Chapter 12 #2
Hazel hesitated for a beat, sucking in a sharp breath. “It was my grandmother’s idea, I guess. I mean, technically, it was ours, back when I was a kid. But she’s the one who made it real.”
He nodded, pen moving.
“She passed away this past summer,” Hazel went on, her eyes drifting away, falling to the steam still rising up from her mug.
“And I came back for the funeral. I thought I’d just settle the estate and go home.
But then… the bakery was here. A half-renovated half-dream.
She wanted me to have it, to make it my own. ”
“And so you stayed?”
“I didn’t know what else to do,” Hazel admitted, the words leaving her mouth before she could soften them. “Felt wrong, somehow, not to honour her last wish for me.”
She didn’t say the rest, not out loud. That deep down, she hadn’t just stayed out of obligation— she’d stayed because she was scared, because walking away would’ve meant admitting she had nowhere left to go.
No dream of her own, not really. Only a thousand sleepless nights in a Boston kitchen and the heavy, echoing ache of a phone that never rang.
She stayed because this place, this crumbling little building with its mismatched chairs and flour-dusted floors, felt more like home than anywhere she’d ever tried to build outside of Maine.
Because the idea that her grandmother had believed in her so deeply, so quietly, had cracked something open in her chest that hadn’t stopped bleeding since.
Because, if she was being honest, she needed this. She needed to feel like she belonged to something, like she was still connected to the woman who’d raised her with steady hands and silent, enduring love.
She wrapped her fingers tighter around the mug, thumb brushing a chip in the ceramic.
“I think I stayed because I didn’t know how not to,” she added, more to herself than to Eli. “Because leaving felt like forgetting her. And I couldn’t— can’t— do that.”
Eli didn’t interrupt. Just nodded in that same, silent way, his pen tracing looping letters across is notebook with a speed that amazed her.
“You were a chef in Boston before this, right?”
Hazel’s stomach flickered. “Yeah, a pastry chef. I worked in a few different kitchens. Eventually ended up managing the dessert program at a restaurant in Back Bay.”
“You don’t miss it?”
Hazel looked down at her coffee. The rising steam kissed her chin, warm and bitter and laced with a lingering hint of maple.
“I miss the structure,” she admitted, leaning back against the chair. “And the late-night noise, maybe, but not the pressure. And definitely not the burnout.”
“Tell me about that,” Eli said. “The burnout.”
Hazel’s breath caught. She reached for the cuff of her sweater, rolling the soft knit between her fingers until it stretched and gave.
A loose strand of hair slipped forward, and she tucked it back behind her ear, her touch lingering there a beat too long— anything to anchor herself before answering.
“It sneaks up on you,” she said after a beat, her voice low.
“Or at least it did for me. One day I just... stopped feeling anything at all. Not joy, not exhaustion, not even pride. I was working twelve-hour shifts in kitchens that never slept, plating desserts for people who wouldn’t remember my name the next morning.
And still, I kept saying yes. More hours.
More menus. More ways to prove I belonged. ”
She paused, blinking hard. Her gaze had drifted— past the window, past Main Street, past the soft swirl of snow. She could imagine those long, never-ending days in Boston, as if she were back in the throes of them, suffering through it all over again.
“I thought if I worked hard enough, I could earn something back,” she said.
“Not money or reputation or anything like that. Just... meaning, maybe. Permission to rest. But that’s not how it works.
You don’t get to collapse after the finish line.
You collapse somewhere along the way, and by then it’s too late. No one’s waiting to catch you.”
She gave a short breath of laughter, but there was no humour in it. Eli’s eyes were still fixed to her face and every so often, he would nod, urging her to keep going.
“I used to love it, you know? Creating. Cooking. Baking. The way sugar transforms, the alchemy of it. But Boston turned it into a performance, a race. And I was always ten steps behind. No matter what I gave, it never felt like enough.”
Her eyes flicked to Eli’s— watching him now, measuring the weight of what she’d offered. Trying to decipher if to him, it was enough.
“And when the grief hit, it knocked everything else loose. All that burnout had hollowed me out so much that I didn’t have anything left to hold it with.”
She looked down at her hands, fingers splayed across her lap.
“Coming back here wasn’t the plan. But maybe it was the only way forward.”
