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 about 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.