Chapter Eight
After dropping off Ash, Hazel texted her father to say she was on her way. Immediately after sending the message, though, she panicked and added, Be there by dinner.
He replied, Can you pick up a few cans of soup? Doesn’t matter what kind.
Was he seriously sending her on a grocery run after she’d driven all the way here? She made him wait a few minutes before she sent a simple K. Then, she bought a coffee and took in how different Lockett Prairie was. Entire shopping centers and manicured subdivisions where there had once been scrubby fields. A lush green golf course. A medical center, whose towers made the start of a real skyline. An AMC movie theater. The main boulevard that ran north all the way through town had been widened in places, but still the traffic was slower than ever, the sheer number of people beyond anything she remembered. It was practically a city now.
Hazel turned off her music, overwhelmed by all the new sights, a little worried she’d get herself lost. Finally, she recognized some landmarks as she reached the older part of town. Lockett Prairie High School with a new electronic marquee out front advertising the Winter Festival. The city pool. The ocean-themed Putt-Putt place where, as teenagers, her old friend, Franny Bowman, made them take the same suggestive selfies everyone else did at the clamshell hole. The old five-dollar movie theater—closed now.
She wound up in the parking lot between the library and her old elementary school. Despite the chill, a handful of kids were running around the school playground, red-cheeked and shrieking, their parents chatting on a nearby bench. The playground was smaller than she remembered. The school, too. On cold days like this, she and Franny spent recess huddled inside the log tunnel, their backs curved against opposite sides, feet propped by the other’s face. Except on Thursdays, when Hazel went to Ms. Hatcher’s office to draw trees and cats and nod that, yes, she understood her parents’ divorce wasn’t her fault.
“I have to go see Ms. Hatcher again,” she’d complain to Franny, but she secretly loved those meetings. Ms. Hatcher gave her hot chocolate in a real, adult mug, and her office had a comfortable couch, warm lamps, a closet full of art supplies. Once they got the first part out of the way, where Ms. Hatcher asked if she had any new feelings or questions about her mom leaving, they talked about other things—her friends, school, concerns about how lockers would work in junior high. Hazel felt very grown-up, talking and sipping from her mug.
It wasn’t until an upper-level college psych course that she understood what that school counselor had really been doing—talk therapy disguised as casual conversation and play. But it made an impact. Those Thursdays in Ms. Hatcher’s office inspired Hazel to develop a volunteer program pairing struggling kids with high school mentors and led her to major in psychology and pursue her PhD. She wanted to help kids. Not in clinical practice, but more broadly, through research that would inform better interventions, programs, and frameworks.
The work she’d been doing in Sheffield’s lab hadn’t turned out to be quite so life-changing. She could see the importance of their study on language development in toddlers, but she’d spent all semester mindlessly transcribing audio files. All that typing felt inconsequential, the research questions not urgent enough.
What did feel urgent was Dr. Tate’s upcoming study on children separated from their incarcerated mothers. Hazel had attended Dr. Tate’s brown bag talk and followed up during her office hours with possible research questions she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about. She’d read articles on innovative family reunification programs, even studied the protocols at the women’s prison where the study would take place. Dr. Tate asked about her work with Sheffield and, after Hazel stumbled over a diplomatic answer, offered her a spot in her lab in the spring. “It may ruffle feathers,” she’d warned, “especially with him. But if it’s what you want, you have a spot with me.”
Hazel couldn’t bear another semester of transcription and Machiavellian lab politics when Dr. Tate was inviting her to do such important, hands-on research, but after busting her ass to impress Dr. Sheffield, it killed her to know he would interpret her request to switch advisors as wishy-washiness, a failure to follow through, or worse—a slap in his face. Never mind the awkwardness if he said no. She wasn’t sure she could do it.
The kids left the playground as Hazel finished her coffee. She considered how soon her father and his family would eat dinner, when she would have to make the final drive across town. A few hours yet. She wouldn’t go until she absolutely had to.
She could at least write the request to transfer, even if she wasn’t ready to send it.
