Chapter 5 #2
Hazel’s hand tightened around the phone again. Her other hand drifted toward her hip, but stopped just short, then fell back to the countertop, her fingertips pressing into the cool granite. She traced the familiar edge, all smooth and rounded, a small gesture that grounded her.
“Yes, she passed a few weeks ago,” she said, the words sounding steadier than she felt.
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
He didn’t sound sorry. He sounded distant, detached, like someone squinting at a memory they barely recognized.
“She was a good woman,” he added, as if closing a file. As if he knew— as if he had any right to know.
Something flared hot in Hazel’s chest. Not grief, not sadness.
It was anger, sharp and sudden and searing.
It moved through her like a strike of heat, harsh and undeserved and deeply, deeply unfair.
Her fingers curled slightly at her sides, forming into a tight fist. Her jaw clenched before she could stop it.
“She was,” Hazel echoed, despite herself, her voice quieter now.
But it felt scraped out of her.
“Are you still in Bar Harbor?” her father asked.
“I am.”
“I figured. Probably a lot of paperwork, huh? Wills and estates are no joke.”
“Yeah, it’s a lot, but I’ve got it handled.”
A beat passed, just long enough to register. She could hear the shift in his breath before he spoke again.
“I can help out, if you need me,” he offered, though the words came out slow. Reluctant. “With the house, getting it ready to sell. I’d imagine it needs some work.”
The words scraped. She felt them like grit beneath her skin, abrasive and presumptive.
Her grip on the phone tightened slightly and her pulse beat once, hard, against the base of her throat.
There was a pause— small, but razor-sharp— where she could feel herself recalibrate.
Where she had to remind herself to stay even. To not rise.
Getting the house ready to sell.
Like it was that simple. Like it hadn’t belonged to the one person who’d stayed.
Hazel opened her mouth to respond and then closed it. And in that second, her mind floated, untethered, to a memory she hadn’t visited in years.
She was seventeen, a high school junior, the first time she’d agreed to visit her dad in Hartford after so many cancelled plans that came before.
Her stepmother, Dana, had greeted her at the door, warm but vaguely apologetic, guiding her into their too-clean home with its pristine wood floors and neutral-toned rugs.
Her half-siblings, Colette and Levi, were tiny then, still spilling juice and squealing through the hallways.
There had been noise, laughter, and the clatter of Lego bricks against the hardwood.
And amongst the chaos, her father had stood in the doorway to the living room, his coffee in hand. He’d been smiling in that slow, quiet way that people smile when they’re watching a life they’re proud of. Watching them. Not her. His eyes hadn’t even lifted toward her when she’d entered the room.
Instead, he’d looked at Colette with something soft in his eyes, a quiet sort of awe. A sweetness she had never known from him, not even when she was little. Not even when she’d tried so hard to earn it.
Her stomach had ached so badly, so immediately, that she’d excused herself almost the moment she’d walked in and locked the door to the powder room behind her.
It smelled like lemon polish and some type of strong cleaning solution, like bleach.
She remembered staring into the mirror, palms braced on either side of the sink, wondering what she lacked.
Wondering what he saw in them that he’d never seen in her.
She hadn’t visited again. Refused the few times he’d offered after that.
Hazel blinked herself back into the present, the memory like a bruise pressed under her ribs.
“I’m not sure I’m selling it,” she admitted, surprising even herself as the words slipped past her lips.
There was a beat of silence on the other end. “You’re not?”
“I haven’t decided,” she said. “Things are different now.”
And they were. In so many ways she hadn’t even named yet.
Her gaze flicked back toward Beck.
He was still watching her, still waiting. His shoulders were relaxed, but there was a quiet sharpness in his eyes, like he saw more than he let on. Like he’d caught the subtle shift in her stance, in her tone, though he was too far to make out her words.
She didn’t think about what that meant. Didn’t draw the line from her hesitation to leave to the person quietly rooted across the room.
“Well, when do you plan to go back to Boston?” her father asked. “Back to work?”
The question landed like a wrong key in a familiar song, too loud and just slightly off-pitch.
“I’m not sure,” she said, drawing out the words. “I might not go back.”
She didn’t offer anything more— didn’t admit to quitting the job she’d once been so proud of.
