Chapter 17
Hazel’s thumbs hovered above the screen, the blue-white light of it casting her face in quiet, flickering shadow.
She didn’t move for a long time. The words had been there in her head for hours, soft-edged and uncertain, and when she finally began to type them out, it felt like trudging through knee-deep snow, slow and clumsy.
Every letter demanded more effort than it should have.
Every sentence settled on the screen with a weight that wasn’t proportionate to its length.
Hey, I just wanted to reach out and say that I’m sorry. I don’t like how I ended that call between us. I really shouldn’t have lashed out like that. I hope you all have a good Christmas.
She read it once, then again. The second time was slower, as if clarity might come with repetition.
On the third pass, she found herself obsessing over a single word, swapping good for great, then back again, like the difference might soften the ache beneath it all.
But it still sounded too careful, too practiced, like something written by someone trying to prove they were fine, when every part of them wanted to confess that they weren’t.
It was a message dressed up in good manners and seasonal civility, a clean line drawn where the real things— regret, distance, and longing— had no room to breathe.
She didn’t know what she wanted from it.
His forgiveness? His approval? Just a reply, maybe, or proof that he still thought of her as more than a wayward daughter with too many sharp edges.
Or maybe it wasn’t about him at all. Maybe it was just a ritual, something her fingers did to keep from shaking.
A familiar wound reopened, not to bleed, but to make sure the scar was still there.
She didn’t hit send.
The screen dimmed in her palm then slipped into black.
Hazel let her hand fall to her lap as she sat behind the counter, the bakery half-dark and silent around her.
The front lights were off, the shadows long and cool across the floors.
They’d closed half an hour ago and Juno had slipped out to pick up a delivery at the post office a few blocks away.
Everything still smelled faintly of cinnamon and clove, with just the softest trace of orange— residue from the morning’s loaves still clinging to the air like ghosts too polite to leave.
Her wrist throbbed with a dull echo from the burn she’d earned earlier that day, but the pain barely registered.
It was quiet now. Too quiet. And the ache had settled elsewhere— deeper, heavier, somewhere even her breath didn’t quite reach.
She’d been trying, really trying, to hold it all together.
She’d been trying to prove that grief and flour could be mixed into something worth keeping, that warmth and ritual and fresh bread at sunrise could be enough to hold back the rest of it.
But the day had cracked something open inside her again.
It was a slow splintering that felt like trying to balance a whole life on a threadbare breath.
Too much, too close to breaking. She was unsettled, a moment away from giving into her worst fears— that she wasn’t just the kind of person people left, but also the kind of person who left, too, because that was all she had ever known.
The door swung open before she could spiral further and Juno burst in like a gust of mid-December wind— bright, breathless, and wrapped in that bright green coat of hers with the mismatched buttons.
Her cheeks were flushed pink from the cold, her arms full of stacked cardboard boxes, the top one teetering at a dangerous angle.
“You’ve gotta stop making that maple scone,” she said, pushing the door shut with her hip, as if the thoughts had been pouring through her mind from the moment she’d left, and finally, finally, she could let them free.
Here, where someone understood. “Some guy came in earlier and bought five and then made me list all the ingredients because his girlfriend’s gluten-free and he wants to impress her, but like— I’m not totally convinced he even knew what gluten was—“
Hazel didn’t say anything.
Juno kept going, oblivious to the silence.
She deposited the boxes on the back counter, huffed out a sigh, and unwound her scarf like someone decompressing from a twelve-act play.
“Also, someone from that new B&B near the ferry terminal stopped in. They wanted to know if you do bulk platters for groups? I said I’d ask.
Sounds pretty cool, if you ask me. We just need to get the branding squared away.
Oh! And someone left this weird little drawing by the register?
It looks like a llama, or maybe a sheep, but with angry eyebrows? ”
Hazel didn’t smile, she didn’t even pretend to.
