Wishful Thinking (5 page)

“Um, sure.” Hazel tried to answer, but she hadn’t said anything in a while and the words got stuck in the dry tunnel of her throat. The options were overwhelming and the anxiety of ordering on the spot had weakened her appetite. “Do you have iced tea?”

The girl with the pencil bun stared at Hazel for a long moment before rolling her dark eyes and retrieving a paper cup from a stack on the counter. She slid it over the counter and gestured with her elbow toward the door. “Soda fountain’s behind you,” she grunted. “Eighty-nine cents.”

Hazel fumbled around the inside of her tote, ducking her head between the straps for a better look. Her wallet had to be in there somewhere. But all she felt was her camera, the crinkling plastic of the garment bag, and lots of empty space.

Behind her, the line was growing impatient, and she shrunk from the glare of ten pairs of eyes, burning holes into the back of her head.

“Sorry,” she stammered to the girl across the counter. “I guess I lost my wallet.”

The girl snatched the cup back across the glass and tipped it upside down on the pile. “Bummer,” she deadpanned, before turning to the next person in line.

Hazel clenched her teeth, her pulse pounding in her ears.
She spun around but was stuck between the glass and the broad shoulders of a boy standing behind her.

“I got it,” a deep voice interjected. Hazel looked up to see a strong, tanned arm reaching out toward the counter. A crumpled dollar bill fell onto the glass and the pencil girl looked up with an irritated sigh.

“Well, if it isn’t Prince Charming,” the girl huffed, slipping the bill inside the register and slamming the drawer shut with her hip. The boy held out his hand and she slapped the plastic cup against it. “Next!”

Hazel felt herself being shoved out of line, her face flushing hot. “Prince Charming” was still hovering at her side and she could hardly bring herself to look up. He had the sturdy voice and solid posture of somebody who was good-looking and knew it.

“Here you go,” he said, handing Hazel the plastic cup. She finally glanced up and saw that he had shaggy brown hair and warm brown eyes, with two deep dimples cut like stars between the strong lines of his cheekbones and jaw.

Good-looking
was an understatement.

“Thanks,” Hazel muttered, following him through the crowd to a soda fountain at the back of the room. “You didn’t have to do that. I have my wallet, somewhere.”

“No worries.” He shrugged. “Happens to the best of us.”

He stood to the side of the soda fountain and reached back for Hazel’s cup.

“I can do it,” she insisted, angling her cup against the ice paddle. Tiny pebbles of frost sputtered down on her wrist. Her cheeks were on fire. Already, she was a charity case.

“This thing’s pretty temperamental,” the boy offered. He
slapped the ancient-looking machine hard on one side until it coughed up three or four perfectly formed squares of ice. He smiled, the two starry dimples burrowing deeper into his cheeks. “Sometimes it just needs a little extra love.”

The boy slid into a booth beneath a bulletin board that was plastered with hand-drawn announcements. He gestured for her to sit, and Hazel perched tentatively at the edge of the plastic bench. Sitting seemed easier than coming up with a reason not to. She stared at a trail of crumbs on the tabletop, gripping the cup between her hands.

“That’s a nice dress,” the boy said, and Hazel immediately regretted her decision to join him. The only thing worse than being pitied was being mocked. She glanced sideways at the boy’s face, prepared to snap back and walk away.

But something wouldn’t let her. He was staring right at her, but there wasn’t anything intimidating in his deep brown eyes. No pity, no making fun. He looked like he’d meant what he said. Like conversation was something he enjoyed.

“Is this your first time on the island?” he went on, leaning back comfortably into the sticky red leather. “You kind of have that deer-in-the-headlights, I-still-can’t-believe-I’m-on-vacation sort of look.”

Hazel smiled in spite of herself. If he only knew.

“Not that it’s a bad thing,” he backtracked. “I just see it every summer. You get a kind of radar after a while. You know?”

“Sure.” She nodded and hoped it was convincing.

“So?” he asked. “Where are you from? I’m Luke, by the way.”

Hazel took a long sip of sticky-sweet iced tea and gulped
it down. “Hazel,” she introduced herself. “Hazel Snow. I’m from—”

Hazel was just settling into the comfortable rhythm of her own voice, and momentarily forgetting to be freaked out, when something caught her eye from behind Luke’s shoulder. It was a glossy, color ad on the bulletin board, and in the mess of hand-scrawled notes from babysitters in search of babies and renters looking for rooms, it stuck out like a sore, professionally printed thumb. Hazel’s eyes had quickly scanned the printed text and jumped to a name, indented at the bottom:

CONTACT: ROSANNA SCOTT.

