Chapter 2: A Family Matter

Hazel held the phone and listened to the party through a closed door.

She heard Rosa's footsteps go away, and a door open, and for a second the music roared and then shrank again. Then voices, faint and far. Rosa's was low and fast. The second one was a man's, short with impatience, and it took Hazel a moment to place it. Theo. He had been twenty the last time she heard him speak, and his voice had gone deeper since then, and harder.

"Ridgeway? Today?" A pause. "Fine. Tell her to book a taxi. We will pay when she gets here. I cannot step out, Dad is about to do the cake."

That was all. He did not ask how she was or whether she was hurt. He talked about cake. Hazel almost laughed. Three years, and her brother could not spare her a minute because of a cake.

Rosa came back on the line. "Book a taxi. They pay when you get home."

"Was that Theo?"

"Yes."

"Okay." Hazel pushed her thumb against the crack in the photo frame, which she had set on the desk. "Thank you, Rosa."

"Hazel..."

"I have to go. I will see you soon."

She hung up before Rosa could say anything kind again. She did not think she could stand it a second time.

The guard was leaning in the doorway with his arms folded, pretending he had not listened. His eyes went to her shoes. She was wearing the same canvas shoes she had worn the day they took her, and the toes had split. "Do you have a taxi number?"

"No."

He took the phone and dialed from memory. "Ridgeway gate. One passenger to Maple Hill." He listened. "No, the family pays at the door. Yes, I am sure." He hung up and dug into his lunch bag, and came out with half a sandwich wrapped in paper. He held it out without looking at her.

Hazel took it. She had stopped refusing food a long time ago. Pride was a thing you could afford when someone else was paying for dinner.

"Thank you."

"Twenty minutes. Eat it before it comes."

She ate it standing at the gate, in four bites. The bread stuck in her throat, and she forced it down.

---

The driver was an older man with gray in his beard and a radio playing low. He glanced at her in the mirror when she gave the address. "Visiting someone at Ridgeway?"

"No. Leaving."

He turned the radio off. He did not say anything else for a long time.

The town slid by in pieces. A pizza place she did not remember. A new mall with a glowing sign. A school with the gym lights on and a crowd of kids on the front steps, laughing and throwing a bag of chips at each other. A girl in a blue jacket leaned back against a boy, and he put his arm around her without thinking about it.

Hazel looked away.

She had been in tenth grade when everything started. She had been proud of that report card, her first one from a city school, with grades good enough that she hid it in her desk drawer to show Grandma Mae. Then Grandma Mae died, and then the van, and then the iron gate. She never finished the term. If somebody asked her now what she was, she would not know what to say. Not a student. Not a graduate. Only a name missing from every list.

She did not try her old lines again. She had thrown them away somewhere in the second year, with the letters. This time she only ran through the plan. A bed. Her papers. The ring. Leave in the morning. She repeated it until it sounded like a prayer, and then she stopped, because she did not pray anymore either.

The house came into view at the end of the long drive.

It was lit up like a ship. White and gold behind the trees, every window blazing, a line of cars curving along the gravel with two men in black vests waving them into spaces. Silver balloons were tied to the gateposts, and a banner stretched across the entrance.

CONGRATULATIONS VIVI. HARTWELL UNIVERSITY.

The taxi stopped. Hazel stayed where she was for a few seconds, looking at the banner. She did not feel the sharp stab she had expected. It was more like looking at a photo of a place she had lived in once and never liked.

"Eighty-six dollars," the driver said gently. "The family is paying, you said?"

"Yes. I will go get them."

She climbed out. The air smelled of cut grass and roasted meat. She walked to the gate with her bag in both arms, and the young man with the clipboard stepped into her path.

"Evening. Name?"

"Hazel Whitmore."

He ran a finger down the list. "I do not see it."

"I live here."

He looked at her sweater, her split shoes, her short sleeves, and a small smile started at the corner of his mouth. "Sure. Staff entrance is around the side. Deliveries ended at six."

"I am not staff. I am their daughter."

"Their daughter is inside. The party is for her." He said it slowly, as if being kind to a child. "If you need work, come back tomorrow."

"Please call Mrs. Whitmore," Hazel said, once. She did not say it again. If he refused she would go around the side and wait, because waiting was something she was good at.

"Hey!" The driver had gotten out. "Somebody pays me or I call this in."

Three people were staring at her now, and she could hear the band starting another song. Hazel's face grew hot. It was an old, useless heat, the kind that has nothing to do with what you want.

"Excuse me. Excuse me, move."

A woman in a gray dress and a white apron ran down the drive with one hand holding her skirt and the other full of bills. Her hair had come loose on one side. It was Rosa, older than Hazel remembered, with new lines around her eyes. She pushed past the young man without a word, counted money into the driver's hand, and said, "Keep the rest. Go."

The driver gave Hazel one last look, then the house, and then got into his car and left.

Rosa turned and took both of Hazel's hands. Hers were rough and hot from the kitchen. "Look at you," she said, thick. "Look at you."

"Rosa. I am fine."

"You are not." Rosa blinked fast. "Come. The back door."

"Okay," Hazel said.

Rosa stopped. "You are not going to argue?"

"No."

"Not even a little?"

"I did not expect the front door," Hazel said. "I need a bed for one night, and my papers. That is all."

Rosa stared at her. Her face changed. It looked like grief, and Hazel did not like that it was for her.

"Rosa? Who is that?"

The voice came from the drive, cool and sharp. Hazel's shoulders went tight on their own. She recognized it before she turned, and the recognition felt like swallowing a stone.

Claudia came down the gravel in a long dark dress, her hair done up, a glass in one hand. She stopped three steps away.

The porch light fell on her face. She looked the same, a little thinner, with a new line at her mouth. Once, a long time ago, Hazel had stood on this same gravel and watched this woman run down the steps in a cream coat, take Hazel's face in both hands, and cry so hard her makeup ran. "My baby," she had said, "I looked for you for so long." Hazel had been fifteen. She had mistaken it for a promise.

Claudia's eyes went from Hazel's face to her hair, then to the sweater, the bag, the shoes. Her mouth tightened.

"Hazel," she said, flat.

"Mrs. Whitmore."

Claudia flinched, just slightly. "Mrs. Whitmore?"

"Ridgeway let me out today," Hazel said. "I need a bed for tonight and my documents. I will be gone in the morning."

"Keep your voice down."

"I am not raising it."

"Why today?" Claudia whispered, glancing at the house. "Of all days. The Hendersons are in there. Half of Gregory's board. Tonight is Vivi's night, and you could not wait until tomorrow?"

"They let me out when they let me out. I did not choose it."

"Everything is a choice, Hazel." Claudia pressed two fingers to her forehead. "Look at you. Is that what they gave you to wear?"

"It is what I came in with."

Her mother's mouth shook. It could have been pain. Hazel found, with a dull kind of interest, that she was waiting for it to turn into something. A word. A hand. A step forward.

Claudia took a step back.

It was small, hardly a step at all, the kind a person takes without thinking. Hazel saw it, and waited to feel the old drop in her stomach. It did not come. There was only a tired certainty, like the click of a lock she had been checking for three years. Of course. She had known. She just had not known she still needed to check.

"Rosa will take you round the back," Claudia said quietly. "And please do not let anyone see you."