Starting Over in Maple Bay by Brittney Joy
CHAPTER TWELVE
“Rose collected all this for the carriage house?” Hazel asked Frankie. They had uncovered the tarped boxes and furniture in the ground level of the carriage house. Garrett and Jesse were in the loft, re-hinging and re-hanging the hay door. All the kids were over at Jesse’s house watching Black Beauty.
Frankie ran a hand over an intricately carved post, which looked to be part of a four-poster bed frame. “She’d been collecting stuff for years. Got most of it from garage and estate sales.”
There were end tables, bookshelves, headboards, dressers, and boxes of who-knows-what. The wood stove Frankie previously mentioned was on the far side of the pile, and Hazel rounded the wall of boxes to get a better look. When she did, she also discovered a clawfoot bathtub.
Hazel gasped. “Oh, wow.” She pressed her fingertips to the white, rounded edge and marveled at the antiqued iron feet.
Frankie walked up beside her. “Mom and I found this at an estate sale on the way to a rodeo.”
“A rodeo?”
“Yeah, it was at least ten years ago, and I still think the estate sale was the only reason Mom left her horse at home and opted not to ride. She wanted to make sure there was room in the trailer for any goodies she found.” Frankie cracked a grin at the memory. “My barrel horse wasn’t sure what to think when he had to ride home next to a bathtub.”
“Rose had a good eye. This is like a piece of art.” Hazel had always wanted a clawfoot tub. She imagined bubble baths in the deep tub would be heavenly.
“She loved searching for new pieces for the carriage house,” Frankie said. “She called it treasure-hunting.”
Hazel eyed the tub, boxes, and furniture. There was more here than she thought. She wouldn’t need to purchase much furniture to fill the loft and make it into an apartment for her and Grace. But all this stuff equated to years worth of memories—for Frankie. “I can’t accept this. I’m sure each of these pieces remind you of your mother. You need to have this. All of it. I’ll get new stuff.” Her budget for renovations and furniture would be tight, but she’d prioritize, and maybe Hazel should rip a page from Rose’s book and tackle some garage sales this week.
Frankie looked startled by Hazel’s suggestion. It was not the reaction Hazel thought she’d receive.
“Mom wanted you to have this,” Frankie said. “She hoped you’d use it to fill the carriage house. That was her wish, to see her treasure-hunting put to good use and enjoyed.”
Frankie’s eyes went glassy and Hazel nodded, not intending to upset Frankie. “Okay. I just didn’t want you to feel like I was taking something that was yours.” At the end of the summer, how would Frankie feel when Hazel sold this place? She was obviously still hurting after her mother’s passing, and the last thing Hazel wanted to do was add to her pain. At the end of the summer, Hazel internally promised to move all of Rose’s things out of the carriage house and over to Frankie’s, where they belonged.
After a few moments of silence, Frankie said, “I’m going to make sure the kids are behaving themselves. And when I say kids, I mean my boys.” Frankie turned and started toward the back door. “Some parents run a tight ship. I run a pirate ship. There’s always a chance of mutiny with my crew.” She gave a tight smile. Hazel wondered if Frankie was trying to avoid how her memories made her feel, or the fact that Rose had left half her world to a stranger, even if that stranger was related by blood.
“Hey, Frankie?” Hazel asked. Frankie stopped and looked back.
Hazel couldn’t explain how it felt to be given up, but she distinctly remembered the moment she learned that she’d been adopted. It was a few weeks after her thirteenth birthday—a normal Tuesday night. Dad had taken her to volleyball practice and Mom was home cooking dinner. When Hazel and her dad got home, she ran upstairs to take a quick shower, but when Hazel skipped back through the kitchen door, everything had changed. Hazel expected to sit at the table, talk about her day, and eat two helpings of Sandy’s Shepherd’s Pie.
Instead, her mom was crying. Sandy sat with her face in her hands. Peter had an arm clasped around her shoulders. Between sobs, Sandy and Peter told Hazel she’d been adopted, and they confessed they weren’t sure they were ever going to tell her. They loved her so much that it didn’t matter where she came from. She was their daughter. But her biological mother had sent a letter, and they didn’t want to chance Rose showing up out of the blue. They wanted the news to come from them, not Hazel’s biological mother.
Up until that day, Hazel had never once doubted that she was Sandy and Peter’s daughter. Her dad had red hair and freckles, just like Hazel. Her mother had dark green eyes. They both loved her immensely. But on that day, questions seeded in Hazel’s head. Over the years they’d grown roots, and Hazel wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to dislodge them.
How could Rose abandon one child and choose to raise another? Before Hazel came to Maple Bay, she’d pictured Rose as an irresponsible, selfish person. She thought maybe her biological mother had been a drug addict, or someone so damaged that she couldn’t love a child. But Rose had raised Frankie. And judging by what Hazel knew of Frankie, Rose had done a good job.
Instead of saying all that, Hazel said, “I’m glad I’m here.”
Frankie pressed her lips together. “Me too.” She stood in the frame of the open door, silhouetted by the afternoon sun, looking like she was grappling with her own demons. “You need to look in the box next to the bathtub.”
She slipped away, and Hazel’s eyes fell to the box in front of her.
Panic crept over Hazel like static electricity. What was in the box?