There was another pause on the other end of the line, another exhaled breath— this one, though, was sharper. It held more surprise.
“Why’s that?”
She closed her eyes, just for a second. She didn’t want to explain this to him, not now, and maybe not ever. Not when she hadn’t even taken the time to explain it to herself yet.
Hazel took a long, steadying breath, and then tried again.
“I don’t know, Dad. Bar Harbor feels more like home than I expected, I guess.”
The silence that followed wasn’t thoughtful, it was blank. Like her words didn’t compute. Like they had gotten lost along the way.
“Well,” he said eventually, “if you need me to come out there, help you settle things… I can.”
And then, just barely, Hazel heard it.
Dana’s voice, muffled but insistent in the background. Coaching, prompting. Offer to go out there. She might need you.
Hazel’s jaw tensed, the muscle tightening so sharply it ached. The anger was back, flaring beneath the surface, sharp-edged and impossible to contain. She was barely holding onto it now.
She didn’t think that Dana had ever had to teach him how to be a father to their kids.
She’d seen the posts all over social media, though she tried desperately to avoid them.
All of Collette’s profiles were public and full of smiling photos from holidays and birthdays, handwritten cards, Father’s Day stories captioned with hearts and gratitude.
But there he was, still failing at being anything even remotely close to a dad for her. Even though she’d come first.
“No,” she said in the end, her voice clipped. The edge to it was no longer hidden. “I’ve got it.”
“Haze—“
“I’ve managed on my own before,” she said, the words sudden and rushed, cold and clean and final. “This won’t be any different.”
She didn’t wait for the reply, she just pulled the phone from her ear and hung up. Pressed it down onto the countertop with sudden, unexpected force.
Hazel stood there for a moment, unmoving, her palm still pressing the phone to the countertop, holding it there so that it wouldn’t come back to life.
Her eyes slid shut, just for a breath. Just long enough to force the heat in her chest back into place.
And then she returned to the moment, a practiced and false sense of calm settling over her.
Hazel crossed the bakery floor with slow steps, as if her limbs had forgotten how to move in their usual rhythm.
Her fingers still tingled faintly from the grip she’d held on the phone.
The click of it settling back onto the counter echoed in her ears like a stone dropped into still water— sharp, then rippling.
She didn’t meet Beck’s eyes at first. Her gaze caught instead on the soft sway of the bell above the door, the way it caught the sunlight and scattered it in fractured little sparks. Everything looked the same, but she didn’t feel the same.
When she reached the table, she didn’t ask if she could sit. She just lowered herself into the chair again, the wood creaking beneath her. Her hand settled on the table like an anchor.
Beck was already watching her— had been, the whole time. He hadn’t moved. One arm rested along the edge of the table, fingers idly tracing the groove in the ceramic of his now empty mug. His posture was loose, casual, but his eyes held something else, something braced. They were open, but alert.
“You alright?” he asked. She gave her head a soft shake in response, the only thing she could manage for the moment.
Beck simply nodded and leaned back in his chair, giving her the time and the space she needed. Everything about him said I’m not in a rush. Whenever you’re ready.
“That was my dad,” Hazel offered after another few moments, her voice quiet and a little raw. It barely felt like her own. “We haven’t talked in months. And even that… wasn’t really talking.”
Beck didn’t speak, he didn’t nod or shift or react. He just listened. And somehow, that steadied her more than any well-meaning response ever could.
“I don’t think he really knew my grandmother, not in any real way, at least. She was a name on a Christmas card or a voice on the end of a phone, maybe, once every couple of years when he bothered to check-in on me. Only when the guilt caught up to him.”
Her thumb brushed over a faint coffee ring on the tabletop, chasing the outline.
“He asked if I needed help selling the house. Then asked when I was going back to Boston.”
She looked up then and met Beck’s eyes. They were the same as they’d always been, a little distant, but also a little warm.
In this moment, she was offering him more pieces of herself than she had before.
Their early mornings shared in the quiet cocoon of Rise had never delved this deep.
Each word was a new offering, a further step into the deeper waters of the unknown.
She paused for a moment, considering this, and took a steadying breath.
Fear tickled sharply at the back of her throat, begging her to back away, to deny herself this moment of connection… but she pressed forward.