Chapter 6 #4
Hazel settled near the back of the room, rolling her mat out in the corner.
She sank down onto it slowly, bones stiff, legs reluctant to fold the way they used to.
Her shirt clung to the small of her back.
As she glanced around, disappointment sank within her chest when she realized Iris was not among those in the room; her classes must have been in the morning, before Verdance opened for the day.
She should have asked before she’d called.
Leigh began the class without fanfare a few moments later.
“Start on your back,” she said, voice soft. “Let the mat hold you.”
Hazel eased down, spine touching rubber one vertebra at a time. Her knees knocked together and her hands felt strange at her sides, like she didn’t know what to do with them.
“Close your eyes if you want. Notice where the tension lives today. Don’t fight it. Just notice.”
Tension lived in her jaw, tight from sleepless grinding.
In her shoulders, from shaping dough at dawn.
In her hands, still aching from carrying too much.
It lived in her hips, her ankles, the back of her neck.
It lived in the place behind her ribs where she kept everything she didn’t say.
Where all the grief pressed in and settled, waiting to be let free.
Leigh guided them through slow breathwork. Inhale for four, hold for four, exhale for six. Hazel tried, but her breath stuttered, catching halfway up her throat.
From there, they moved into slow, deliberate shapes— cat-cow, low lunge, thread the needle. Nothing fancy, nothing that required perfection. Just shapes that forced Hazel to feel her body again. Her hip creaked in pigeon pose. Her wrists ached in downward dog. Her balance faltered in warrior II.
When she folded forward, forehead grazing her mat, Beck’s voice came back to her, uninvited.
You know you can’t pour from an empty cup, right?
She pressed her palms deeper into the mat and gritted her teeth.
She hated how much that line had stayed with her throughout the day— and more than that, she hated that he was right. Hated that he’d held up a mirror she hadn’t asked for, hadn’t wanted, and forced her to see what she’d been so carefully avoiding.
She liked to believe she’d made a change by coming home.
That leaving Boston had meant leaving behind the worst parts of herself— the burnout, the inability to find connection, the constant edge of panic disguised as ambition.
But if she was honest, she hadn’t softened her life so much as repackaged it.
She had simply traded one kind of unrelenting pressure for another.
Here, in Bar Harbor, she’d just found new ways to run herself ragged.
Earlier mornings, longer hours, higher expectations.
She’d filled her days with flour and deliveries and menu testing and smiling at customers until her cheeks ached.
Not because she loved every moment, but because she was terrified of slowing down long enough to hear the quiet.
To notice how lonely she still felt in a house too big for one person.
To feel the hollow ache of grief settle in when the noise stopped.
She had built the bakery like a dam, one she could hide behind and pour herself into.
But lately the cracks were showing. She didn’t pause, she didn’t rest. She barely even breathed, except to notice how tired she was.
Her body ached constantly, like it was begging her to stop, but she hadn’t listened. She didn’t know how to.
Because slowing down might mean feeling it all.
And she wasn’t sure she could survive that.
Leigh moved around the room with slow, silent movements, adjusting when necessary, sometimes simply watching. When she passed Hazel’s mat, her hand brushed Hazel’s upper back— gentle pressure, nothing more.
“There’s no rush,” she murmured. “The body knows when it’s ready.”
Hazel didn’t respond, but the words settled somewhere low in her chest. A response to the words she hadn’t voiced, but still lingered on her tongue.
They moved into bridge pose. Hazel’s thighs trembled, breath shaky, her glutes not engaging the way they should. She thought about the call from her father, a few days earlier. The way his voice had carried with her through every moment since, like a storm cloud not content to clear.
They shifted to seated twists and her spine creaked. She remembered the smell of mint tea rising between her and Sylvia just yesterday, and the way Sylvia had said, “She wanted to leave you something that would hold.”
Hazel didn’t know if she was holding it, or if it was holding her.
If this life was a choice, or a cage. Something she’d turn towards, when things got hard, or something she’d run away from. Again.
Her muscles screamed through the final standing sequence, her balance hopeless.
Her heel wobbled, her shoulders curled in.
At some point, a tear slipped from one eye.
It didn’t fall, not exactly. Just hovered there, clinging to her lashes until it gave in and faded away.
She told herself it was just from the exertion; from finding a level of control over her body she hadn’t managed in a while.
And then, finally, they lay down.
Savasana.
Hazel stretched out flat, her arms resting beside her, palms open, legs turned slightly outward. Her heartbeat thrummed in her ears, steady and tired. The mat wasn’t soft, but it felt like the only solid thing beneath her in weeks.
