Beck’s hand at her back stilled, then pressed to her more firmly, like he could hold her in place with sheer will alone. “Do you remember when it started to shift?”
Hazel blinked, surprised by the gentleness in his voice, by the question that didn’t pry so much as invite.
“My grandmother always said it started after I was born,” Hazel murmured, pressing her eyes shut. Just saying the words out loud scraped something raw. That old guilt, buried deep but never dormant. Over the years, people had tried to lift it from her shoulders, told her it wasn’t her fault— that it was the system that failed her mother, not the child who marked the beginning of her unraveling. But guilt didn’t always obey logic. It lingered like something damp— quiet, clinging, and hard to shake.
“She had postpartum depression,” Hazel continued, voice thinner now. “But no one named it. No one treated it. And over those first fewyears, she just… drifted. Got quieter. Smaller. Sank deeper and deeper inside herself until there wasn’t much left.”
She paused, sucking in a slow, withered breath.
“She used to hum when she cooked,” Hazel said, softer. “And she’d trace my freckles with her finger when she put me to bed. I remember that. I really do. But most of it after that is fog, just glimpses. And then I was living with my grandmother, and the version of my mom I saw after that came in fragments. Short visits or letters. The rare, good spell that made us all wonder if she’d find herself again.”
She swallowed, gaze dropping toward the seam of his jacket, no longer brave enough to hold his gaze.
“And now she lives somewhere soft and quiet, and she seems… content. But it’s not with me. It’s notbecauseof me. I’m just this polite girl who brings cookies and smiles and pretends not to notice the cracks in the surface.”
Beck finally spoke, his voice low, rough like sea glass worn smooth. “That’s a heavy thing to carry all on your own, Hazel.”
Hazel’s breath trembled out of her. “It shouldn’t matter anymore. I’m grown. I shouldn’t still want a mother the way I did when I was ten.”
“It matters,” he said, one of his hands lifting from her back. It settled beneath her chin, instead, his thumb pushing upwards until her gaze was forced to meet his. “It’ll always matter, but that doesn’t mean it defines you. That doesn’t mean it’ll always hurt.”
His words slipped under her ribs, quiet but steadying. She let them settle, like silt stirred up and drifting down again.
“There was a part of me,” she admitted, her eyes falling shut. “That wanted to yell. Or cry. Or ask her why. But then she reached out and held my hand, and I just… couldn’t. I sat there and told her about the bakery, showed her a picture. And pretended it was all fine.”
Beck gave a faint hum, something deep in his chest. His thumb caressed softly over her skin. “Sometimes not breaking the moment is its own kind of love.”
Hazel let that linger. Then, so quietly she wasn’t sure she’d said it aloud, she whispered, “I don’t know if that makes me strong… or just afraid.”
“That was brave,” Beck said. And when she flinched, he added, “It’s okay if it doesn’t feel like it. Doesn’t change the truth.”
Hazel looked up at him, again, the corners of her eyes tight. “I was afraid if I said the wrong thing, it would disappear. That version of her. That tiny piece of something I thought I’d lost.”
Beck didn’t try to fix it. Didn’t feed her platitudes or tell her it would all make sense someday. He just reached for her again, slow and certain, and wrapped both arms around her, drawing her fully into his chest.
His lips brushed her hair again, barely a touch, but weighted with meaning.
“Up here,” he murmured against her temple, his coffee-stained breath brushing over her skin. “No one’s watching. No one’s listening. Say whatever you need to say, or don’t say anything at all. Either way, I’ve got you.”
He tightened his hold a fraction. His coat shifted as he moved, one arm wrapping higher around her back, the other steady at her hip.
“You don’t have to hold it all alone,” he added, quieter still. “Not with me.”
And for a while, that was enough. The wind howled, the ocean murmured far below, and Hazel stayed where she was— held fast, held steady, in the arms of someone who didn’t need to understand everything to offer her exactly what she needed.
14
Hazel crouched near the window, adjusting the angle of the tiny ceramic bookstore with careful fingers. The glue on the snowbank she’d patched earlier had dried, though flecks of it still clung stubbornly to her knuckles. Outside the frosted panes, the little shop’s lights glowed a soft amber— unchanged and just as she remembered.
The porcelain village stretched across the bakery’s front window, a miniature world curated and expanded over decades from her grandmother’s collection. Each building held its precise place: the town hall at the center, its clock tower forever frozen at six-fifteen; the skating pond, a loop of frozen blue resin like a ribbon cinched tight; miniature trees dusted with fake snow; a lone bench beside the candy shop; and the sleepy dog Hazel herself had added as a child, curled beneath the tiny bakery’s stoop.
Her grandmother used to unpack them every December with quiet reverence, placing each figurine just so, humming the same Nat King Cole record while cider bubbled on the stove. She’d narrate their names, their small lives, sharing each piece with Hazel.“This is the general store where everyone says hello. This is the baker who always gives extra icing if you ask nicely.”
Hazel could almost hear her voice again, almost feel the nudge of her elbow, see the faint shimmer of glitter clinging to her tanned, weathered fingertips. She remembered sitting cross-legged on the carpet, her face nearly pressed to the glass of each tiny window,imagining herself inside, tucked into the warmth of another world entirely. A world where every child had a mother, a father, a sibling, a family pet. Where only love, warmth, and comfort existed. A world that could not have been more different from her own.
Now, years later, the village lived in the front window of Rise, trimmed in cedar boughs and lit from beneath by golden string lights. It was their official entry in the Main Street holiday display competition. Across the length of the street, other shops had gone all out— some with glittering dioramas of Santa’s workshop, others with rotating snowmen or scenes fromThe GrinchorThe Nightmare Before Christmas. But Hazel had wanted something quieter, something real. Something that reminded her of the very person who had put her here, inside Rise, in the first place.
She stepped back and smoothed her hands down the sides of her dress— a deep green wrap, soft and heavy velvet, with sleeves just long enough to hide the faint flour smudge still clinging to her wrist. Her hair was curled softly at the ends and the scent of vanilla clung to her skin from the baking she’d done that afternoon.
