Chapter 1 #3
By the time Hazel made it back to her grandmother’s house, the sun had sunk below the trees, casting the yard in cool shadow.
The old clapboard had once been white, though even that had begun to surrender to time.
Each time Hazel visited, it seemed to be in worse shape.
The Maine salt air had worn it down in patches, dulling the finish and leaving subtle trails where the wind had passed again and again.
Branches rustled gently overhead, brushing against one another like old friends leaning in close.
A tall pine tree loomed out front, as straight as a lighthouse beam, its bark cracked with age.
Hazel had spent whole summers beneath it, curled into its shadow with a dog-eared book in one hand and a sweating glass of lemonade in the other.
The taste of mint and sugar lingered on her tongue while cicadas hummed around her as she tried to forget the rest of the world.
Beyond the front porch, the door was still that soft, sun-washed yellow; the paint leftover from Hazel’s own bedroom on the second floor.
It had once been a boring old grey until they redid it one spring after her grandmother insisted the house needed some cheer.
Hazel had been fourteen, then. She’d suggested the colour on a whim, pointing at the half-empty can in the basement.
Her grandmother had nodded once and said, “Why not? Every home needs a little light to come back to.”
And here it was. Still waiting for her.
As Hazel neared the front door, she noticed something jammed into the frame just above the latch.
A business card.
It had been placed with careful intention and angled in a way that said I was here and you’ll remember that I came. The card’s glossy front caught the waning light like a challenge and Hazel stared at it for a moment, unmoving. The name stood out in curling blue script.
Lynn Weatherbie
Weatherbie Realty
She remembered Lynn from the funeral— tall, tidy, dressed in a tailored navy coat, heels clicking on the church floor.
She’d approached quietly, not during the service itself, but after.
It had happened when Hazel had been standing near the exit, raw and hollow, thanking strangers and vaguely familiar faces for their condolences.
Lynn had sidled in close with a sympathetic murmur and a card already in hand, something about “just in case” and “should you be thinking about next steps.” Hazel hadn’t taken it then.
She hadn’t even replied. Just looked at her, long enough that the woman flushed and backed away.
And yet, here it was.
Her name, her logo, her quiet insistence.
Hazel’s fingers moved before she could think better of it.
She yanked the card free from the frame, the corner catching briefly on a splinter in the wood.
The wind shifted behind her, lifting her hair from her shoulders and bringing with it the scent of pine and the distant sea, but all she could feel was the heat rising beneath her skin.
That bone-deep frustration. That anger that bloomed not as fire, but as something heavier— like being underestimated.
Like being watched by people waiting to see what you’d give up first.
She curled the card in her palm, the edges bending sharply. The thin cardstock crinkled with a soft, papery sound as her fingers balled into a fist.
She stepped inside.
In the hush of the entryway, she hung her canvas bag on the hook beside the old umbrella stand, fingers still twitching from the tension. Then, without looking, she shoved the card deep into the side pocket and let it vanish into the dark.
She toed off her shoes next, socked feet sinking into the old runner rug centered in the hallway.
The living room opened up in a familiar sprawl. Her funeral dress was slung across the arm of the couch, still holding the shape of her along the long, black seam.
She didn’t touch it. Couldn’t bring herself to.
Hazel moved instinctively toward the kitchen, filled a glass pitcher from the tap, and returned to make her rounds.
She watered each of her grandmother’s dutifully cared for plants, one by one.
Her fingers brushed leaves and straightened pots.
Her throat tightened as she crouched beside a peace lily that had started to wilt at the edges.
“Sorry,” she murmured. “She always remembered. I should’ve.”
The house didn’t answer, but it felt like it heard.
Back in the kitchen, the overhead light hummed faintly. Hazel wiped her face with the back of her hand, not bothering to check if she was crying. She knew she was. The ache inside her was rising again, pressing against her ribcage and clawing its way up through her throat.
I should have been here.
She bit her lip until it hurt. Until there was a faint tinge of copper on her tongue.
Just one more conversation. That was all she wanted. All she could wish for.
One more cup of tea on the back porch, watching the wind move through the trees.
There, her grandmother could’ve shared one last story about her days in the classroom: chalk dust in the air, the sharp scent of dry-erase markers clinging to her sleeves, the low hum of restless energy just before the lunch bell.
Tales of impossible students who softened with time, of quiet ones who wrote poems in the margins of their math sheets.
Or maybe it would’ve been something deeper, something harder to share.
She might have told Hazel another story about her late husband, the man Hazel never had a chance to meet.
He’d died of a sudden heart attack one bleak November morning while Hazel’s mother was still pregnant.
Before the postpartum depression and anxiety took root and twisted into something darker.
His death had been a shock that split her grandmother’s life into before and after.
She had done what she could to keep his memory alive over the years; the way he whistled off-key while folding laundry, the particular way he laughed when something truly caught him off guard.
And if Hazel looked hard enough, she could have sworn she still saw his imprint in that old green armchair in the living room.
