Wishful Thinking (6 page)

“Not that this is much of a gallery, no, but it would be great to have someone around to help me set up, maybe work with me to choose the pieces. …” Rosanna turned and studied Hazel with a smile, quickly taking in her dress. “You look like you have good taste.”

Hazel blushed. “Oh, well, I don’t know. …” She drifted off, feeling Rosanna’s watchful eyes on the top of her head. This was her chance to spend time with her mother. She wasn’t
about to blow it by being modest. “I could learn,” she said firmly, meeting Rosanna’s gaze head-on.

“Fantastic.” Rosanna smiled. “Do you have somewhere to stay? Are you here with family?”

Hazel shook her head quickly and looked down at the cherrywood floor. The absurdity of the situation suddenly slammed down around her. She didn’t know a single person on the island, and she had not a penny to her name. What was she thinking? What was
Posey
thinking, sending her across the country with no explanation, no contacts, and no money?

“No,” she finally managed. “My parents are traveling. In Europe. I’m here by myself.”

Hazel held her breath, terrified to move or look up. It was the first time she’d said the words
my parents
out loud in all of her life, and as they’d tripped awkwardly out of her mouth, she felt like they might set off some kind of authenticity alarm.
False! Not possible! Doesn’t exist!

But if an alarm had gone off, only Hazel could hear it. Rosanna simply shrugged. “Not a problem,” she insisted, noting Hazel’s hesitation and taking her gently by the arm. “There’s plenty of room in the guesthouse. Nothing fancy, but Jaime—our caretaker—has really made it her own. You can stay there, and we’ll give you a small stipend in addition to room and board.”

Rosanna walked through the screen door, cupping her hands around her mouth and whistling at the woods. Moments later, a hefty black lab bounded through a cluster of trees and landed at their feet, panting and pawing at the grass.

“Buster, meet—” Rosanna stopped on the lawn and turned suddenly to Hazel. “I didn’t even ask your name! Typical, Rosanna,” she laughed, admonishing herself.

“That’s okay.” She smiled. “It’s Hazel.”

Rosanna nodded approvingly and linked her arm with Hazel’s elbow. They walked along the path beside the house, the steady surge of the waves rolling against the sand beneath them.

“Well, Hazel,” Rosanna said, their feet falling into comfortable, synchronized steps. She gestured broadly around them with one long arm. “Welcome home.”

H
azel sat on her new bed, in her new room, with paper bags full of new clothes at her feet.

She was supposed to be unpacking. The story she’d told Rosanna about the airline losing her luggage had sounded almost true, and Hazel couldn’t believe how quickly she had an entirely new wardrobe at her disposal. Not just any wardrobe, either: piles and piles of gently worn jeans and soft cotton tops, all of which Rosanna had insisted she’d been meaning to get rid of, anyway.

Hazel emptied one bag on the bed and picked through a mound of comfy-looking sweaters. Each one of them was something Rosanna had worn. They were hand-me-downs from her mother. For the first time in her life, Hazel had hand-me-downs.

And for the first time that she remembered, she had a mother.

Hazel smiled, her heart full as she looked through the tall bedroom window. The guesthouse was a small but artfully
crafted cabin, perched at the top of the hill and overlooking the garden. The roof was pitched with dark wooden beams, and thick white panels were squeezed together like a jigsaw puzzle on the walls. Rosanna had given Hazel a quick tour of the kitchen and den downstairs, insisting that she help herself to whatever was in the fridge. Hazel had watched through the open screen door as Rosanna walked back across the lawn to the studio, still not quite believing that any of it was real.

Now Hazel looked up from the sweaters on her bed. The cabin had only one bedroom, which Hazel would be sharing with the caretaker. Rosanna hadn’t said much about her new roommate, except that she had a day job in town, and would be arriving home any minute.

The room hardly looked lived in at all. There were no pictures in frames, no posters on the walls. Hazel quietly opened and closed a few of the top dresser drawers, eyeing neatly folded T-shirts next to careful piles of shorts and pants. Even the closet, where Hazel had carefully hung Posey’s dresses, looked straight out of a hotel. Most of the hangers were empty, except for a bathrobe and a single, white sundress, pushed all the way against the wall at one end.

The only personal touch was a colorful patchwork quilt, neatly folded at the foot of the other twin bed. Hazel stood at the end of the bed and touched it, the faded fabric soft and well-worn between her fingers.

