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 itright.
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 ashello,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 thefloor 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 werereallyimpatient. 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 aneight-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.