Ah, there wasn’t much that was more pathetic than only facing her Sheffield problem when it delayed her from facing her father problem.
But Hazel had decided, and there was power in having a plan. She trudged into the library, found a table by the window looking out at the melancholy gray winter sky, and plugged in her laptop.
Hazel forgot her father’s strange request for soup until she was already driving past the last grocery store before his neighborhood. Honestly, she reasoned, if they needed soup so badly, they could probably pay someone to fetch it for them.
She knew next to nothing about her father’s fiancée, Val, only that she did a lot of philanthropy. What kind of philanthropy remained a mystery. So did her job, if she had one. Last year, out of curiosity, Hazel had looked up her father’s new address, and the Google Maps street view revealed a modest mansion. Her father made decent money now that he was the lead weather reporter at his station, but not that kind of money. Hazel had come to think of Val as a rich, Stepford wife type—beautiful, blonde, and Botoxed. A divorcée whose money came from some oil baron ex-husband, maybe. She’d probably met Hazel’s father at a black-tie event in Midland and been drawn in by his minor celebrity status, his camera-ready smile.
Hazel was at the gated subdivision entrance now, passing a lit sign that read Emerald Hillcrest Estates. Which had to be a joke since this whole area was naturally flat and full of brown, scrubby brush. She joined a line of cars waiting to get into the neighborhood and searched her sparse text history with her father for the gate code. But the gate wasn’t what was holding up the line. This was a whole damn procession, past the gate, down the main road, and winding from one street to the next. It snaked toward the back of the subdivision on one side and around to the front on the other. Through the line of windshields, Hazel could see that on their way into the Estates, drivers kept passing items to a security officer.
“Happy holidays,” the officer said flatly when she pulled up. “Food or clothing?”
“What?”
He bent to peer in her window. “Admission to see the Christmas lights is three cans of food or an item of winter clothing.”
Ahead, it looked like Clark Griswold had decorated every house. She had to squint to take in all the lights. “My dad lives here. Dan Elliot? It’s his fiancée’s house, actually. Val…” She trailed off, blanking on Val’s last name. “I can tell you the address.”
“Most residents just donate something when they come home at night, given…” He gestured past the gate. The lights on the eaves highlighted that the homes all had two stories and some had columns, Juliet balconies, or double front doors. Even in the dark, she couldn’t miss the extensive landscaping—young trees planted along the entry drive, lush winter florals surrounding the security booth, sprawling lawns with grass that was likely green in other seasons despite the arid soil—that all made good on the promise of the neighborhood’s name. She got the guy’s meaning. The people who lived here could stand to toss in a few cans of peas on their way back to their Estates.
“I don’t live here. My dad does.”
“If you don’t have a donation, you’ll have to pull in here and turn around.”
Seriously? She gripped her open window, wincing against the wind. “I drove for two days to get here. I’m just a grad student. I don’t even have three cans of food in my pantry right now.”
“I need to keep the line moving.”
“What if I bring you six cans next time?”
He pointed at a sign propped against the large donation bin. “It’s a food and clothing drive.”
Hazel’s fingers found her chunky, red scarf. It was her favorite. “Would you take cash?”
He crossed his arms.
She unwound the long scarf from her neck and folded it over twice before reluctantly passing it through the window.
“Happy holidays,” he said, already walking away.
Hazel was trapped in the line of cars for the next fifteen minutes before she finally reached her father’s street and parked in front of the detached three-car garage at the end of the long driveway. Then she trudged back around to the front door and knocked, aware that everyone inching by to take in the lights could see her standing out here, waiting to be let in. Or maybe in her black leggings and jacket, she looked like she was casing the place. Impatient, she pressed the doorbell.
A muffled voice called out inside, “Come in!” For the second time in as many days, she let herself into someone else’s home, feeling like an absolute intruder.
“Hello?”
“In here! Come in!” a woman called again. Something crashed to the floor around the corner. Voices overlapped with a jumble of directions—“Grab it! Stop her! Over there!” A scrambling, scratching sound, then several thumps, and another crash.