Hazel lurched across the table, barely registering how close her shoulder came to bumping against Luke’s. She grabbed for one of the perforated rectangles, which displayed Rosanna’s name again, this time next to a phone number.

She was still stretched long over the booth, staring numbly at the paper in her hands, when she heard Luke laugh.

“If I’d known you needed a job that bad, I would’ve bought you some ice cream, too.” He smiled and slouched toward the window.

Hazel slid back to her side of the booth, the tiny piece of paper already dampening between the tips of her fingers. “What?” she asked, not fully registering what he’d said. She looked back at the poster on the board and this time saw the bold lettering at the top.

LOOKING FOR HOUSEHOLD HELP!
the sign announced. It seemed to be an ad for a caretaking job.

“Oh, no, I just—” Hazel started to explain but stopped. What else could she possibly say?

“I mean, yes. I need a job,” she said firmly, suddenly.
“Why? Do you know this place?” Hazel flattened the square of paper on the table, Rosanna’s name staring back up at them. Luke glanced down at it, the star-shaped dimples springing back into place.

“Yeah,” he said, clearing his throat. “You could say that.”

Hazel looked back at the paper, the little printed words swimming in her vision. Her heart was a buoy, bobbing in her chest, and she couldn’t believe her good luck.

“You do?” she asked quickly. “Do you know how to get there?”

Luke glanced out the window, squinting and biting the corner of his lip. “I’d give you a ride, but I walked to town,” he said. “There’s a free shuttle bus that stops across the street from the merry-go-round. Take it all the way into Chilmark and tell the driver to drop you off at the General Store. There’s a trail on the left. Walk all the way down to the water, and you’ll see it. It’s pretty hard to miss.”

Hazel was halfway to the door when he’d finished giving directions. She only remembered to thank him when she was out on the street.

She turned to see Luke leaning against the glass, one hand raised in a tentative wave. “Thanks!” she called out to the window, before racing off toward the bus.

Hazel felt a tiny tug between her ribs and quickly wondered if she’d ever see him again, this Prince Charming who’d swooped in and saved her day. But the wrinkled paper in her hand reminded her of why she was here. She was about to find what she was looking for.

Her mother was only a bus ride away.

“H
ere you go.”

After clattering for what felt like miles down a long, bumpy dirt road, the shuttle bus slowed to a stop. The driver, a cheerful man in a floppy red visor, pulled the door open and Hazel stepped onto a gravel trail.

“Follow the path,” the driver urged, pointing over Hazel’s shoulder toward an expanse of lawn and sky. Just beyond the peaks of a tall, green cliff, she saw the ocean, deep blue and dotted with rolling whitecaps. “If you end up underwater, you’ve gone too far.”

Hazel thanked him and stood in place as the van rolled back over the gravel driveway. She started down the path, her feet crunching over the layers of crumbled seashells, jagged and fine with hints of pale purple inside.

The house was one low level sprawled out across the lawn. Covered, open-air walkways connected different sections, and rounded cupolas peeked out of the white
cedar-shingled roof. Hazel stood at the entrance and peeled the now-sticky material of her dress away from her body. She took a deep breath.

She was about to knock when she heard a noise behind her. It sounded like a screen door swinging shut. As she listened harder, sounds of soft, classical music wafted past, punctuated by the rolling rhythm of the waves in the distance.

Hazel stepped back onto the path and followed the melodic strains of violins. The smell of fresh-cut grass mingled with the salty sea air, and Hazel gaped at the rolling hills, the manicured gardens, the open view of soft, gentle surf. At the edge of a cliff, she spotted a cozy wooden cottage, and headed for it.

A sharp pang tightened around her heart. It was the most beautiful place Hazel had ever seen. And it could have been home. It
should
have been home. If only her mother hadn’t given her away.

The screen door to the cottage was stuck slightly open, and Hazel peered inside. It was just one room, with dark wood panels and a giant circular window, cut in the shape of a captain’s wheel and overlooking the horizon. The walls were covered with colorful canvases, some framed, some half-finished, with many more crowded together and propped up against one another on the floor.