“Do you mind?”

Hazel jumped and turned to see a small girl standing in the doorway. She had long, dark hair that tumbled past her shoulders, and small, deep-set eyes that were narrowed to angry
slits. If there hadn’t been a pencil in her mouth, Hazel probably wouldn’t have recognized her right away.

“Rule number one,” the girl muttered. She took the pencil from her mouth and pushed past Hazel, ripping the quilt out of her hand. “My stuff is
my stuff.
Not
your stuff.
That means don’t touch it.”

Hazel stepped back, the soft part of her calves knocking into the frame of her bed. She sank heavily back onto the mattress and watched as the girl refolded the blanket with sharp, directed movements. She couldn’t have been over five feet tall, and Hazel wondered how so much mean could live inside such a tiny person.

“Sorry,” Hazel muttered, once she realized the girl wasn’t going to say anything else. “I’m—I’m Hazel, I’m—”

“Iced tea. I remember,” the girl snapped as she went to the closet and pulled a folded towel down from a high shelf. “I’m Jaime.”

Hazel glanced away just as Jaime started pulling off her Cups ‘N’ Cones T-shirt. “I can’t believe this,” Jaime said, as if to herself. “Rosanna’s always saying she’s going to hire somebody else but she never actually
does
it.”

Out of the corner of her eyes, Hazel saw Jaime wriggling out of her knee-length cutoffs and wrapping herself in the towel. “So what’s your story?” Jaime asked. “Runaway? You don’t look homeless.”

Hazel bit the inside of her cheek and felt her eyebrows inching together. “Homeless?” she repeated, her voice sturdy and defensive. “What makes you think I’m homeless?”

Hazel hated girls like this. At the four different high schools she’d so far had the privilege of attending, she had met many
of them: the tough, little girls who projected quiet disdain and had a clever comeback for everything, always. In fact, she herself had been mistaken for one of them fairly regularly. But it was Hazel’s firm belief that anyone who
actually was
that unhappy usually tried a lot harder to hide it.

“Rosanna only takes in kids who need fixing,” Jaime announced to a tall chest of drawers. She pulled out a pair of white sport socks and some blue cotton underwear and balled them up in her hand.

Hazel shifted on the bed, the mattress creaking heavily beneath her.

“Fine, don’t tell me,” Jaime sighed, shutting the drawer with a thud. “Guess we’ll have plenty of time for secrets. You don’t snore, do you?” Jaime paused at the door and turned to Hazel, her steely eyes cold and focused.

“No,” Hazel coolly replied. The idea of she and Jaime trading secrets was almost enough to make her laugh. “Do you?”

One corner of Jaime’s mouth turned up in a half-smile as she turned toward the hall. “I’ll give you the grand tour when I get out,” she called out from the bathroom. The spray of the water hit the shower curtain, quickly muffling as Jaime slammed the door shut.

Hazel rubbed her forehead and sighed, turning back to the pile of new clothes on her bed. She knew she should keep unpacking, but her eyes stung and her body ached. She swung her legs around the bag and curled up against the wall, glancing out the window at the main house across the lawn. Soft yellow light spilled out of the windows and Hazel tried to picture Rosanna inside.

She let her mind wander, imagining what it would be like
to stay in the main house, instead of out here with Jaime, who seemed intent on making their time together as uncomfortable as possible. But Hazel wasn’t here to make friends, she reminded herself. She was here to know her mother.

Hazel felt her eyelids growing heavy and she rolled over, wisps of her half-dyed hair falling over her face. It wouldn’t hurt to rest for a minute, just until Jaime got out of the shower. Just a minute, and maybe they could start over. Maybe after a shower and a quick little nap, everything would look different.

“R
ise and shine, Slumberella.”

Hazel blinked her eyes open as Jaime threw back the curtains, flooding the room with dusty sunlight. Hazel rolled over to face the wall. There was a faint thumping at the back of her head and it took her a few moments of staring at the knotted wood panels to remember where she was.

“Since you slept through your tour, I guess we’ll have to do it now.” Jaime was standing at the foot of Hazel’s bed, twisting a handful of coarse dark hair and stabbing it with yesterday’s pencil.

