Chapter 13 #2
Then her mother’s face shifted, a large smile tugging at the edges of her lips.
“Oh, sweetheart,” she gushed, her voice heavy with unspoken emotion. “Gram must be so happy to have you back.”
Hazel’s heart thudded once, deep and low. Her stomach dipped to the floor, nausea tinged with regret burning at the back of her throat.
But she managed to force a smile, even as every inch of her ached with the effort of it.
“Yeah,” she agreed, nodding. “She is.”
She couldn’t correct her, she couldn’t simply say No, Mom, she’s gone. She died in August. She couldn’t explain the call from the lawyer, or the ride back through fog, or the smell of lingering lavender and dust in the house she’d walked into alone.
There was no part of her that wanted to drop that weight into the stillness of this room.
Her mother didn’t need that grief, not now. Not when she looked like herself.
Somewhere she’d read that for people like her mother, people who needed the scaffolding of routine, of calm, of consistency, grief could do more than sting.
It could undo. It could crack the fragile thread of stability they spent weeks trying to hold.
A well-intentioned truth could become a landslide.
So Hazel didn’t say it. She let the smile hold.
“I’ve opened a bakery on Main Street,” she said instead, careful to keep that same smile in place. It was easier, the further away they treaded from the truth. “Gram put together the building for me— it was the old marine supply shop, if you remember. It’s called Rise now.”
“Rise,” her mother repeated, her smile widening. She let the word settle in her mouth like a favourite flavour. “That’s perfect. It sounds like you.”
“Gram picked the name. I think it’s perfect.”
Hazel’s mother nodded, her eyes nothing but warm as they remained on her. “Oh, of course it is. She always knew you best.”
And then, as if an afterthought had arrived on a cool, wintery breeze, her mother shifted, curiosity lifting one of her brows. “Do you have any pictures?”
Hazel nodded and reached into her pocket for her phone, thumbed it awake, and scrolled to the bakery’s Instagram. She pulled up a photo Juno had taken a few days earlier, one Hazel hadn’t meant to like as much as she did.
In the image, she stood behind the front counter at Rise, the pastry case gleaming in front of her, rows of cinnamon buns and galettes arranged like something reverent.
Her apron was pressed flat and clean, her braid tucked neatly over one shoulder, and her smile reached all the way to her eyes.
The early light pooled through the window ahead of her, casting the whole space in a soft, golden glow.
She turned the screen toward her mother.
She adjusted the angle, carefully, bringing the phone closer to her face. Her eyes moved over every inch of it— Hazel’s face, the curve of the pastry case, the soft gleam of morning light caught on glass.
“Oh,” she breathed. Her hand rose to her chest, fingers splaying gently. “Hazel… it’s beautiful.”
She looked up, eyes shining. “It looks like your place. Like it belongs to you.”
Hazel blinked, throat tightening.
Her mother’s voice softened even more. “It looks like home.”
Hazel’s fingers curled into her lap. She hadn’t expected that, not in so many words. Not from her.
“Thank you,” she said, her voice catching on the edges. “That means a lot.”
Her mother looked at the photo a moment longer, then tapped the edge of the screen with her thumbnail. “Do you make those?” she asked, nodding toward Hazel’s take on a cinnamon bun— her most popular item, ever since she’d opened.
“Every morning,” Hazel said, a fond smile appearing on her face. “We sell out everyday.”
Her mother laughed, a low, warm sound Hazel hadn’t heard in years. “Well, that’s a good problem to have.”
Hazel smiled and took the phone back, slipping it back into her pocket. The silence that settled between them was gentler now, as if it had been smoothed out.
Her mother tilted her head, her expression turning quietly curious once again. “And have you met anyone new?” she asked, her tone light but fond. “Any handsome men coming in for baked goods they don’t need?”
Hazel blinked, her breath catching at the unexpected turn of conversation. It was a gentle question, simple and harmless, but it landed sharp in the center of her chest.
Her mother had never asked her something like that before. Not when she was twelve, not when she was sixteen, not in any of the visits that followed. Most of those had been brief. Some good, some awful. None of them like this.
The teasing tone, the soft smile, the warmth shining steady in her mother’s hazel eyes.
She didn’t know what to do with it.
It felt... wrong, at first. Like standing in a familiar room that had been rearranged.