“Hazel!” Her father. “Get in here!”
Hazel dropped her bags and closed the door, breathing in the delicious aromas of baked chicken and fresh bread. The living room was spacious and tastefully maximalist with colorful patterns and plants everywhere—and a massive, toppled Christmas tree, its ornaments strewn across the tile floor. The room opened around a corner into a large kitchen, where a teenager was blocking the wide opening, half crouched, her arms wide. Beyond her, Hazel’s father held a baking pan with an entire golden-brown chicken above his head. A green leash was wrapped tightly around his legs, attached to an enormous dog.
The dog’s focus darted between the chicken, a spread of sugar cookies across the center island, an overturned basket of dinner rolls on the floor, and a white cockatoo pacing and squawking on top of the refrigerator. Every time the dog lunged, Hazel’s father teetered.
Val—she assumed this was Val—was rising from the floor, rubbing her elbow. Paw prints and streaks of mud ringed the island. A plant had been overturned, the pot cracked in half and soil scattered. It was clear the dog needed to be contained first, so Hazel took the baking pan from her dad’s hands.
He muscled the dog into a bathroom down the hall, calling over his shoulder, “Hey, kiddo. Glad you’re here.”
Val was decidedly not Stepford-looking: bronze-skinned and dark-haired, the tips dip-dyed red—a match to the teenage girl’s full head of festive, poinsettia red. Val’s jeans and knotted T-shirt were covered in muddy paw prints. She wore kitschy Christmas lightbulb earrings, a full set of silver studs outlining the shell of one ear. When she swiped her hair out of her face, Hazel spotted her engagement ring—not an enormous diamond but a modest green gem on a simple, thin band. With a self-deprecating laugh, Val said, “Not the impression I was hoping to make, but welcome, Hazel.” She approached, arms opening as if for a hug, and Hazel lifted the pan of chicken to say, I would, but my hands are full. Val took the pan with another laughing apology, then turned off the stove, where green beans were on the verge of charring in a skillet.
The teenager, presumably Val’s daughter, stretched up on her toes below the bird on the refrigerator. “It’s okay, Maddie,” she cooed. It bobbed and squawked and paced some more before finally hopping onto her crooked finger. Full of disdain, she said to Val, “I told you his dumb dog would try to eat her.”
His dog? Did she mean Hazel’s father?
“I will talk to your brother,” Val said.
Sibling bickering, then. Hazel’s shoulders eased down.
She could hear her father down the hall, running water in a tub and threatening the animal in a way that sounded amused, not angry. She’d wanted a dog growing up. She’d thought when her mom left, her father might relent on a puppy, but he’d told her he didn’t have the time or energy to be a good pet owner. He hadn’t been wrong.
The girl petted the bird gently, both of them visibly ruffled. On her way out of the kitchen, she paused to say politely to Hazel, “Hi, by the way. I like your boots.”
Val began putting cookies in Tupperware, and Hazel smoothed her palms down her thighs, willing the clammy nervousness away. She found her voice and offered to mop the floor, half expecting Val to say no, she was a guest. But Val nodded toward the closet. “That’d be great.”
And so, she went from feeling like an intruder to doing chores. Hazel got to work on the trail of mud from the back door around the kitchen island and into the living room, where the Christmas tree lay. After putting their dinner in the oven to stay warm, Val swept up the broken ornaments. Eventually, Hazel’s father took the now-clean dog to a bedroom then returned to help Val right the tree. It was artificial, and its center pole had cracked, so they disassembled it instead.
When they finally sat down to eat dinner, a boy arrived. He looked about the same age as Dr. Sheffield’s students, baby-faced but confident, on the cusp of adulthood. He wore a Lockett Prairie High marching band sweatshirt. “Sorry I’m late,” he said, breathless. “I forgot the cans. The guy at the gate was a dick.”
“Raf,” Val warned.
“You were supposed to be back an hour ago to walk your stupid dog,” the girl said. “He nearly killed Maddie.”
