Chapter 19 #2
She watched the rhythm of him— how steady he was, how deliberate.
The swing of his arms. The strength in his shoulders.
The way he paused between each split, breath rising visibly in the cold air.
He moved like someone who understood the importance of small things done well.
Of rituals. Of tasks that served no one but the people you cared about.
Hazel didn’t realize she’d sat down until she felt the edge of the kitchen chair beneath her.
Her phone was on the table before her and she stared at it for a long time, a million thoughts rolling through her mind all at once.
Things she wanted to do, things she needed to say, and everything else in between.
Eventually, she reached for it. Her thumbs hovered above the screen again, just like they had a few days ago, but the ache was different now. Sharper in some ways, but cleaner. Less tangled.
This wasn’t guilt, not exactly. It was a choice.
And choices, she was learning, didn’t have to feel good to be right.
She opened the thread. The one that hadn’t been touched since she drafted the last message and let it fade into the dark.
Her fingers moved slower this time, not because she didn’t know what to say— but because she wanted to say it right.
It wasn’t perfect, but it was honest. And real.
Hi. I’ve been thinking a lot and I wanted to say I’m sorry for how I spoke to you on the phone the other day.
But I’m not sorry for the truth of it. I want to try again.
I want to believe there’s still something between us that can be repaired.
But it has to be real this time, not halfway.
I need you to show up, not when it’s convenient, not just when you feel guilty.
But fully. As a father. As a person who wants to be part of my life, not just someone passing through it.
If you can do that, I’m here. If not… then this is goodbye. Merry Christmas Dad.
She read it through twice and didn’t change a word.
Then she hit send. The message blinked away, gone.
Hazel’s gaze returned to the window again. Beck was stacking logs now, his hands bare and his jacket open despite the cold.
She watched him bend to pick up another piece, toss it onto the pile, then stand back to assess his work. It was a small, ordinary thing— just a mundane task, just something that someone needed to do.
But to her, it looked like love.
She reached for her phone again, and without giving herself time to think, she scrolled through her contact list until she landed on the right one.
The line rang once, then again. And when the call connected, before the person on the other line could say so much as hello, Hazel began to speak.
“Iris,” she said, voice clear this time. “I need your help with something.”
It started with Iris, as so many of Hazel’s best decisions did.
By mid-morning on Boxing Day, the house was alive again.
Beck had returned from a second round of firewood stacking with snow on his sleeves and a pink flush in his cheeks, and Hazel had already unearthed the dusty table leaf from the hall closet.
Iris arrived just after noon with Claire in tow, both of them wrapped in scarves, their arms full of groceries and candles and something warm in a Dutch oven that made the entire kitchen smell like rosemary and citrus the second the lid cracked.
From there, everything bloomed outward like a ripple.
Malcolm showed up with two loaves of sourdough and a bottle of red wine, dusting snow off his boots at the back door.
Juno came skipping up the front steps not long after, cheeks flushed and arms full of mismatched plates she’d borrowed from Greyfin for the occasion— “You said it wasn’t fancy, but I couldn’t help myself”— and Leigh, quiet and steady as ever, trailed behind her with a Tupperware of root vegetables so perfectly roasted it looked like art.
Elise and Connor arrived with their two kids in tow— cheeks pink, jackets undone, the older one tugging on a hand-knit beanie as he slipped out of his boots.
Imogen came too, unexpectedly, with a bottle of something sparkling and a hesitant kind of grace.
Sylvia wandered in with a tray of maple tarts and a sprig of mistletoe already taped to the brim of her wide felt hat.
And just like that, Hazel’s grandmother’s house— once so quiet, so heavy with the weight of ghosts and grief— was full.
There were voices in every room and footsteps on every floorboard.
The kitchen was alive with laughter, the clatter of cutlery, and the low hum of music from the speaker set up in the living room.
Beck helped Connor fix the broken leg on one of the dining chairs, his sleeves rolled to the elbows again, wood glue in one hand and a clamp in the other.
Iris and Malcolm moved like magnets in the kitchen, tossing herbs, slicing bread, arguing softly about oven temperatures and whether or not the salad needed more lemon.
Leigh sat on the floor with the kids, helping them put together two Lego sets of varying degrees of difficulty.
Even Imogen, typically poised and observant, leaned in close to Juno over the cheese board, giggling at something she’d just said about star-shaped crackers.
Hazel watched it unfold from the edge of the hallway, a wineglass in one hand and a soft ache blooming somewhere behind her ribs.
It didn’t feel like intrusion.
