby is going to have a baby. And what is she going to do? What are we going to do?

  What am I going to do? Again, I fully realize that this is not about me, but right now it feels a little bit like it is. Because for once, just once, I want something in our family to be about me. These next few months, they were supposed to be about me.

  I officially begin my job in two weeks. My first contract for my newly formed business. The project I’ve been dreaming of for years. Literally my dream job. I’m finally going to be a part of the world again, after years of breast-feeding and diapers and toddler playdates and volunteering at elementary school book sales and the junior prom. Which my son did not attend because he chickened out asking “this girl he works with” at the store where he sells TVs and cell phone cases.

  I haven’t worked in almost sixteen years. After Hazel was born, my design job in Portland got to be too much. Even though they let me work mostly at home, juggling my job, and the house, and the kids. Even the occasional commute was too long; child care was too complic
ated. And Oscar’s job was shift work with ten- and twelve-hour days. It was too crazy trying to work around his schedule and mine, so at Oscar’s insistence, I became a stay-at-home mom. I hadn’t liked my job all that much, but I found that I missed it. I missed getting dressed for work the one day a week, even if it was in jeans and my “good” Blund-stone boots. I missed talking to adults about adult things. Oscar and I talked about me going back to work when Sean started kindergarten, but by then Oscar decided he liked the energy in the emergency department at the local hospital and I realized pretty quickly that there was no way he could work those crazy hours and care for the children. So . . . I stayed home and made peanut-butter-and-honey sandwiches.

  I halt a few feet behind Oscar and just stand there for a minute trying to find my balance, emotionally.

  His curly auburn hair is thinning but he’s in denial. When he asks me if it’s thinner and I tell him maybe a little, he argues it isn’t. He spends a lot of time in front of the mirror combing his hair in one direction and the other, trying to camouflage the area where you see skin.

  I’ve been telling him for two years, since he started going bald, that I don’t care if his thick head of hair isn’t so thick anymore or if his hairline is receding. If he can accept me with my little wrinkles around my mouth, my thickening middle, I can accept his receding hairline. He argues that I don’t understand because he’s older than I am. By five years, though we graduated at the same time from the University of Maine, because it took him a little while to “find himself.”

  I look over my shoulder at the house, sensing someone’s watching me. I spot Hazel in her window. She’s waiting to see if her father spontaneously combusts when I tell him. She’s daddy’s little girl and she’s right if she thinks he’s going to be upset that she’s been having sex. Oscar isn’t a prude. He knows what teenagers do; he knows what he did as a teenager with Ally Kemp in her grandmother’s basement. He just isn’t going to like having his own daughter’s sexuality thrown in his face.