“Lucy,” Val said. Then she straightened. “Oh, we didn’t do introductions. Hazel, these are my kids, Rafael and Lucia. I’m Valentina, but everyone calls me Val.”
Both the kids corrected her with the nicknames she’d already called them, Raf and Lucy.
“Just Hazel,” she said. “No nickname.”
The name her father used to call her, Hazelnut, bubbled up. Was he thinking of it, too? Because of all the chaos, they hadn’t even hugged when she’d arrived, and now he was seated two chairs away. His hair was shorter, and he’d stopped dyeing it. He’d told her he was going to when she last saw him at graduation in May, self-consciously chuckling about his vanity, and new gray streaks cut through his nearly-black brown hair. He looked older, but relaxed, comfortable in his skin, in this house.
During dinner, everyone interjected and talked over each other but somehow maintained the various threads of conversation, passing side dishes around. Hazel lacked instincts for how and when to speak up herself, like entering a game of double Dutch. She worried if she did, everything would grind to a halt.
Then, like it was a standard procedure, they all pulled up calendars on their phones to discuss their schedules. Lucy had extra rehearsals for a choir concert. Raf was starting a dual credit mini-mester at Midland Community College. Val was taking cookies to a nursing home. Hazel’s father had his last day of work at the station until two days after the wedding.
“You have Christmas off? Like, off off?” Hazel asked.
He nodded, but his gaze dropped. He took great care to stab several green beans with his fork before removing them and grabbing a bite of chicken instead. Maybe he knew what she was thinking. That he’d never once taken days off during the holidays. If he had Christmas morning off, he worked Christmas Eve. Even then, an ice storm within a hundred-mile radius could pull him out into the field all day for a spaced-out string of two-minute updates, or to the station to pore over models and reports. Rather than use the single dad card, he’d left her with babysitters or, once she was old enough, alone. On Christmas.
Hazel supposed some rookie reporter got those holiday assignments now.
“That’s great,” she said, quiet.
Dinner lasted a full hour. Afterward, she felt like she’d extroverted for a whole day, so when Val suggested they help her take her things to her room, she sagged a little at the impending relief of being alone.
The guest room was anything but the HGTV-neutral, bland one she expected. Opposite the door was an enormous photo print of a foggy, tree-dense mountainside. The wall color was moody, dark teal, which should have made the space feel small but somehow had the opposite effect, like a bottomless well. The L-shaped room featured a nook with a window seat and leafy plants. Her eyes flitted from one detail to the next, unable to take it all in at once—a vintage library catalog in the corner, a white desk topped with a set of mint-colored hardback reference books, eight framed illustrations evoking inkblot tests but with vibrant colors and textures, a bright yellow typewriter. The same maximalist aesthetic as the rest of the house, but moodier and somehow exactly her taste.
Then, she saw the framed photo of herself at about ten, doing her best impression of a French sophisticate, her hair tucked under a forest-green beret so it looked cropped, a pale pink scarf knotted at her throat, pencil propped between her fingers like a long cigarette. She cringed at the thought of anyone seeing, let alone framing, this photo. Wasn’t this a guest room?
“We should let you get settled,” Val said.
Her father, who hadn’t quite made it all the way into the room, drummed his fingers on the doorframe and stepped back to let Val squeeze out. He turned his shoulders but not his feet after his fiancée. They still hadn’t hugged. Was he waiting for Hazel to reach for him? Most fathers didn’t need their daughters to reach out first, did they?
“The room is really great,” she said.
His chin dipped in acknowledgment. “Okay. Holler if you need anything.”
Holler if she needed anything? He didn’t crack a smile or give any indication that he’d said this with irony.
He did, however, step into the room and bend to loop his arms around her. It wasn’t a tight embrace, but for the few seconds of contact, Hazel’s senses were soothed with the hard-wired, familiar scents of Carmex and his clean aftershave, the light scratch of his short hair against her cheek, and the exact way that she fit with him, always small, always safe. She brought her hands up to loosely clutch his arms until he cleared his throat and stepped back.
With a rap of his knuckle against the door, he asked, “Open or closed?”
“Closed.”