A woman stood in the far corner of the room, at an easel by the window. She was tall and thin, with broad shoulders and long, dark blond hair that cascaded in waves down her back. Her arms were folded at her waist and she rocked back gently on her heels, staring at the empty canvas as if waiting for it to tell her where to begin.

Hazel stood on the other side of the screen door, tiny ripples of excitement chasing away any negative thoughts. Even if she hadn’t seen Rosanna’s photograph, she would have known this was the woman she had spent her whole life waiting to meet. Something about just being near her made Hazel feel warm and full, and she was afraid to speak. She was afraid to do anything that would make this feeling go away.

“I can hear you breathing, Buster,” Rosanna said without turning around. Hazel took a deep breath and readied herself to speak. But then Rosanna turned, her sharp brow relaxing as she noticed Hazel by the door.

“Oh my God, I thought you were the dog,” Rosanna laughed, dropping a paintbrush into a can and holding out one arm toward the door. She wore an oversize, honey-colored sweater that hung down from her arm like a wing, and dark, crisp jeans, folded twice just above the tanned tops of her bare feet.

“Come in,” she added, smiling, and Hazel immediately recognized the perfect row of sparkling white teeth. “Can I help you?”

Hazel pulled the screen door open and took a careful step inside. “Hi,” she said, tucking her hair behind one ear. “I was just—I saw your ad. In town? And …”

“Of course.” Rosanna nodded and wrapped the loose ends of her sweater around her slender waist, taking a few steps toward Hazel. “That would be Billy, my husband. He went a little crazy with the posters this year. I swear I think I even saw one in the bathroom at the vet.” Rosanna laughed, a short, robust chuckle that shook her shoulders. A section of her thick, silky hair tumbled past her chin.

Hazel was trying to pay attention, but it was all she could
do to remember to blink. Standing less than three feet away from her was her biological mother. The woman whose name was on her birth certificate. The woman she’d whispered good night to every night in the dark, wondering what she was doing at that very moment, wondering if they looked alike.

Did they? Hazel wondered now. Would her own hair, despite being fine and stringy today, someday be that full and long? And though Rosanna’s eyes were darker and closer to green than Hazel’s blue, were they the same shape? They definitely had the same tall, lanky build, though where Hazel felt gangly and awkward, Rosanna stood confident and proud.

“Is this your first summer on the island?”

Hazel blinked and recognized the look of a question on Rosanna’s face.

“Yes,” Hazel managed, hugging her elbows in front of her chest. “I, I live in California. …”

The words tumbled out before she had decided they were the ones she wanted to say.

“So do we!” Rosanna exclaimed, laying a hand on Hazel’s shoulder. Her touch was soft and gentle and sent tingles down Hazel’s arm. “Well, half the year,” Rosanna continued. “The half we’re not here. Billy teaches computer science at Stanford. This farm has been in his family for generations and we come back every summer to keep it running. I’m an artist. …”

She rolled her eyes, gesturing to the canvases. “Obviously,” she laughed. “And I teach, too. In Marin County, not far from San Francisco.”

Hazel tried to keep her features steady, but her head was still spinning. Rosanna taught in Marin, which explained how
Hazel had been given up for adoption in San Francisco, and not in Massachusetts. Her eyes traveled to Rosanna’s slim midriff. It was the end of June. If Hazel was to be born in December, she’d have to be growing inside of Rosanna by now. The idea made Hazel wince and she glanced quickly up at the paintings on the wall.

“I have a few shows coming up,” Rosanna said. The pastel colors of landscapes and thoughtful portraits of people in various natural settings swirled in Hazel’s view. “That’s part of what I need help with, actually. In addition to keeping track of things around the house. We have a wonderful year-round caretaker, and there’s a young couple that helps with the farm, but there’s always so much to do. It’s going to be a busy season, lots of … changes, I think.”

Hazel looked back at Rosanna, who was now pacing the room. She lifted a curtain and peeked outside as if distracted by something she’d seen on the lawn. “Do you have any gallery experience?” she asked, a faraway look in her eyes.

“Gallery?” Hazel repeated, her mind still stuck on the word
changes.
What kind of changes? Did Rosanna already know she was pregnant? “No,” Hazel answered distractedly. “I mean, not really, but—”