Each time her grandmother had shared small pieces of their love story, Hazel had listened with rapt attention— it was the sort of love she longed to find, someday. Quiet, steady, and enduring.
When he passed, the life insurance policy he’d left behind was enough to pay off the mortgage and pad her grandmother’s savings; a quiet inheritance that let her grieve in private without fearing the world would fall out from under her.
She never remarried, never even looked at another man, though she hadn’t yet reached sixty when he died.
Instead, she poured herself into her work.
And later, into Hazel. She offered the kind of steadfast, enduring love that never needed grand gestures to be felt.
Just one more day.
But the wishes were useless. There would be no more.
Hazel stared at the clean counter, hands braced on either side of the sink. Her reflection hovered faintly in the darkened window overlooking the backyard. She looked older than she remembered. More tired.
On instinct, she reached up and slid the window open a few inches, needing to feel the fresh air against her skin. It moved easily beneath her hand, smoother than it ever had before. Her breath caught and she blinked, staring at the window pane as if it could somehow explain itself.
That window had always stuck on the left side.
She must’ve complained about it a dozen times growing up, jiggling the frame, wedging her palm into it with a grunt of effort.
She used to tell her grandmother to get someone in to fix it, but she would just wave her off.
“It’s fine, it works well enough,“ she’d say.
But now, it glided open like new. Someone had fixed it, finally, after all these years.
Hazel stared at it for a moment longer, something soft and uncertain blooming in her chest. Her grandmother had started the work. Quietly, in small, seemingly unremarkable ways. She hadn’t just left the house for Hazel— she’d begun readying it, smoothing the edges, making it easier for her to stay.
And then, something inside of her shifted. Like a puzzle piece that had found it’s perfect partner, pressed into place with careful fingertips.
It wasn’t the kind of epiphany that unsettled the very ground that stood beneath her, instead, it was a quiet realization that she was already doing it.
That coming back— staying through the funeral, caring for the plants, watering the house back to life— was the beginning.
Her grandmother hadn’t left her a burden, she’d left an offering.
Maybe this was how she made it right.
By staying. By trying. By breathing new life into what had been so carefully prepared for her.
Hazel let out a long breath, soft and shaky. She pressed a hand to her chest, right where the ache had rooted itself since the phone call had come through, back in Boston. It didn’t vanish, but it shifted, and uncoiled just a bit. Became, if only for a moment, something she could carry.
Hazel closed her eyes and breathed it in.
One single, old window had opened, and with it, another had closed— quietly, decisively, as if the air itself had shifted its allegiance.
For just a moment, the faint outline of her Boston life shimmered in her mind, all sharp angles and fluorescent light, the clatter of kitchenware and the constant press of time.
But she blinked, and the image dissolved like steam against glass.
What was there, really, still waiting for her?
A job that drained more than it gave, where praise came in muttered grunts and her body ached from the endless hours spent bent over prep tables.
A box of an apartment that swallowed nearly every cent she earned and gave little in return, less than eight hundred square feet of peeling baseboards, flickering bulbs, and a silence that never felt restful.
And the people? She had cared for them, in her own quiet way, had shopped for birthdays and answered late-night phone calls and showed up for split-shift drinks in dimly lit bars.
But not one of them had called when it mattered.
Not one had reached out after the funeral or asked what she needed, or even how she was.
Not one had said, What can I do for you?
Nobody there had ever stayed, not when it counted. So why should she?
There was no real choice to be made. She was here and that life was there, already fading in her rearview mirror.
And so she continued on.
The tin of loose-leaf chamomile sat tucked behind the box teas, its label faded and curling at the corners.
The lid stuck, then gave way with a soft metallic pop.
The scent rose like memory: sweet, floral, calming.
She reached for the tea strainer, the warmth of the ritual anchoring her to the quiet rhythm of being home.
When the water boiled, she poured it slowly, letting the tea steep.
She carried the mug into the living room, setting it down on the coffee table for a moment while she folded herself into the corner of the couch.
She reached for the quilt that was always settled over the back of the couch and settled it over her legs, smoothing it across her knees. She inhaled, almost instinctively.
Lavender. A hint of cedar.
The scent of her grandmother clung to the fabric, wrapping itself around her like a benediction.
Hazel’s throat tightened again. But this time, it didn’t ache the same way.
She reached for her laptop, positioned in the center of the coffee table, and flipped it open. The glow of the screen spilled across her face. She hesitated— just long enough to feel the pull of doubt in her chest— and then typed in her password.
The browser opened to a blank search bar.
If she was really going to do this, if she was truly going to close the shutters on her life in Boston and stay here, even just for a while, she needed to do it right.
Hazel reached out and wrapped her fingers around the handle of her mug, letting the steam settle over her face as she pulled it close. When she took the very first sip, the warmth bloomed in her chest like the promise of something not yet written.
And for the first time in a long time, she let herself wonder: what if this wasn’t the end of something? What if it was the beginning?