Hazel slowly opened the cardboard flaps, not liking the feeling Frankie had left her with. Inside there was another box—a wooden rectangle covered in pretty pictures, like someone would cover the pages of a scrapbook. Hazel gently removed the box and ran her fingers over the glued-on pictures. They weren’t of anyone or any place she recognized. It looked like they’d been cut from magazines. There were images of children laughing and families hugging. There was one of a cute cottage surrounded by a white picket fence. Most had been cutout in the shape of a heart. Across the lid, Hazel’s name was spelled out in purple felt letters.
Her heart stopped. The big, open carriage house shrunk down so that Hazel could only see the box in her hands.
“What is this?” she whispered to herself and pried open the lid.
Inside, the box was full of envelopes. Hazel fingered through them. Each had a date scrolled across the upper left corner—November 16th—but each envelope noted a different year.
My birthday.
Hazel gingerly removed the envelope that displayed the date that would’ve been her first birthday. With a shaky sigh, she gathered every ounce of courage she could muster and opened the envelope. Inside was a handwritten letter and a picture of Hazel when she was a baby. She was wearing a frilly dress and a flowered headband. Hazel immediately recognized the picture from the many that were hung in her parents’ home.
My Sweet Baby,
Today is your first birthday, and I’ve been thinking of you since the minute you left my arms. Momma said I wasn’t ready to have a baby. That I’m still a baby myself. Maybe she was right. I’m not sure. I know I was barely sixteen when you came into this world, but I also know that I’d never felt true love until I saw you. And I can’t imagine a greater pain than what I felt when I let you go.
Momma says you will have a better life now, but I feel like a part of me has been missing since you left. Today the adoption agent stopped by and handed me a picture of you. At first, I cried. For a whole day. But then I thought what great parents you must have, because they were kind enough to send me a picture and a note. They named you Hazel. It’s a beautiful name, but it will take me awhile to get used to, calling you by your given name. To me, you’ve always been Charlotte—a name I picked for you the day you were born. I have been calling you Charlie, for short. I talk to you every day, hoping you hear me, but this is the first letter I am writing to you. I hope that someday you can see this and know how much I have loved you. Even if I only held you in my arms for one day.
Love you always,
Rose
The written words cut into Hazel. They numbed her. She scanned through the rest of the envelopes, looking at the dates. There was a letter for every year that followed her first birthday. The last envelope was written just this past year, on her thirty-seventh birthday.
Hazel set the box and letter down. She placed a hand on the rounded edge of the bathtub and focused on her breathing. Reading Rose’s letter, seeing that there were many more, was almost too much to take in. The penned words had ripped open a wound she’d bandaged for years.
“Hazel?” A hand pressed against her back and she jerked. “Are you okay?”
She drew her stare out of the clawfoot tub and up the expanse of Jesse. “I don’t know.”
His eyes flitted around, looking for the source of whatever had sent her spinning. Before his eyes fell back to her, Hazel’s mind shot back to the words in Rose’s letter. Rose said she’d given Hazel the name of Charlotte . . . or, Charlie.
“Do you want to sit down?” Jesse put a hand on her arm and tried to lead her to the stairs.
Hazel didn’t move. “What’s Charlie’s full name?”
Jesse angled his body back toward her, keeping his hand on her arm. “What?” His gaze shifted and found the open box.
“Is her full name Charlotte?” Hazel asked.
Jesse’s gaze flitted back to Hazel. “Yes.”
Was it a complete coincidence that Jesse had given his daughter the name that was intended for Hazel? That he called his daughter Charlie? From the look on Jesse’s face, Hazel knew there was more to the story. It wasn’t a coincidence. “Why’d you name her Charlotte?”
Jesse looked like his mind was reeling back, searching memories. From the way his shoulders straightened, Hazel thought she’d poked at a painful recollection, like she wasn’t the only one with wounds hidden in the past.
“I didn’t name her,” he said.
Hazel stared at Jesse, waiting for more, but quick footsteps fell on the patio and Tommy burst through the open door.
“Dad!” Tommy yelled in a tone that forced Hazel upright.
Jesse let go of her arm. “He’s upstairs. What’s wrong?”
“Are you okay? Is everyone okay?” Hazel took a step toward Tommy. Where was Grace? The rest of the kids?
“That lady from the rescue group called Mom,” Tommy explained. “Said the police need a whole bunch of horses picked up in Elm Grove. Said it’s bad. Mom went to get the trailer. Told me to come get you guys.”
Garrett had started down the stairs, and Jesse looked at him.
“I’ll call Evan. And Creed. My mom can stay with the kids,” Jesse said to Garrett. Then he pulled his phone from his back pocket, pressed the screen once, and put it to his ear. The person on the other end started talking before Jesse said a word. “Okay, I’ll meet you at the barn.”
Garrett got on his phone too, and after a one sentence conversation, said, “Joyce is already on her way.” He jogged down the rest of the stairs. “Tommy, go back to Jesse’s house. Joyce is going to stay with you guys. She’ll be there in a few minutes. Okay?”
Tommy nodded and headed out, running across the lawn. Hazel watched him out the window and saw that Joyce was already pulling up to Jesse’s cottage on a four-wheeler. The kids all spilled out of the door. She ushered them back inside.
“Hazel, you can ride with us,” Garrett said, jogging toward the door, assuming she was coming along. “We’ll need all the help we can get.”
Jesse looked at Hazel and added, “These type of rescues can be pretty bad.” It sounded like a warning—like he was giving her the option to ignore Garrett.
Hazel blinked, letting the secrets she’d just unboxed fall away. There was something more urgent to focus on. “I can help. Just tell me how.”