It felt like restoration.
She wandered back into the living room a while later and caught sight of Beck by the hearth.
His legs were stretched out in front of him, his back braced against the base of the couch, and Elise and Connor’s youngest was perched cross-legged at his side, brows furrowed in concentration as she carefully painted his fingernails with the precision of a tiny professional.
The bottle of polish— hot pink and flecked with glitter— balanced precariously on the arm of the chair beside her.
Beck sat as still as stone, one hand resting palm-down on his thigh, fingers splayed obediently while she worked.
He was smiling widely, the kind of slow, boyish grin Hazel didn’t see from him often.
Not full-toothed, not exaggerated, just real.
A pink streak ran down the side of his thumb. He didn’t so much as flinch.
Hazel stopped in the archway, her wineglass loose in her fingers, and watched him as he looked down at the girl beside him with the kind of focused attention most adults didn’t bother to offer children.
She was chatting to him in a soft voice, explaining something about topcoats and dry time and how her mom said you could only blow on them if you were really impatient.
Beck nodded solemnly like it was gospel.
When he glanced up and saw Hazel standing there, across the room, his eyes warmed instantly. He didn’t speak, just held her gaze, that grin still lingering at the corners of his mouth. Hazel smiled back, heart aching in the way it always did when joy snuck up on her.
Because this— this moment— wasn’t what she’d imagined. It wasn’t grand or sweeping. It wasn’t firelight and whispered declarations or slow kisses in the dark.
It was Beck in a soft grey t-shirt, legs stretched long before the hearth, his fingertips drying one by one in the wake of an eight-year-old’s careful brush strokes. It was the sound of laughter echoing from the kitchen and the smell of pine and wine and pumpkin pie baking in the oven.
It was home.
And somehow, without ever saying it aloud, she knew… he had become part of it. A part of her.
All of them had.
She lingered there a little longer, watching the girl blow on Beck’s hand and nod with approval, already reaching for the next bottle, purple this time. And Beck? Beck just chuckled and offered his other hand, that same smile still settled on his face like there was nowhere he’d rather be.
And in Hazel’s chest, something loosened.
They ate in shifts— plates balanced on knees, elbows brushing shoulders on the floor, kids perched on stools that didn’t quite reach the table.
People passed rolls and poured wine and asked for seconds.
There was no schedule, no seating chart, just the messy, beautiful kind of belonging that didn’t need rules to make sense.
Hazel lost track of how many times someone touched her shoulder as they passed, or leaned in close to tell her how beautiful the house looked, or how grateful they were for the invitation, or how proud her grandmother would’ve been.
The fire crackled. A pie baked and cooled and disappeared.
Someone put on an old playlist and the entire living room erupted in off-key, joyful harmonizing.
At one point, Iris stood on a chair and offered a toast, “To friends, to chosen family, to the kind of generosity that leaves your coat pockets full of clementine peels and your heart twice its size.”
Hazel raised her glass with everyone else.
But it wasn’t until later, when the kids were curled up on the rug, giggling, and the dishes were half-washed and the noise had softened to a low, companionable murmur, that she stepped out into the hallway and let herself look.
From where she stood, tucked in the archway that led to the kitchen, she could see it all.
The people. The coats hung crooked on the hooks by the door.
The table, littered with wineglasses and crumpled napkins.
The living room floor, layered with half-wrapped presents and empty mugs and the faint echo of a carol someone had hummed hours earlier.
The walls that had once held so much silence now swollen with sound.
Her throat tightened.
Because she saw it clearly, then— what had shifted. She wasn’t holding it alone anymore.
The grief, the weight, the hope, the trying.
It wasn’t all hers to carry.
She was surrounded by people who knew her, now, who had seen the cracks and stayed anyway. Who showed up not just because it was easy, but because she mattered.
Hazel pressed a hand to the wall behind her and let herself breathe it all in.
And she knew, in that moment, why her grandmother had done it.
Why she had bought the bakery, left the house intact, tucked receipts and handwritten recipes and keys to unopened doors into drawers Hazel wouldn’t find until she needed them.
It hadn’t been pressure, it hadn’t even been expectation.
It had been possibility. A soft offering.
A way of saying: if you want to stay, here is a place that will hold you.
A place with roots and corners and echoes that know your name.
And now, surrounded by the hum of people she had come to love, Hazel understood that this had been the hope all along.
That she would grow something new in the shadow of what had come before.
That she would be safe here— not in the absence of grief, but in the presence of something larger than it. Something alive.
That she would learn, because of them, to stay.