1
The scent of salt clung to the air in that way only Maine could manage: dense, bracing, and edged with something colder beneath it, like stone left wet too long. Above, gulls cried out their perpetual songs, circling in loose spirals, their wings catching light as they drifted along wind currents that usually carried the clouds westward over the water. But not today. Today, the sky was unmarred. Blue and open and impossibly vast.
Hazel tipped her head back, letting the sun spill down across her face. The light warmed her skin, kissed her eyelids through their delicate thinness, and still she felt that ache of cold curled somewhere deep inside, stubborn and unmoving. She took a slow breath, deeper than she meant to. The air filled her lungs with the scent of tide-washed rock and evergreen, sharp and clean like pine needles crushed beneath her shoes.
The town felt smaller than she remembered. Or maybe she was just older now, and tired in a way that had nothing to do with sleep. She shifted the envelope held carefully in her hands. Her name was still printed neatly on the front, her grandmother’s handwriting sharp and precise, as if even from the grave, she needed Hazel to pay attention. She didn’t need to peer down at it or open it again; the words were already etched into her skin, like a tattoo she hadn’t agreed to.
It had all started with a phone call, just a week earlier.
Not the kind that splits a life in two all at once. This one arrived quietly, slipping through the cracks.
It had rung during prep, just past the height of dinner rush. The sound cut through the kitchen like any other, blending with the hiss of oil, the clang of knives, the muted thump of pots hitting the stainless steel counter. She hadn’t looked up. Hadn’t needed to. That sound was someone else’s job, someone else’s world. She was too distracted, too focused on her own upcoming solo in the orchestra that was dinner service. It was a job that she’d once loved, but these days, it felt more like sprinting toward a finish line that kept moving further and further away.
Her hands had been busy, sticky with cinnamon sugar, the sweet sharpness of Granny Smith apples clinging to her skin. She remembered brushing her forearm across her forehead, elbow-deep in filling. She remembered the heat pressing close and the scent of rosemary seared into her apron. She remembered—
A throat cleared.
Not hers. And not casual.
She looked up.
Her manager stood a few feet away, holding the kitchen phone like it might bite. His face was pale, his expression pinched in that unmistakable way; the one people wear when they’re about to hand you something heavy. Hazel had known, instinctively, the way you know when you’re about to burn yourself but still reach for the pan. She braced against whatever was to come.
My mother,she thought.Something has happened to my mother.
Her mind, sharp with panic, had already begun to calculate the quickest route to Portland. If she flew, she could be there in under two hours, provided she found a last-minute flight and there were no delays out of Logan. The facility wasn’t far from the airport, twenty minutes by cab if traffic was light. She knew the math. Had run it in her head a dozen times before, each time her phone rang unexpectedly or her grandmother’s voice on the other line started off lower than she’d expected.
But instead, it was her grandmother’s attorney, saying a handful of words she couldn’t quite piece together in real time. Things likeunfortunatelyandnext of kinandproperty transferkept unspooling without anchoring. It was like someone else was living it for her. Someone standing in her apron, crusted with sugar, stomach hollowing out from the inside.
She had hung up the phone. Washed her hands. And then left work without saying anything at all.
And now, here she was. Back on this same, familiar stretch of sidewalk, in the small town where she’d spent most of her childhood.
The air felt different here, less filtered and far more alive. The brine-laced breeze clung to her skin like a second memory, grounding and familiar in a way nothing in Boston had ever managed to be. It stirred strands of her dark hair against her cheek as she moved down the cobblestone sidewalk, speckled with uneven cracks.
Main Street stretched before her like something from a postcard, quaint and sun-washed, framed in soft pastels and white trim. The storefronts wore coats of pale blue, mint green, butter yellow— all faded just enough to feel lived-in, not worn out. Bright windows gleamed beneath painted eaves, each one framed by overflowing flower boxes that spilled with geraniums and petunias, trailing ivy and tiny white blossoms. Signs swung gently from wrought-iron brackets, hand-lettered and charmingly uneven. Every corner seemed to hold a memory, a detail preserved.
It felt like walking through a diorama of a life she used to live.
A few things had changed: different store fronts, new signage, fresh coats of paint. But some pieces were exactly the same, held in place like sea glass in a tide pool. She passed by the familiar storefront of Greyfin Studios, its weathered blue trim flaking just a little more than it had the last time she’d seen it, nearly ten years ago. She hadn’t meant to smile, but she did; a small, gentle curve of her lips that faded as quickly as it had come. She’d taken watercolor lessons there as a child, a birthday gift from her mother during one of the good months, one of the rare stretches where she’d managed to find a job and keep it for a little while. The classes had come with a tin filled withcolours and a spiral pad of paper, neither of which she’d everquitelearned to use. She remembered the way the paint bled too quickly when she added water, how she never really got the blues right. The sky always came out too heavy.
Hazel’s feet carried her across the street, to a building she hadn’t seen in years but could still picture clearly. What it had been, not what it was now. The old maritime supply shop. Once, its windows had been cluttered with fishing rods and rain-faded signs offering deals on tackle boxes and bait. The smell of rubber and something vaguely fishy had always clung to the doorway. She used to hate walking past it as a child, would often lift a hand and pinch at her nose to avoid the scent.
Now, it was different, cleaner and more modern. The front window that faced the street was covered in thick brown paper, edges taped carefully from the inside, hiding whatever was behind it. But it was the word above the door that stopped her in her tracks. She went still.
Rise.
No tagline, no extra letters. Just that,Rise,in elegant, serifed lettering. Black against white, clean and striking.
Hazel stared at it, the word ringing strangely in her ears, like something spoken too softly to understand but too close to ignore. She tipped the envelope in her hand and a single brass key slid out onto her palm with a quiet clink. It was old, slightly tarnished, with a long neck and a rounded head that bore a small, pressed emblem:W.S.Her grandmother’s initials.
She curled her fingers around it slowly, letting the metal settle into her grip. For a moment, she just stood there in the silence— letting it all come back.
Her grandmother’s laugh. A voice that never scolded, just dipped a few octaves lower with unspoken and implied disappointment. The way she made tea in the afternoons even if no one was coming by, because, as she’d always said,“You never know when someone might need something warm.”
Hazel reached for the door before she could second guess it, before the memories could eat her alive, suck her away with the strength of the current and wash her out to sea.
The key slid into the lock easily, like it remembered its home. She hesitated, just for a second, and took one last breath of the salt and sea and sawdust air of Bar Harbor.
