And there it was. Still and familiar.
The smell hit her first— lavender and cedar, soft and clean, with something warmer beneath it. Cinnamon, maybe, or the faint echo of an old candle that had once lived on the nightstand. The room felt suspended in time, as if it had been waiting for her. The bed was still made, the covers drawn smooth across the old patchwork quilt. The curtains were half-drawn, allowing in the golden glow of the streetlamp beyond the trees, and her grandmother’s slippers still sat by the footboard, slightly askew.
Hazel stood in the doorway, unmoving. Her eyes swept the space. The heavy four-poster bed, the white wicker dresser with its lace runner and the Santo Niño displayed at the center, a remnant of the life her great-grandmother had left behind before moving to America as a young woman. The porcelain dish that still held earrings and hair ties and a random peppermint, a stack of folded scarves in the corner, some patterned, some plain. And then there was the chair— the old, antique armchair with the rounded arms and the soft, beige upholstery— where her grandmother had sat to write Christmas cards every year, one leg folded beneath her, her glasses low on her nose.
Hazel didn’t cry. She refused to.
She was here to do a thing. Just a task. A clinical, adult task. Packing, sorting, readying. That was all. She would start with the closet or the drawer by the bed. She didn’t know which.
She stepped inside and reached for the first box.
But it wasn’t clinical. Not even close.
The memories came too fast. Too full.
It wasn’t the scent or the slippers or the quilt that undid her. It was the small dip in the center of the bed, the place where she’d once curled into herself, a hot water bottle pressed low to her stomach, her cheeks flushed and her eyes watery with pain.
She remembered the night with a clarity that felt cruel.
She had been thirteen, or maybe twelve, it was hard to say. All she remembered was the deep, twisting ache in her abdomen and the way she’d stumbled down the hallway in the dark, unsure of what was happening. Her grandmother had woken instantly, as if summoned by instinct, and ushered her into bed without hesitation. She’d warmed the bottle, made a cup of ginger tea, and returned upstairs with a chocolate bar, broken into careful squares, insisting Hazel eat even though she wasn’t hungry.
And then she’d sat there, on the edge of the bed, in her old flannel robe, brushing Hazel’s hair back from her damp forehead with slow, rhythmic strokes.
“Your mother has the worst periods,”she’d said in a quiet voice, a fondness in her tone that softened the weight of the words.“All throughout her life. I hope you didn’t inherit that from her.”
Hazel hadn’t answered. She’d just closed her eyes, sinking deeper into the sheets that smelled like rosewater and soap, and her grandmother had stayed there, one hand still in her hair, eyes gentle, full of a kind of love Hazel had only ever found in this house. In this room. In the space between pain and comfort, when everything else had gone quiet.
Hazel stood there now, frozen, that memory settling over her like dust.
She blinked. Once, then twice.
Still, she didn’t cry.
Instead, she set her jaw, reached for the top drawer of the nightstand, and began to empty it into the open box at her feet.
But the motions weren’t steady. They were frantic and shaky, too fast.
The scent of lavender deepened around her, stirred up by every item she moved. A folded handkerchief, a bottle of hand lotion, avelvet-lined jewelry box with a missing clasp. The memories kept coming, louder now. Unwelcome and unstoppable. Her throat felt tight and her eyes burned.
She pulled open another drawer, this one within the wicker dresser across from the bed.
And then another.
She was breathing hard by then, like she’d been running. Her hands shook as she placed a stack of letters into the box, each one worn thin at the edges, each envelope creased and soft with time. She told herself not to look, not to read, but her fingers moved without asking. Slower now and less practical, she paused over a bundle tied together with pale blue ribbon that had faded to almost grey, the ends frayed like something beloved and handled often. The handwriting on the envelopes was her own, crooked and earnest and unpolished in the earliest ones, growing steadier as the years passed.
They were birthday cards. All of them.
Some store-bought, sure, picked out during hurried visits to the corner store in town, covered in flowers or owls or hand-lettered quotes, but most of them were made by hand. Folded cardstock, mismatched markers, construction paper cut with scalloped scissors. Messages written in bright ink. Stickers in the margins. Hazel recognized her own effort in every one of them, her quiet insistence that her grandmother be celebrated properly. Fully. With the kind of attention andintentionshe’d always deserved and so rarely received.
She remembered the way her grandmother once said it, offhandedly, like she was brushing dust from the windowsill. “Sharing your birthday with Christmas is a real curse when you’ve got six siblings. There’s only so much cake to go around. Makes the most sense not to have it when you’re already celebrating something else.”She’d said it with a small smile, not quite bitter, not quite amused, but Hazel had felt it anyway. That subtle ache, tucked between the words. The kind that didn’t fade, just settled into the bones. She had recognized it instantly, committing her grandmother’s own bruise that no longer showed to memory.
And so every year, Hazel had tried to make it different. Better.
A homemadecard and a birthday cake all to herself. One of those oversized mugs of tea with the honey already stirred in and a single piece of toast, made golden in the toaster, her favourite orange marmalade spread edge to edge. She’d wake early just to have it all ready by the time her grandmother’s slippers shuffled softly down the stairs and into the kitchen.
She flipped one of the cards open now, her thumb dragging along the crease. It was one she’d made in high school from pale yellow cardstock, her writing a bit more contained by then, the loops smaller. Inside, a photo slipped out and fluttered to the floor, landing face-up against the worn hardwood.
Hazel froze.
