“Then I will bring them to the hospit—”
“And what if they get homesick?”
“Then I will have them—”
“What will they have for breakfast? And dinner? And lunch? Are you going to tell them stories about me? I sure hope not. And what will you do if they’re bored? And what if the girls aren’t getting along?”
The words and questions were all just slipping out of her mouth. But this was just minutiae. It wasn’t answering the big questions about what it would mean for the rest of Hazel’s life. About Hazel’s love story. And those were the questions that could not be answered yet.
Jane knew it.
Silas knew it.
“Then, I’ll... Listen, Jane. I know this is a big deal. I know it is.”
“It is a big deal. It’s a huge deal!”
“I’ll try not to fuck it up,” Silas added with a little more lightness now. Jane could feel him smiling on the other side of the line.
“You better not!” Jane said, now smiling, too, then disconnected and placed the phone facedown into her lap.
“That’s my little girl,” Jane said aloud but quietly, even though the call was ended and the room was empty. “She’s my little girl more than she’s anyone else’s.”
Jane exhaled and brought her hands to her heart and fell backward onto her bed.
She felt she knew what she needed to do, what she wanted to do, but couldn’t help the feeling of rubber-banding back to keeping her daughter close.
She called Cam into their room, and without removing her hands from her eyes or moving her body an inch, Jane said plainly, “I’m thinking of letting Hazel go to meet her biological father.”
Cam was silent. And then she felt the weight of his body sit down on the mattress next to her. His arm grazed her tummy as he placed his palm gently on her hip.
“Apparently she’s got a half sister, too, who goes to visit him in the summers. I think I know what to do, and I want to do it, but she is my baby, Cam. She belongs with me.”
Lying motionless, with her hands still on her eyes, Jane said, “I can’t just let her go.”
She then sat up abruptly and slapped her hands onto the bed. She explained the whole scenario in panicked and disjointed detail.
“This whole thing could ruin her life. It really could.” Jane could feel her hysteria begin to ooze out of her. She could feel it beginning to fill up the entire room.
“Her biological father isn’t exactly the most responsible or fatherlike, you know! He’s the one who let me do this on my own. He’s the one who didn’t call or write or help or anything. He’s a lone wolf. And he’s scarred. Really, deeply scarred in ways even I can only begin to comprehend. He’s been through a lot in his life, more than most men should go through, but the outcome is still the same. He didn’t want me and I felt so sure then that he wouldn’t want Hazel. I didn’t want to put her through discovering that. And now look what I get. He’s the beacon of parenthood in Hazel’s eyes.”
She looked straight into Cam’s eyes. They were kind eyes. Always calm. She loved that about him.
Jane opened her eyes wider and lurched forward a bit toward Cam. She wanted something from him. Something big enough to match this big moment. But still he just sat there calmly, a gentle smile across his lips.
“After all, I am her mother,” she said.
There was another brief moment of silence that Jane opened her mouth to fill, but then Cam claimed it instead.
“Honey, do you really think you are that important?”
Jane lay back, stunned.
“I am afraid you are terribly mistaken if you think you are. I haven’t been a parent as long as you have, but there is something I have always known about our children, all children. And it’s that their lives are eventually their own. You are here at the beginning, and to usher them through it from time to time, but their lives are ultimately their own.”
Jane’s shoulders lowered and her cheeks perked up and her heart opened and she listened. Really listened.
“Somehow parents convince themselves that every little thing we do, every little choice we make, every little word we say, marks our children forever. But that’s ridiculous. They are independent beings.”
Jane slid her hand onto Cam’s thigh. It was not often he was so convincing. Not often he said things so profound. But it was always a thing Jane knew he had in him. She wanted to hear more. She wanted him to say more. She gave his leg a little squeeze.
“I love our babies. And I love Hazel. And I want to do everything for them. I want to make their lives good and perfect every day with every decision we make. And I know you do, too. But those are our ideas of perfection, not theirs. Those things we do are fulfilling our desires as parents, not theirs as children. They will pursue their own perfect lives full of their own desires. Hazel is a beautiful, smart, strong, capable girl.”
Jane didn’t realize it until Cam had stopped talking, but she had been nodding her head up and down.
“She can do this, honey. And so can you.”
Jane reached her arms around Cam’s neck and pulled him close.
“She is becoming her own young woman, just like you once did.”
“Okay,” Jane said, her voice catching in her throat on her own nervousness.
“Okay,” she said again, this time with more conviction. It was for herself more than it was for Cam.
Jane pulled her body away, her arms outstretched with a hand on each of Cam’s shoulders.
“Well, fine, then,” Jane said.
It was now a question of how it was all going to work, more than it was a question of if Hazel was going at all.
7
HAZEL
Hazel was sitting quietly in her room when she heard her mother call, “Hazel?”
Hazel expected she was about to be asked to do some favor or chore involving the twins, and she skulked over toward her mother’s room. “Yeah?” she asked listlessly.
“I’ve decided, you can go to visit Silas,” her mother said matter-of-factly.
Hazel’s eyes lit up and she sprung up onto her toes and tackled her mother over onto the bed she was sitting on.
“Thank you. Thank you. Thank you,” she yelled wildly. “Thank you!”
Hazel nestled the crown of her head into the nook of her mother’s neck and slowed down to stillness. “Thank you,” she said again calmly and warmly.
Hazel’s mother sat up and looked into her eyes. Her lips curled up a bit.