That Summer in Maine

by Brianna Wolfson

  As you lay your head on your father’s shoulder and sank into his arms even further, I thought I heard you whisper that you hated him.

  I thought the incident was over after you stormed into your room but you came flying back out within a few minutes. You just yelled and yelled, asking for his name.

  And no lies. So I told you. And I told you with shame in my voice that it was Silas Box.

  I couldn’t say I regretted everything because it brought you to me. But I’m so sorry I caused you any pain, my love. So, so sorry.

  I later learned that immediately after you slammed your bedroom door, you opened your computer and you found your biological father. I guess it wasn’t too hard to find him. You said that his website just popped right up.

  It started off a whole new journey of you meeting him up in Grandor, where the whole thing happened.

  I’m sorry if it made a mess of things,

  Mom.

  * * *

  And with that, Jane wrote:

  Letter 7

  Jane

  Dear Hazel,

  There wasn’t ever a time in your life that you didn’t know about your father. About Silas.

  I made sure of that when I saw that green eye of yours for the first time and gave you his last name. I wanted you to know about him because I wanted you to know yourself and your story. It was never any secret.

  But now I realize that knowing about him isn’t the same as knowing him.

  I suppose I expected you to ask more questions as you got older. Things about what your father looked like, or sounded like, or acted like. The things he loved and the things he hated. I expected you to wonder if the things you were seeing or feeling or thinking came from him. But you never did.

  I guess I assumed that you never got curious. That you never would get curious.

  In hindsight, I think part of feeling this way was knowing your father. I knew he would not be a good husband at that time. I knew he would not be a good father at that time. On the surface he was too independent, too selfish. But it was the thing that was deeper down that would have really stopped him from being good to us. It was the fact that he was still reeling from losing the other loves of his life. That was the woman and that was the daughter he would have been perfect for. Those were the people he needed to be perfect for.

  And I inadvertently assumed that if I wanted to have you without him, live my life without him, that you would, too. I should have known that questions about him rested latent within you. I shouldn’t have been surprised when that message from Eve activated everything. In hindsight, it was silly to think this but I really thought I might be enough for you.

  Still, when I saw your eyes light up in front of that computer screen, I was in shock at how quickly, how effortlessly, how simply you gave yourself away to your father. And Eve.

  It was in that moment that I realized just how slow I had been to believe that you would need to explore, really explore, this side of you.

  Until this moment, I thought of you as an extension of me. When I felt warm and loving and happy with you, I felt warm and loving and happy with myself. When I felt anxious and angry and annoyed with you, I felt anxious and angry and annoyed with myself. When I talked to you, I felt I was talking to myself.

  It’s different with the twins. With them, I think about the parts of them that come from Cam. And I love those parts of them. Without your father in our lives, I supposed I felt like you were all mine. But of course you are not. And Silas’s coming into your life forced me to remember that.

  If I am being honest, I didn’t know whether to mourn or embrace that truth. To stop you in your tracks or to push you toward it.

  I was scared. I’m still scared.

  I didn’t know whether to allow you to go on this journey and learn more about yourself, and in doing so, certainly learn that you were more like him and less like me. Or scarier yet, that you are simply your own person. Not just a mix of me and your father.

  As we sat in front of that computer, I felt an overwhelming urge to keep you close. To ask you to stay. To demand that you do. I know it was within my ability as a mother to make that so.

  But I knew deep down that I had to let you go. I knew I had to let you explore that part of yourself.

  I barely thought of Silas or Eve or Cam or your brothers and to some extent even myself. I was mostly just thinking of you. Your story. Your journey to womanhood. Your journey to knowing who you are and where you came from.

  I’m sorry if I made a mess of things,

  Mom.

  19

  Jane sat on the couch with Susie’s book of letters next to her and her phone between her fingers as she waited for it to light up with a text from Hazel. She was running out of Susie’s letters to read, and there was an emptiness around her she hadn’t felt before. She stared at the blank, dark surface of the phone. She willed it to move. To buzz. To connect her with Hazel.

  Nothing.

  Jane looked up to the ceiling to distract herself. She had sent Cam and the boys out for a walk so she could get some space with her own thoughts.

  Still no buzz.

  Jane considered whether she may have had the settings mixed up and opened the phone herself to check on her texts.

  Even though she had been the one sending texts, it surprised Jane just how long, embarrassing, desperate the string of messages to Hazel was. It was a string with no responses—everything from Call your mother...now to Miss you, love you honey to How was today, send pics! They covered the full spectrum of her emotions, felt and feigned. Anything to get a response, but still nothing.

  Jane sat with the phone in her lap for a while longer. The silence of the room and the blankness of the phone weighed heavy on her.

