Chapter 5: Distant Relative

"Another school," Hazel repeated.

She said it flatly, without any question in it. Claudia's jaw tightened, as if she had expected tears and been handed a blank page instead.

"I will not make trouble," Hazel said. "I told Dad. I am gone in the morning."

"You keep saying that."

"Then you will not have to wait long."

Vivi lifted her face from Claudia's neck. Her eyes were wet and wide. "Mom, please do not send her away again," she whispered. "She just got back. She did not mean it."

It was so well done that Gregory's face softened, and Claudia stroked Vivi's hair and murmured, "You are too good, sweetheart." Hazel watched this with a dull, steady attention. Three years ago she would have burned. Now she only noted it, like reading a line off a chart. Vivi had always been good at this. She had only gotten better.

"Rosa," Claudia said, without looking away from her daughter. "Take her to the laundry room. Make a bed. And make sure she..."

The swinging door opened.

A woman in pearls leaned in with her hand still on the door, and behind her stood a tall man with a drink. It was the same gray-haired woman Gregory had shut out earlier. This time she had brought her husband, and she was not going to be shut out again.

"Claudia, forgive me, but half the room is asking if the poor girl is all right." She stepped through. "Vivi, darling! What happened to your wrist?"

"Patricia." Claudia's voice went smooth in a single breath. "It is nothing. A dropped tray. Vivi startled."

"Oh, good. We heard a scream and I thought, goodness." Patricia pressed a hand to her chest, and then her eyes landed on Hazel and stayed. "And who is this?"

Nobody spoke. Hazel felt the room tilt toward her. She could hear the refrigerator humming. Rosa's hand closed on her elbow, not hard. It could have been a warning or an apology.

Claudia glanced at Gregory. It was a very short glance. Hazel saw it go across the room and come back with something in it, a decision made in a quarter of a second.

"This is Hazel," Claudia said. "A distant relative. From my side of the family. She is going to be staying with us a while."

Hazel did not move.

She had thought she was ready. She had told herself in the taxi that nothing her mother did could land anymore. And that was true. It did not land. It simply went through her and came out somewhere on the other side, and she stood there feeling the hole it left, clean and round, with no pain in it at all.

My side of the family, she thought. I came out of you.

"How lovely," Patricia said. She looked Hazel up and down, from the short sleeves to the split shoes. She did it politely, like a person checking the price of something they do not intend to buy. "You poor thing, you must be freezing. Is that all you brought? Claudia, you must take her shopping."

"Of course."

"And are you at school, dear?"

Hazel opened her mouth.

"She did not finish," Claudia said.

It came out so fast that Patricia's husband gave a tiny, embarrassed laugh into his glass. Patricia's eyebrows rose. "Oh. Did not finish? That is a shame. Was it a health matter?"

"Family trouble," Claudia said. "It is a long story. We are helping her get back on her feet."

"Well, that is very generous of you." Patricia looked at Vivi with soft, approving eyes. "I am sure Vivi will be a wonderful influence. She is such a kind girl. She told me once she always wanted a sister."

"I did," Vivi said, and bowed her head modestly.

Anger rose in Hazel's chest, hot and bitter, and she pushed it back down. She had learned how in the second year, in the isolation room, with her forehead pressed to cold concrete. You swallowed it like a pill. It tasted terrible, and then you could stand up.

"Hazel," Patricia said. "Just Hazel? What is your surname, dear?"

The pause was almost nothing. Hazel saw her mother's shoulders stiffen. She saw her father look at the floor.

"Hazel," Claudia said again. "Her mother's name was Marsh. It is simpler."

Her mother's name had never been Marsh. It had been Whitmore for twenty-two years, and the woman who owned it was standing right there in a dark dress.

For one blink, the kitchen went white at the edges. Then it came back, with the cooks all very busy and Rosa shaking, and Theo staring at his own shoes by the door. Nobody said anything. Hazel heard her own voice come out calm and thin.

"Marsh is fine."

"There. You see?" Claudia let out a small, relieved laugh. "She is so easy."

Patricia smiled and took Hazel's hand, patting it like a stray cat's head. "Well, come out and have a slice of cake, dear. You cannot hide in the kitchen on a night like this. It is a party."

"Patricia, she is tired," Claudia said quickly. "She has had a long day."

