Chapter 14 #2
Hazel didn’t move. She knew she should shut the door, turn back inside.
But she stood there instead, caught in that awful, invisible gravity that pulls you toward someone else’s pain even when you know it’s not yours to witness.
It wasn’t voyeurism. It was empathy, or something lonelier, maybe— recognition.
The realization clawed at something jagged and rough, buried deep within Hazel’s chest.
“It’s the holidays, Mom.” Imogen’s voice dropped lower. “I’d like to come see you and Dad.”
Hazel felt the air shift. The temperature hadn’t changed, but it felt colder somehow. Thinner and more fragile, like porcelain left too long in the sun, fine cracks just waiting to splinter.
Imogen’s body stilled. Her shoulders, already tight, rose slightly, and then fell.
She turned just enough that Hazel saw her face in profile.
The high planes of her cheekbone, the sharp line of her jaw, and something softer, almost raw, behind it all.
Her mouth trembled for half a second before she pressed her lips together, breathing in through her nose as if the air itself was a wound.
She looked, in that moment, not polished or composed or distant— but young. Young in that awful, hollow way that settles when you realize something isn’t going to happen, no matter how desperately you want it to.
Then the voice came back, sharp this time, louder— performative.
“What do you mean I’m not…”
A beat.
“No, of course I don’t understand. I’m your daughter.”
Hazel flinched at the last word. Not because it was loud, but because it wasn’t. It sounded scraped raw, as if torn from a place it no longer wished to exist.
Imogen laughed then, the sound short and bitter and deeply unfunny. It cracked in the middle and fell away like ice off a gutter.
“Okay, then. Merry Christmas.”
Her mouth curled into a semblance of a smile, the kind people wear when they don’t want to be caught crying, and she pulled the phone slowly from her ear.
She didn’t move for a second, just held it loosely in her gloved hand like she wasn’t quite sure what to do with it.
Then she slid it into her coat pocket, gentle and deliberate, as if burying something valuable.
Hazel’s hand hovered near the frame, fingertips brushing the wood.
Her mouth opened, then closed again. She could still pretend she hadn’t heard.
Still walk away. But the weight in her chest had shifted and she knew she didn’t have it in her to leave Imogen alone, not like this.
Not in a way she had been left alone, many times before.
So she opened the door a little wider and stepped out into the snow, the sound of Beck’s bell ringing out, filling the space between them.
“Hey.”
Imogen turned, the movement sharp, like an animal startled in the brush, as though instinct had overridden everything else.
Her eyes flashed with recognition, and then something else took over.
Her expression tightened, her spine straightened, a mask of forced composure snapping into place like a zipper pulled too high.
Her chin lifted and her mouth curved into a smile that didn’t quite touch her eyes.
“Oh,” she said, staring down her nose in Hazel’s direction. “Hazel. Hello.”
It came out like a question disguised as a statement, or maybe the other way around.
Hazel didn’t answer right away. Instead, she took in the sight of Imogen standing alone at the edge of the street, swaddled in cream wool and candlelight, elegant as ever, every inch of her curated.
But her eyes were glassy and her breath came too quick, and even beneath the perfect posture and sculpted calm, something in her looked undone.
Hazel could see it now, the sad girl beneath the harsh woman. And she wasn’t sure the realization of it would ever fade.
“You look…” Imogen started, then faltered. Her voice caught slightly, like it had landed wrong in her throat and she wasn’t sure whether to clear it or let it sit there. “Festive.”
Hazel let the word settle, unbothered. Then she gave the faintest nod.
“It’s the dress,” she said, finally, her tone soft and even. Not chilly, but not inviting either. Just... neutral. Measured. The kind of response that left room, if someone wanted to step into it, but didn’t demand that they do.
Hazel folded her arms around herself, the velvet brushing her forearms where her coat sleeves had slipped. Snow was gathering in delicate flurries at the tips of her boots, melting slowly into the worn rubber soles.
Imogen’s gaze dropped to them, lingered for a breath too long, then flickered back up. Her mouth twitched at one corner, like a thought had formed but died in her throat before she could give it shape.