She didn’t think of anything as she lay there, or maybe she thought of everything. Her grandmother’s hands. The golden light in Rise. Beck’s profile as he turned back toward the door.
You can’t pour from an empty cup.
From the front of the room, Leigh spoke only once more, her voice a hush in the gathering stillness.
“Remember everyone… there’s no right way to arrive. You’re here. And that’s enough.”
Hazel didn’t need to argue with that.
She just let herself lie still.
The studio had taken on a dim, golden glow by the time class ended. The late afternoon light pooled across the floorboards in long amber stripes, catching on dust motes and the slow, gentle movements of bodies gathering up their things.
Hazel sat cross-legged on her mat for a moment longer than necessary, hands braced on her knees, breathing slow.
Her muscles ached in ways that felt unfamiliar, but not unpleasant.
It was the kind of ache that came from doing something for herself for the first time in longer than she cared to admit.
This was always her habit, her way of moving through life.
She didn’t prioritize caring for herself until the dam began to crack, until water began to pour through so many gaps that she couldn’t possibly plug them all at once.
With a sharp sort of irony, she realized that this was why her grandmother had gifted her the classes— yet another well-intentioned expectation, placed heavily onto Hazel’s shoulders.
She had given her the pressure and the purpose of the bakery, knowing Hazel would be unable to find that healthy line between commitment and burnout.
And these classes were her grandmother’s attempt at drawing that line for her.
Around her, the soft rustle of fabric and the murmur of low voices echoed in the space— friends chatting as they rolled up mats, someone laughing quietly as they lingered near the door. The warmth of it all brushed at Hazel’s skin like something she wasn’t entirely sure she was allowed to touch.
She bent forward and rolled up her mat with care. Her hoodie was folded beside her, slightly creased, and she tugged it over her head before reaching for her water bottle.
That was when she noticed Leigh standing a few feet away, not looming, just waiting. Calm and composed, as if she’d been there for some time but hadn’t wanted to interrupt.
Hazel straightened, shouldering her bag. “Hey,” she said, voice soft, unsure whether she should thank her or offer a compliment.
Leigh nodded once, a small dip of her chin. “You move like someone who doesn’t trust her body yet,” she said.
Hazel blinked. “Oh. Uh… I’m sorry?”
Leigh’s expression didn’t shift. “It’s not a criticism. It just means there’s something you’re coming back from.”
Hazel let out a short breath, half a laugh, half something else. “Yeah, well, I guess that’d be accurate.”
“I haven’t made it into Rise yet, but I’ve been meaning to. People are talking.”
Hazel’s brows lifted, her eyes flaring wide. “They are?”
Leigh nodded. “There’s a buzz. The locals seem to like it, and if you ask me, Main Street’s been overdue for something like this. Especially something from someone who knows the town like you do.”
Hazel didn’t know what to say to that. The compliment— if it was one— landed somewhere uncertain. The pressure that often loomed within her chest fluttered, tickling at the back of her throat.
Leigh shifted her weight, eyes remaining locked on Hazel’s.
“If you ever want people to know what you’re building over there, I know someone who might be able to help.
A friend of mine writes freelance for a few regional food and lifestyle magazines.
Local features, small business profiles, that sort of thing.
Your story would be right up his alley.”
Hazel had gone still, her throat closing over. “My story?”
Leigh nodded. “You’ve inherited something people around here remember. That kind of narrative has weight.”
Hazel swallowed, trying to clean her throat, her cheeks warming. “I don’t know. That sounds like… a lot.”
“It might be,” Leigh said, lifting her shoulder in a shrug. “But it’s also reach. And sometimes reach matters more than readiness.”
Hazel didn’t know what to say to that. Her thoughts tangled into one another— press, exposure, her name in print.
Something that stuck around, that lasted.
The window of the shop, glowing in a photograph.
The idea of her father, flipping through a Sunday paper in Hartford and recognizing her, even for a moment.
“Thank you,” she said finally, her voice quieter than she meant it to be. “I’ll think about it.”
Leigh nodded again, offering a gentle smile. “You should.”
Then she turned and walked away, just as purposeful as she’d arrived— no small talk, no trailing pleasantries. Just the weight of her words, still echoing long after she’d gone.
Help always came dressed this way, to Hazel; causal and simple on the surface, but just beneath, it was dark and jagged along the edges. A weariness settled over her limp, exhausted muscles. How long could she turn away from the people of Bar Harbor, before they gave up on her, too?
Hazel stood there for another beat, her mat under one arm, her bag slung across the other. Around her, the room had thinned. Shoes squeaked gently against the hallway tile.
She closed her eyes for just a second and let herself imagine it.
Then, on a deep inhale of air, she headed for the door.