“Also, also,” Juno continued, still undeterred by the silence. “I was thinking we could run a poll on the bakery’s Instagram. Like, favourite holiday treat? Gingerbread versus peppermint bark? Or maybe something quirky, like those spiced almond things you made that one week. People were obsessed—“
“Juno.” Hazel’s voice cut through the air like a cold front moving in— not loud, but unmistakable. Sharp, then soft, like the snap of a twig underfoot.
Juno froze, mid-sentence, one hand clutching her half-unwrapped scarf, the other still waving a crumpled receipt like a flag of surrender.
Her expression shifted, pulled taut by the undercurrent she hadn’t noticed before.
Her gaze flickered around the bakery, and it seemed, in that moment, she realized something— that perhaps, when she had left in a flurry of cheer and excitement, she had taken all of the warmth from the bakery with her, leaving Hazel here alone and in the dark.
Hazel didn’t raise her voice, she didn’t need to. “I’m thinking of closing for a few days around Christmas.”
There was a beat, though it wasn’t long. Just long enough to be noticeable.
“Oh,” Juno said, blinking. Her voice came out too bright, like she was trying to fill a space that had suddenly gone hollow. “Yeah. Totally. That makes sense. You’ve been going nonstop since opening. You definitely deserve the break.”
Hazel nodded, eyes trained on the floor like it held answers. One of her feet swayed back and forth a bit as she twisted the stool this way and that, her legs too short to reach the ground beneath her.
“I’ll reach out after the holidays. Let you know what the schedule looks like.”
She didn’t say our schedule. And Juno heard it, even if she didn’t say so.
“Cool,” she said after a pause. “Well… let me know if you need anything. I’ll be around.”
Hazel didn’t answer.
She could see the movement in her periphery as Juno replaced her scarf, tucking it into the collar of her coat. Hazel could feel her gaze heavy on her face, but she couldn’t bring herself to look up.
“Merry Christmas, Hazel,” the younger woman offered, her voice quieter than Hazel had ever heard it.
“Yeah, you too,” she replied, her eyes still fixed on that same spot on the floor.
A minute later, the door opened again, and then closed.
And just like that, the silence returned.
It settled in like cold water rising in the walls, seeping between the floorboards.
Hazel sat there for a moment longer, her phone still resting in her hand, the unsent message lingering just beneath the screen’s surface, like a truth she didn’t want to touch.
She moved after that. Not quickly, but with the kind of quiet resolve that came only when you stopped hoping someone else might intervene.
Around the corner, past the cooler, down the hallway to the cubbies in the back where she kept the extra aprons and her keys and the spare sweater she never wore, too warm from the constant running around and the heat of the ovens when she pulled them open.
She knelt and unzipped the smallest side pocket of her bag, fingers already knowing what they were reaching for.
The card was still there, the corners curling ever so slightly, like parchment left too long in the sun.
The serif font was elegant and just a little too cheerful, displaying the name of the realtor who had approached her that humid, August morning at her grandmother’s funeral.
On the back, written in faded blue pen, it said, Sorry for your loss.
If you ever change your mind, give me a call.
Hazel stared at it for a long time, but not because she wasn’t sure. Because she was. And she hated it so so much.
When she finally stood, the card held between her fingers, she caught the scent of the bakery again— sugar, citrus, browned butter.
It smelled like comfort, like everything she had poured herself into for months.
But today, it didn’t touch her. It was like breathing in a dream, fragrant and familiar and impossibly far away.
Something she had been trying to reach for, trying to chase, but that kept moving further and further away.
Just like her job back in Boston.
Hazel retraced her steps back to the front of the bakery. She unlocked her phone and swiped the message to her father away, but she didn’t delete it, didn’t reread it. She just let it slip back into the quiet space where unsent things go.
The number was printed clear across the top of the card. She typed it in without hesitation.
And then, she made the call.
It rang once, then again.
And then a bright, practiced voice on the other end said, “Hello, this is Lynn Weatherbie with Weatherbie Realty. How can I help you today?”
Hazel didn’t clear her throat, didn’t fumble. Her voice came out even and low.
“Hi,” she said. “My name is Hazel Simmons. You left your card for me a while back, after my grandmother passed.”