For a long moment, neither of them moved.
Behind them, laughter drifted down Main Street in warm, overlapping waves, muffled only by the hush of snow.
Hazel glanced across the road instinctively.
Greyfin was glowing from the inside out, the windows fogged slightly from body heat and too many open drinks.
The golden light spilled across the sidewalk like butter across toast, and through the frost-flecked glass she could just make out Leigh and Juno pressed shoulder to shoulder on a loveseat near the front of the store.
They were laughing about something— wild, full-bodied laughter that made their heads tip all the way back, eyes squeezed shut, hands slapping knees like nothing in the world could hurt them tonight.
It was the kind of laughter you felt in your ribs for hours after.
And then, cutting through the warmth like a bright ribbon, came a familiar voice from across the street.
“Hazel!”
Iris stood on the sidewalk just outside the door to Greyfin, heading inside with a short glass of something amber in her raised hand.
Her cheeks were pink from the cold and the drink, and she leaned easily into the arm of the woman beside her— a tall, striking figure with pin straight blonde hair and a soft, amused smile curling at one edge of her mouth.
Hazel hadn’t met her yet, but she knew immediately that it was Iris’s wife, Claire.
It wasn’t strange that their paths hadn’t crossed, not really.
Claire worked late hours in a lab just outside of town, and Hazel spent most of her own days tucked inside the warm repetition of Rise or curled into herself at home, sorting through the quiet wreckage of the life she’d stumbled into.
And when she did go out, it wasn’t usually to the places where couples lingered— galleries, patios, parks at dusk.
Without meaning to, she’d started orbiting around them.
Not because she didn’t want that kind of closeness, but because being near it too often felt like pressing on a bruise that hadn’t faded yet.
Some things still hadn’t fallen into place. And some days, it was easier not to look at what you didn’t have.
Claire stood like someone who’d spent years learning to listen before she spoke.
Calm where Iris was animated, intentional where Iris moved like wind.
Her coat was open just enough to reveal a charcoal grey turtleneck and a necklace with a small silver charm at the end that caught the light with every step forward.
Iris grinned across the street, seemingly too distracted to notice Imogen just a few feet away, half-hidden in the darkness now that she’d shifted backwards by a few steps. “Get over here already!”
Hazel lifted her hand and gave a small wave, a gentle smile blooming across her face. “I’ll be right there,” she called.
But she didn’t move, not right away. She watched, instead, as Iris and Claire pushed open the door and settled into the warmth of Greyfin, the golden light spilling across the street, not quite touching the other side where Hazel stood.
Beside her, Imogen shifted, just a flicker of motion.
The angle of her shoulders pulled tighter and the set of her jaw changed like she’d remembered something inconvenient.
Her hands disappeared deeper into her coat pockets.
And when Hazel turned to glance at her again, she caught it, the small, faltering line that had formed between her brows.
“You should go,” Imogen muttered after a moment, her gaze still fixed somewhere far off. “Your people are waiting for you.”
There was no malice in it, no bite. Just the exhausted certainty of someone who had learned how to anticipate being left behind before it even happened.
Hazel didn’t answer, not immediately. Instead, she looked at Imogen— really looked.
Not the way she had before, through the lens of wary comparison and unspoken competition.
But now, beneath the weight of falling snow and the faint sound of piano music bleeding through the street, Imogen didn’t look like an adversary.
She looked like someone trying very hard to hold herself together with too few hands.
And Hazel— whose entire life had been stitched together by the one person who stayed when no one else did— felt something inside her tilt. There was no sympathy in it, no softness, either. Just a silent knowing that she couldn’t ignore, steady and sharp.
She didn’t know Imogen, not really. And what she did know of her… she hadn’t particularly liked. But now, looking at her and really seeing her, Hazel saw more than poise.
She saw pieces. Fractures, familiar ones.
The kind that didn’t show in someone’s words but in their restraint. In the way their eyes slid to the sidewalk instead of meeting yours. In the way they spoke like they were already halfway gone, already anticipating the door that would eventually shut them out.
Hazel had known that feeling. She still carried it.