Chapter 18
The house was quiet. Not the peaceful kind, not the sort that settled gently into your bones— but a heavier quiet.
The kind that layered itself over everything, thick and unmoving.
Hazel had been drifting through that silence for days now, a ghost in her own home, wrapped in the same cardigan every morning— her grandmother’s, pale blue with a hole in the right pocket where the knit had unraveled years ago and never been fixed.
There was still a tissue in the left pocket, crumpled and soft from age. Hazel didn’t throw it out.
She hadn’t been to the bakery. Hadn’t answered Iris’s texts or returned Malcolm’s calls.
The blinds in the living room were half-drawn and a stack of unopened mail sat crooked on the windowsill, damp at the corners from a leak she hadn’t gotten around to fixing.
Everything felt dimmed. Dulled. Like the days had slipped loose from their structure and fallen into something shapeless.
The only thing she’d done was pack.
Endlessly, incompletely, in half-hearted bursts that left more chaos in their wake than progress.
The house was scattered with the evidence of it— open boxes and collapsed piles, a stray boot in the hallway, framed photos leaning against walls with smudged fingerprints across the glass.
She’d start a corner and leave it. Pull out a drawer, get overwhelmed, and move to the next room.
There were old bills tucked into the couch cushions, ceramic bowls stacked in the laundry room sink, a half-folded sweater left draped across the stair railing like a forgotten flag.
She hadn’t showered in a day, maybe two. She couldn’t remember.
It was early evening on Christmas Eve. Outside, the sky was the kind of slate grey that never quite turned to black, the kind that made the trees look like silhouettes— bare branches tangled against a soft, dying light.
A fire crackled low in the hearth, more smoke than heat now, casting slow-moving shadows across the walls.
The air smelled faintly of cedar and ash and the last pour of the wine she’d opened hours earlier.
Her third glass sat on the table beside her, untouched and warm.
She was curled into one corner of the couch, her bare feet tucked beneath her, the cardigan wrapped tight around her ribs like a binding.
There was something heavy in her lap. A folded apron.
She didn’t even remember picking it up— had just been digging through a storage chest in the hallway, looking for something she could throw away, and found it tucked at the bottom in a plastic bag with a note: Hazel’s, to pass down when she’s ready.
The handwriting was unmistakable, thin and purposeful and slightly leaning right.
She’d clutched the fabric to her chest before she could stop herself, not because she needed it, but because she didn’t know what else to do.
Now, hours later, it was still there, half-sprawled across her legs, a faint flour stain near the hem.
And her thoughts drifted— soft, slow, inevitable— to the memory that had followed her with it.
She was maybe eight, maybe nine. It had been the week of Christmas and her grandmother had promised to teach her how to make the spiced gingerbread cookies they only ever baked once a year.
Hazel remembered the way she’d stood on the small kitchen stool, hair French braided into pigtails, the sleeves of her shirt rolled so high they pinched her shoulders.
The air had been thick with cinnamon and clove, her fingers sticky with dough, and her grandmother’s laughter had filled every corner of the old kitchen like a hymn.
At some point, she’d spilled an entire bag of brown sugar across the floor.
Hazel had frozen, horrified, waiting for a scolding. Waiting for the entire world to shift on its axis, as it always had back home with her parents, when she’d done something outside the norm, when she’d risked stepping outside the routine.
But her grandmother had just tilted her head, smiled, and said, “Honey, if the worst thing you do today is make the floor taste better, I think we’re doing just fine.”
Hazel had laughed then. A small, nervous laugh. But it had stayed with her.
All of it had.
And now, sitting in the firelight with the memory curling warm and sharp beneath her skin, Hazel looked down at the apron in her lap and felt the weight of that afternoon settle over her like dust.
She hadn’t baked a single thing all week, not since she’d closed Rise.
She hadn’t wanted to.
She took a slow sip of wine. It was too warm, too dry, but she swallowed anyway.
That was when the knock came.
It startled her, her body flinching before she could help herself.
The wine glass in her hand jolted and some of the red liquid inside threatened to spill up over the lip, barely contained within the glass.
She set it down, then pushed the blanket from her lap, the apron slipping to the floor without a sound.
