“I didn’t know what else to do,” Hazel admitted, the words leaving her mouth before she could soften them. “Felt wrong, somehow, not to honour her last wish for me.”
She didn’t say the rest, not out loud. That deep down, she hadn’t just stayed out of obligation— she’d stayed because she was scared, because walking away would’ve meant admitting she had nowhere leftto go. No dream of her own, not really. Only a thousand sleepless nights in a Boston kitchen and the heavy, echoing ache of a phone that never rang.
She stayed because this place, this crumbling little building with its mismatched chairs and flour-dusted floors, felt more like home than anywhere she’d ever tried to build outside of Maine. Because the idea that her grandmother had believed in her so deeply, so quietly, had cracked something open in her chest that hadn’t stopped bleeding since.
Because, if she was being honest, she neededthis.She needed to feel like she belonged to something, like she was still connected to the woman who’d raised her with steady hands and silent, enduring love.
She wrapped her fingers tighter around the mug, thumb brushing a chip in the ceramic.
“I think I stayed because I didn’t know how not to,” she added, more to herself than to Eli. “Because leaving felt like forgetting her. And I couldn’t— can’t— do that.”
Eli didn’t interrupt. Just nodded in that same, silent way, his pen tracing looping letters across is notebook with a speed that amazed her.
“You were a chef in Boston before this, right?”
Hazel’s stomach flickered. “Yeah, a pastry chef. I worked in a few different kitchens. Eventually ended up managing the dessert program at a restaurant in Back Bay.”
“You don’t miss it?”
Hazel looked down at her coffee. The rising steam kissed her chin, warm and bitter and laced with a lingering hint of maple.
“I miss the structure,” she admitted, leaning back against the chair. “And the late-night noise, maybe, but not the pressure. And definitely not the burnout.”
“Tell me about that,” Eli said. “The burnout.”
Hazel’s breath caught. She reached for the cuff of her sweater, rolling the soft knit between her fingers until it stretched and gave. A loose strand of hair slipped forward, and she tucked it back behindher ear, her touch lingering there a beat too long— anything to anchor herself before answering.
“It sneaks up on you,” she said after a beat, her voice low. “Or at least it did for me. One day I just... stopped feeling anything at all. Not joy, not exhaustion, not even pride. I was working twelve-hour shifts in kitchens that never slept, plating desserts for people who wouldn’t remember my name the next morning. And still, I kept saying yes. More hours. More menus. More ways to prove I belonged.”
She paused, blinking hard. Her gaze had drifted— past the window, past Main Street, past the soft swirl of snow. She could imagine those long, never-ending days in Boston, as if she were back in the throes of them, suffering through it all over again.
“I thought if I worked hard enough, I could earn something back,” she said. “Not money or reputation or anything like that. Just... meaning, maybe. Permission to rest. But that’s not how it works. You don’t get to collapse after the finish line. You collapse somewhere along the way, and by then it’s too late. No one’s waiting to catch you.”
She gave a short breath of laughter, but there was no humour in it. Eli’s eyes were still fixed to her face and every so often, he would nod, urging her to keep going.
“I used to love it, you know? Creating. Cooking. Baking. The way sugar transforms, the alchemy of it. But Boston turned it into a performance, a race. And I was always ten steps behind. No matter what I gave, it never felt like enough.”
Her eyes flicked to Eli’s— watching him now, measuring the weight of what she’d offered. Trying to decipher if to him, it was enough.
“And when the grief hit, it knocked everything else loose. All that burnout had hollowed me out so much that I didn’t have anything left to hold it with.”
She looked down at her hands, fingers splayed across her lap.
“Coming back here wasn’t the plan. But maybe it was the only way forward.”
She didn’t say anything else for a moment. Just sat there, the quiet stretching between them like soft dough— pulling, pliable, never quite breaking. Outside the window, the snow was still falling in slow,deliberate spirals. There were footsteps traced along the sidewalk outside from people who had passed by, but not lingered.
Eli didn’t fill the silence, he just let it settle. Gave her space, the way good writers do.
Hazel turned her mug in slow circles between her palms. The heat had begun to fade, but she held it like it still offered something. A memory, maybe. A tether.
She cleared her throat, eyes still on the steam-softened glass. “You know,” she said, her voice low. “Even when I was away, she used to send me things. Cards, letters. Little reminders.”
Eli lifted his head. “Recipe cards?” he asked, already reaching for his pen.
Hazel smiled faintly. “Yeah. She used to mail me these boxes filled with pine, or herbs from her garden, and tucked inside would be some old family recipe written in her handwriting. She’d always end it withDon’t forget where you started.”
“That’s a nice sentiment,” Eli said, his eyes warm behind the frames of his glasses.