Hazel looked down to see that she was still wearing Rosanna’s yellow shirt and jeans. She pushed herself up on her elbows and blinked as Jaime pulled a sweatshirt out of the bottom dresser drawer. Even though it was late June, Hazel could feel an early morning chill slipping in through the window. “What time is it?” she mumbled, checking the corners of her mouth for drool.

“This isn’t vacation, Blondie,” Jaime spat, tugging up the zipper on her navy blue sweatshirt and making her way toward the door. “You’re in my world now, and sleeping in is
not
on the agenda. Meet me downstairs in five.”

Jaime flashed Hazel a fake smile and pulled the door shut.

Hazel flopped back on the bed. Less than twenty-four hours ago, she had been walking around San Francisco, where everything was familiar and things made sense. Now she was in a different place, in a different time, sharing a room with a girl who made
different
seem like something to shoot for.

Hazel flung back the sheets and pulled on another pair of Rosanna’s jeans and a well-worn button-down shirt. The material was soft on her skin and smelled faintly of suntan lotion. Hazel buried her face in the collar, breathing in her mother’s scent as deeply as she could. In the bathroom, she splashed some water on her face and glanced at her reflection in the mirror. Out of habit, she looked up to the corner where she kept the photo of Wendy at home, and found herself wondering what Roy was doing now. Would he be worried yet? Had he even noticed she was gone?

Hazel dried her hands on a towel and hurried down the stairs. Jaime had been sitting on the porch steps, but started out across the lawn as soon as Hazel reached the door.

Hazel skipped to keep up. The property looked even more pristine than it had the day before, green and lush and practically vibrating in the sun. The air was sweet and cool, and the grass was damp with dew.

She followed Jaime up to the main house and through the sturdy front door. Inside, the house was elegant but understated. An antique chandelier greeted them in the grand foyer,
and Hazel glanced across the open living room, all white furniture with a massive stone hearth, to a wall of windows, overlooking the expanse of ocean and sky.

At the end of a narrow hallway, a door opened, and a man started toward them.

“Morning, Jaime,” he said. His cinnamon-colored hair was tousled and he had the focused and half-dazed look of somebody who’d been staring at a computer screen for hours on end.

“Hi, Billy,” Jaime said, stepping aside to let him pass through the hall. “This is Hazel,” she added reluctantly. “She works here now, I guess.”

Jaime turned and walked down the main hall, leaving Hazel alone with Billy in the foyer. Billy stuck out his hand and Hazel shook it, barely able to look him in the eye. A hollowness had already settled in the pit of her stomach. It was the man from the Ferry Building event. The man standing by himself at the bar, staring sadly into his drink. All at once, Hazel remembered why he was there. He’d lost his wife. In the future, Rosanna was dead.

“Nice to meet you, Hazel.” Billy smiled. His features were small and precise and looked a little bit lost in the broad expanse of his face.

“You … you, too,” Hazel stuttered. She stood dumbstruck, staring at the man who would eventually be her father. She searched for hints of similarities. His eyes were blue, like hers, but his nose was smaller and turned up at the end.

“I’m waiting,” Jaime called impatiently from somewhere at the end of the hall.

“You’d better hop to,” Billy whispered, leaning in. “Don’t worry. Her bite’s not half as bad as her bark.”

Billy winked at Hazel and continued into the living room, whistling to himself as he picked up a newspaper from a glass end table by the couch.

Hazel felt her heart swell and turned to find Jaime. She had a dad. A real dad, who did classic dad things, like whistle and read the paper.

She hurried after Jaime into the kitchen, a gigantic room with walls of windows and clear ocean views. Big industrial lamps hung from the ceiling and a long, marble island split the room in half. The stainless steel refrigerator was open and a man in white pants and a black apron was crouching low and peering inside.

“Emmett makes muffins every morning,” Jaime said, pointing to a basket on the counter. “Hope you’re not watching your weight.”

The man at the refrigerator stood upright and turned around. He was small and trim, and if it weren’t for the sharp lines around his clear green eyes Hazel would’ve thought he was her age.

“Who do we have here?” Emmett asked, his smile bright and mischievous as the words tumbled quickly out of his mouth, the lyrical lilt of an Irish accent rolling them into a song. “Another one for the kitchen, is it? She’s pretty enough, yeah. I’ll keep her.”

Jaime selected a muffin from the basket and peeled down the paper wrapper. “I wish,” Jaime sighed. “Unfortunately, Rosanna thinks it’s me who needs help.”