Still, something inside her shifted.
She managed to find her way to a gentle laugh, quiet and startled, but real. “Maybe one or two.”
“Oh, really?” her mother’s brow lifted with surprise, the kind of familiar teasing Hazel had only ever witnessed between other mothers and daughters. Never here, never with her own. “Tell me.”
Hazel looked down at her hands. Her palms were warm now, slightly damp. Her heart had picked up speed, quick and uncertain. But when she looked back up, when she met her mother’s gaze, what she saw there rooted her. There was no sharpness, no confusion, just care. Steady, open, and unguarded.
And so Hazel made a choice. She inhaled a slow, steadying breath, tried to calm the flutter in her chest, and let herself be part of the moment.
“There’s one,” she admitted, peering up at her mother from below the dark shield of her eyelashes.
Her mother said nothing. Just waited, her eyes soft with interest, not expectation.
“He’s... kind,” Hazel continued, after a beat. “And very quiet. He doesn’t say much, but when he does, it’s always honest. And thoughtful. He’s helped me with more than I think he realizes. And I feel like even when I don’t ask… he just knows what I need.”
Her mother tilted her head, brows knitting together with thought. “That sounds like someone you need,” she said, nodding her head. “Someone who will be good for you.”
Hazel felt it again— that ache in her chest, sharp and sudden, like something shifting inside her ribs. Like air after a long-held breath.
“Maybe,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “I hope so.”
Her mother reached out and tucked a strand of hair behind Hazel’s ear. The motion was delicate, practiced. The kind of gesture that should have belonged to years they didn’t get. The kind of touch that once would’ve been second nature.
“I hope so, too,” her mother said. “Because you deserve to be seen. And cared for.”
Hazel’s eyes stung. She could only nod in response.
Outside the window, the light had changed. The trees were rimmed in silver, the sky pale and wide. A bird fluttered against a feeder hook below them in the courtyard and then disappeared into the branches.
Her mother leaned back in her chair, but her hand lingered, her fingertips still brushing Hazel’s.
“You look happy,” she said, voice hushed. “I like seeing you like this.”
Hazel’s throat tightened. She pressed her lips together, felt the weight of everything she could say, and didn’t. She forced herself to stay in the moment, not to apologize, not to reach for things that couldn’t be mended. Not to wish for another version of this life.
“I like being here,” she said. “With you.”
And she meant it.
Even with everything they’d lost. Even with everything they couldn’t get back.
Because sometimes, being here— this here— was all that mattered.
And today was a good day.
There had been times— days, sometimes even weeks— when her mother had been like this.
Warm and present, able to hold conversations that tracked, able to remember birthdays, holidays, names.
She’d hum while she cleaned, trace her fingers along Hazel’s freckles before bed, calling them her own secret set of constellations.
But then the balance would shift. It always did.
A missed dose, a change in schedule, a phone call that didn’t go well, a look from someone on the street that lasted too long. And the thoughts would start to storm again, loud and fast and tangled. Her mother would stay in the room, physically, but she’d already be gone.
The last time they brought her home, Hazel had been twelve.
Old enough to hope. Old enough to remember what it felt like to be mothered. But still too young to carry the disappointment when it started to fray.
They’d painted the spare room at her grandmother’s house a soft lilac, the kind of colour her grandmother said promoted calm.
They bought new bedsheets, high-thread-count cotton in a pale blue floral, and set up a little table by the window with a journal, a new box of coloured pencils, and a diffuser that smelled like mint.
Everything had been clean. Safe.
Hazel remembered her mother smiling as she unpacked her suitcase, her voice light, her movements deliberate. She remembered the first night— how her mother had made tea for them both, wrapped in her grandmother’s housecoat, asking about Hazel’s classes like she hadn’t missed two years of them.
It had lasted five weeks.
At first, it was little things. A morning where she forgot what day it was, an evening where she wandered outside barefoot, insisting someone was calling to her from the treeline.
She started staying up later, scribbling in her journal well past midnight, the light from her room spilling out into the hallway.
The tea stopped being made. The humming stopped, too.
Then came the night Hazel was roused awake by shouting.
She didn’t remember what the words were— only the sound of them, loud and frantic. Not angry, exactly. Just afraid.