I’m Melanie Trent, thirty-eight, an art teacher who spends her days convincing middle schoolers that painting thunderstorms is more exciting than they think. My daughter Hazel is seven, bright and thoughtful, with my stubborn chin and her father’s gentle eyes. She draws butterflies everywhere—on napkins, homework folders, restaurant receipts, even on the car windows when they fog. My husband, Dennis, sells insurance and builds furniture in the garage with the steady patience of someone who believes every problem can be solved with the right tools and the right measurements.
My family is a story of its own. My mother, Joyce, retired two years ago and poured all that extra time into organizing everyone else’s lives. My father, Roger, delivered mail for three decades and never quite learned how to speak up for himself. My sister, Francine, is married to Nathan, who owns a Ford dealership and walks around as if he’s made out of leather seats and self-importance. Their son, Colton, has never heard the word “no,” and their golden doodle, Duchess, is treated with more reverence than any human in the family.
That’s the cast. And here’s how everything fell apart.
Every July, we gather at my grandfather Eugene’s lake house in Minnesota. This year was Hazel’s first time making the trip without a car seat, and she’d been excited for weeks. She kept drawing pictures for Grandma Joyce, even though I knew they would barely get a glance. So I saved them all myself, tucked carefully into the cabinet at home—the one place Hazel’s art has always mattered.
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