  She settled on another Hi, honey. Thinking of you and hit the send button and decided to distract herself while she waited for, hoped for, the answer to come in.

  She lifted herself from the couch and began pacing across the carpet, her cell phone still tight in her grip in case Hazel was going to reply.

  She turned back to Susie’s book for what she knew was the final letter as she waited for the reply.

  Letter 8

  Deciding to let you go

  Susie

  Dear Eve,

  I’m sure you felt it, too. Our house was quiet in the days after you told your father and me that you wanted to meet Silas.

  I think we all felt a longing for simpler times. But then I remembered that even if those times felt simple, they were also shrouded in a lie. A lie that your father and I had allowed to persist. But it was all out in the open now and we could never go back.

  At first I felt a sadness, but then I felt a freedom. A freedom from the lies. A freedom to live in truth. A freedom to love each other with everything laid bare on the table.

  I had managed to hang on to your father by what sometimes felt like only a thread. I wondered if I would be so lucky with you. There’s a fire, a fierceness, in you that your father (your real father, not the one whose genes you have) doesn’t possess. It scared me. But I knew that holding you close, holding you back, would only make it worse. That you would never forgive me if you never got to know this side of you.

  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.

  Hazel thought back to all those days and nights at home in New York. All those times observing Cam and her mother steal away. All those moments changing, and bathing, and dressing the twins and playing with them. All those evenings alone in her bedroom, with a phone that never lit up with a friend calling. She longed for friends but never made any that would stick around. She longed for attention from teachers but didn’t get the grades to earn it. She longed for a pat on the back from sports coaches but didn’t have the athleticism to deserve it. Looking back on it, she thought everything seemed so small, so insignificant, compared to what was about to happen now.

  Hazel considered how each of those tiny, meaningless, insignificant moments stacked on top of one another and created a tower. A tower high enough to free-fall off and land right where everything started. Where she could construct from nothing a brand-new tower of experiences. A brand-new life.

  This was a chance at a new life that was all her own. This was freedom.

  The roads became narrower, choppier and more serpentine as the ride continued. First there were four lanes, and then two, and then just one. The buildings on the side of the road became shorter and the parking lots became emptier. The neon signs dulled into painted ones. And soon there were no buildings at all. Just long stretches of grass and trees. The roads unfurling with a monotony, only revealing the sliver that lay immediately ahead. Skies echoed blue for miles, and then turned to gold as the sun slipped behind the horizon. A sense of calm had Hazel entranced, until she heard the familiar pop of gravel under the tires as the bus slowed to a stop.

  Eve shook herself awake and barely took a moment to rub her eyes before pressing her face into the window.

  “That’s our dad!” Eve announced. “Isn’t he kind of hot?”

  Hazel giggled a
nd blushed a little and slapped Eve playfully on the arm. “Ew, that’s seriously gross.”

  Ignoring the retort, Eve climbed over Hazel’s legs, scooped up her bags and rushed down the aisle. Hazel followed, breathing deeply to slow her heart down.

  Eve, and then Hazel, stepped off the bus.

  The world suddenly felt so muted and still. It was as if time had stopped entirely.

  And then a playful, gravelly voice broke the silence. “Hey,” Silas said and lifted his sunglasses from his eyes to look down at Hazel and Eve in front of him. He reached out with both hands and rubbed his palms brashly, paternally, on top of their heads, as if they were little boys that had just hit their first home runs.

  Eve winced and Hazel soaked it up, keeping her eyes open the entire time as her black hair swished back and forth in front of her eyes. Silas held his hands there for a moment longer than expected, eyes shifting from one face to the other.

  Hazel locked in on Silas’s eyes. They were like smooth rocks in the bottom of a sparkling lake. The centers were dark and green. Heavy and austere.

  Hazel blinked and shook her head to pull herself out of her transfixion. Her cheeks and arms and belly were all tingly. This was her father. This man, right here in front of her, was her father. This was the man who made her, her. The man who could save her from her life. She felt an overwhelming urge to wrap her arms around him and squeeze him with all her might. Before she could talk herself out of it, her body lurched forward and her arms swung around his waist with the force of fifteen years of missing someone she never knew she should miss. She tilted her head to press it onto the side of his body and closed her eyes tight. This was home.

  Silas patted Eve on the head, somewhat robotically, and then curled his arm, somewhat rigidly, around Hazel’s back. Hazel wiggled her body to fit more naturally under his arm, but there was still an awkwardness to the orientation.

  “Bah, ha!” Eve guffawed, tearing Hazel right back into reality. Her eyes sprung open and she looked over at Eve.