She didn’t say anything else for a moment.
Just sat there, the quiet stretching between them like soft dough— pulling, pliable, never quite breaking.
Outside the window, the snow was still falling in slow, deliberate spirals.
There were footsteps traced along the sidewalk outside from people who had passed by, but not lingered.
Eli didn’t fill the silence, he just let it settle. Gave her space, the way good writers do.
Hazel turned her mug in slow circles between her palms. The heat had begun to fade, but she held it like it still offered something. A memory, maybe. A tether.
She cleared her throat, eyes still on the steam-softened glass. “You know,” she said, her voice low. “Even when I was away, she used to send me things. Cards, letters. Little reminders.”
Eli lifted his head. “Recipe cards?” he asked, already reaching for his pen.
Hazel smiled faintly. “Yeah. She used to mail me these boxes filled with pine, or herbs from her garden, and tucked inside would be some old family recipe written in her handwriting. She’d always end it with Don’t forget where you started.”
“That’s a nice sentiment,” Eli said, his eyes warm behind the frames of his glasses.
Hazel nodded. Her fingers tightened around the mug.
“And your parents? Did they play a role in your love for baking?”
Hazel stiffened before she could stop herself.
It wasn’t a flinch exactly, but something subtler.
A stilling. The kind of full-body hush that creeps in just before an old wound pulls tight beneath the skin.
She felt it in her jaw first, the quiet grind of her back molars pressing down, then in her throat, where the words stalled out like they’d hit a locked door.
For a moment, she didn’t answer. Just stared past the rim of her mug to the windowsill, where condensation gathered like the breath of ghosts. She could feel his eyes on her— gentle, but curious. Professional, but prodding.
And maybe that was what made it worse.
Because it wasn’t just a question. It was a key.
And she wasn’t ready for the door it might unlock.
“My parents weren’t really around in that way,” she said, a few beats too late. “It was mostly just me and my grandmother.”
Eli’s pen hovered. His free hand lifted, nudging his glasses further up the bridge of his nose.
Hazel took a breath and reached for the thread she always came back to. “She was… everything. Tough and generous and sharp as a tack. She believed in showing up… for people, for your work. Even when it’s hard. Especially when it’s hard. I like to think I inherited a little bit of that.”
The bakery, for a moment, felt quiet in a different way. Less empty, more full. Like memory had taken a seat at the table too.
Eli’s pen scratched once more, jotting down the words Hazel had offered to him.
“Anyway, that’s where Rise came from. It’s named for her, not just the dough. She believed we all rise, if we have enough care and time. And that we should all make the time to ensure it happens.”
“That is a great quote,” he admitted, setting his pen down.
She laughed, soft and startled, and leaned back in her chair. Her heart still jittered, but it no longer felt like it might tip her over. Maybe this was okay. Maybe telling the story could help her figure out where it was going.
It was a Thursday morning and the inside of Rise was warm and alive.
The air hummed with a soft undercurrent of activity— spoons tapping ceramic, a quiet laugh from the two older women who always claimed the window seat at this time of day.
Chairs scraped gently against the floor as another regular slipped out of their coat, unwinding a scarf.
The heat from the ovens had fogged the window entirely, curling the edges of the glass in a soft white glow that made the entire bakery feel wrapped in its own little snow globe.
And behind the counter, Juno Callahan was entirely, unequivocally in her element.
Juno had been the one interviewee from the nearby college who had stuck out in Hazel’s mind.
Bright, eager, maybe a little scattered, but in a way that had felt authentic.
She’d talked fast, asked smart questions, and left Hazel with the quiet suspicion that if she did bring her on, she’d learn as much from Juno as Juno might learn from her.
Juno worked in a swift rhythm that Hazel could hardly keep up with— chatting with one customer, pulling a shot of espresso for another, wiping down the drip tray while passing a muffin to a third.
Her bright and curling auburn hair was pulled back from her face, trapped in a hot pink claw clip that seemed to be holding on for dear life.
But even still, nothing was frantic, everything flowed.
Her laughter was light, her energy constant, and the playlist she’d made for the bakery, something indie folk with just a touch of whimsy, curled up into the air like steam.
“Honestly, you should try the chai loaf next time,” Juno said, her voice bright as she flashed a smile at the woman standing at the register.