"All the more reason. A little cake and a little warmth." Patricia was already steering her, one soft hand at her back. "Gregory, bring the girl. We will not have her eating in a pantry."

Hazel looked at Gregory. He was staring at the wall, the muscle in his jaw jumping.

"Fine," Gregory said, finally. "Hazel. Stay at the back. Do not talk unless spoken to."

"And take off that sweater," Claudia hissed, low enough that only Hazel heard. "Please. It smells."

Hazel did not take it off. She was not going to let them see her arms again.

---

The main hall was golden and loud. A chandelier hung over the center like a frozen fountain, and underneath it sixty people in good clothes were talking over each other. A string quartet played in the corner. A table along the far wall held a four-tier cake with white roses and the same tiny gold graduation cap on top.

Patricia led her to a small round table near the French doors, right at the back, and pressed a plate into her hand. "There. Sit and enjoy it. Do not mind us old people; we only gossip."

Then she was gone, swallowed by the crowd.

Hazel stood by a pillar with the plate. People glanced at her, and glanced away. A girl her own age in a green dress looked at her shoes and whispered to a friend, and they both turned their backs.

A waiter came by with a tray, saw her clothes, and went around her. She was at a party, in a crowd, and she was more alone than she had been in the isolation room. At least there, the walls had been honest.

Across the hall, under the chandelier, Vivi had returned. She held a glass of sparkling juice and a bandage on her wrist, and a ring of people had gathered around her. She laughed softly at something someone said. The green stone on her finger caught the light. Gregory stood at her shoulder with his arm around her. Claudia took her other hand and kissed her cheek.

They looked like a photograph. They looked like the kind of family people put on a mantel.

Hazel took one bite of the cake, because it was in her hand. It was sweet and soft and she could not taste it. She set the fork down and let the plate hang from her fingers.

She did not cry. She was not even close. What she felt was a very old tiredness, deeper than hunger and deeper than the cold. It came from carrying one thing for so long that her arms had forgotten they were holding it. She thought of her grandmother in the garden. She thought of Lily. She thought, I only need to get through tonight.

Footsteps came toward the pillar, and two men stopped on the other side of it, close enough that Hazel could have touched a sleeve. She knew one of them by his voice. It was Gregory, tight and low.

"Not here, Ray."

"It cannot wait, Gregory." The other man sounded out of breath, as if he had crossed the hall too fast. "Reyes Holdings made an offer on the Brookfield land this morning. Double ours. I just heard from the owner's lawyer."

Hazel did not move.

"I know," Gregory said.

"You know? Then why are you standing here eating cake?"

"Because there are sixty people in this house, half of them on the board, and I will not let them see me sweat." Gregory's voice cracked like a whip, then dropped. "He is in town until Friday. The owner meets him tomorrow, and our board votes Thursday. If he signs first, the whole project is dead."

A glass was set down hard. Hazel stood with the plate cold in her hand, and Ray's voice came again, lower. "Who is that girl by the pillar? Is she listening?"

"The relative?" There was a pause, and then a short, flat laugh. "She is nobody. She does not hear anything."

Their footsteps moved off toward the doors.

Hazel did not breathe. Hearing herself called nobody should have hurt, and somewhere far away it did. But something louder was already going off in her head.

Reyes Holdings.

She had heard those two words every night for three years, in the dark, through a wall. "My dad's company," Lily would whisper. "Reyes Holdings. It was small when I left. Mom said it would go under."

And once, near the end of the second year, Lily had come back from cleaning the supervisor's office with a torn page folded small inside her shoe. It was from a business magazine, a month old. Under a photo too blurry to read, a short paragraph said that a young man named Dominic Reyes had taken over his father's company and tripled its value in three years.

Lily had held that scrap of paper against her chest all night. She did not sleep. In the morning she hid it under her bunk, and she told Hazel, in a whisper that shook, "That is him. That is my brother. He is looking for me. I know he is looking."

Hazel had promised that if she ever got out, she would go to him.

And he was here. He was a few miles away, in the same week, on the night of the worst party of her life, and he would be gone on Friday,

It seems God is helping me.

Across the hall, Vivi was laughing again. The quartet began another song.

Hazel set the plate down on the table and began, very quietly, to look for the nearest door.