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