She bent instantly to pick it up, her fingers gentle as she placed it in the spot where she’d just been sitting.
Her bare feet touched the hardwood as she moved towards the front door and she winced at the sudden cold without the fireplace at her side.
Everything in her wanted to stay still, to pretend she hadn’t heard it, that no one was there, but her legs moved anyway.
The hallway felt longer than usual, the shadows stretched further. The soft weight of her cardigan dragged at her shoulders like memory.
When she opened the door, Beck was standing there.
Windblown, flushed, solid in the way only he could be— like a person carved from something older and quieter than the rest of the world.
His coat was half-zipped, his dark hair damp around the temples.
One hand was jammed in his pocket, the other held a flat, square package wrapped in brown paper and tied with string.
There was snow on his boots, melting in slow rivulets.
Hazel stared at him, heart drumming faintly in her chest.
He didn’t smile, not really. He just gave her a look, direct, searching, and almost cautious. Like he wasn’t sure if she would shut the door in his face or let him fall through it.
“Hey,” he said, voice low. Rough from the cold, maybe. “I didn’t want to bother you. I just…”
He trailed off, then held out the gift between them like proof.
“I wasn’t sure if I should come. But I wanted to.”
Hazel didn’t move.
He exhaled, a slow breath that fogged in the air between them. “I didn’t mean to disappear.”
“You didn’t,” she said, but her voice came out thinner than she meant, not quite bitter, but close. “You just didn’t come.”
Beck nodded once, eyes dropping. “I know.”
She didn’t ask him why, couldn’t bring herself to form the words. She wasn’t going to ask another man why she hadn’t been enough, not this time.
The cold wrapped around them, humming in the doorway like a third presence.
Finally, she stepped back, just enough. “You can come in. If you want.”
He didn’t hesitate, just ducked inside with a quiet nod, shaking the snow from his boots on the mat before toeing them off. The warmth of the house settled around him like fog, clinging to his shoulders as he followed her toward the living room.
Hazel didn’t say anything until they were both standing there— her near the fire, him hovering by the edge of the rug like he wasn’t sure he was allowed to sit.
She reached for her wine glass, took a long sip, and then, gesturing toward the bottle on the table, asked, “Want some?”
He glanced at it, then nodded once. “Yeah. Thanks.”
She poured it wordlessly into another mismatched glass she retrieved from the kitchen— one of her grandmother’s old ones, delicate around the rim— and handed it to him without touching his fingers.
Then she sat down, curling back into her usual spot on the couch after moving the apron to hang over the arm, and waited for the silence to crack open.
It didn’t take long.
“I didn’t mean to stay away,” Beck said, his voice low, shaped by something that sounded like guilt but didn’t try to excuse itself.
He sat across from her, not on the edge of his seat like he was ready to run, but low and forward— his forearms braced on his knees, his gaze not yet on her.
The firelight flickered between them, casting gold along the ridges of his knuckles, the slope of his jaw.
“My sister showed up out of nowhere. She was there when I got back, after I walked you home from the Main Street party. She flew in from New York without telling me. She’s been calling for weeks and I kept ignoring it, so… she decided to intervene.”
Hazel didn’t answer, not right away. Her body went still in the way it always did when something she wasn’t prepared for brushed too close.
The wine she’d been sipping earlier had gone tepid in her glass, the sweetness gone dry on her tongue, but her fingers held it anyway— like something to anchor her.
Beck let out a breath, one that clouded faintly in the air between them even though the fire had warmed the room considerably. “She showed up with old photos,” he continued. “Letters. Our dad’s watch.”
His mouth twisted around the words. A laugh caught and flattened in the space between them. “Like something out of a Hallmark movie. We fought for two days, made up for another two. Then she left.”
Hazel didn’t smile, though she wanted to. Or, at least, she thought she should. Either way, her mouth wouldn’t move.
She looked down instead, at the coffee table between them, a cluttered expanse of half-folded newspapers, a candle burned halfway down and leaning in its jar, the hardcover book she’d tried and failed to finish twice that week.
Just beyond it, near the hearth, a cardboard box overflowed with books and mugs and linen napkins, packed hastily and never sealed.
She hadn’t known he’d be here tonight. She hadn’t been ready to be seen like this.