Page 6 of Rise
Hazel moved toward the closet with a sweater, a few pairs of linen pants, and a sundress draped over one arm. She pushed the door open the rest of the way, reached for a hanger, then paused. Up on the top shelf, nearly out of sight, sat a clear plastic bin. The lid was slightly ajar, the contents a mix of old photo envelopes and loose prints, their edges faded. Her stomach gave a small, involuntary twist.
She knew that bin— or at least, the kind of bin it was. The kind that held things she might not be ready for.
Hazel stepped further into the closet and reached for it, stretching up and dragging it down carefully with one hand. The weight of it surprised her. She tossed her clothes back into the suitcase, then settled on the rug with the bin balanced between her knees.
The label on top, written in her grandmother’s steady script, read:Photos to be sorted.
Hazel hesitated, thumb pressed to the edge of the lid. She wasn’t sure what she was afraid of— maybe what she’d feel more than what she’d find. After another moment, she lifted the lid and began to flip through the contents.
The first handful was a mess of decades. Moments frozen in time, shuffled like a deck with no particular order. In the first she was maybe a year old, strapped into a highchair out on her grandmother’s back deck, a cake with a single candle sitting squarely in front of her. Her mother and father flanked the chair on either side, both smiling. It was a snapshot from the days before— before the diagnosis, before the divorce, before her world reoriented around absence. But even in the frame, amid the joy, there was something behind her mother’s smile. A tightness around the mouth, a faint pinch at the bridge of her nose. It was the kind of shadow you don’t notice until much later, when you knew what to look for.
More photos followed. Snapshots from childhood, though some years were conspicuously absent. The in-between years. The ones spent with her parents, in Portland, when her dad was still trying to hold everything together and visits to Bar Harbor had grown few and far between. But there were plenty from the time she turned seven. That was the year everything cracked apart. That was the year shecame to stay— meant to be temporary, just until things stabilized. But temporary had stretched, quietly and relentlessly, until she left for college. Until it was her turn to leave.
There were a few photos of her in this very room in those early days. Her frown was deep and defiant, the kind of look that stayed with you. Hazel ran her thumb lightly across the edge of one print, the ache in her chest growing tight and familiar. It was the ache of being left behind. Of rooms gone quiet, of calls that never came. Of knowing you weren’t enough to stay for.
Then, with slowness that only came from the passing of time, the pictures began to brighten. A garden shot, Hazel in a sunhat far too big for her head, grinning at the camera with a tomato in each hand, a gap between her front teeth. She traced her tongue over that spot now, relieved that it had shrunk as she aged.
The next one was another shot of her in this room. She wore a long, oversized white gown— her grandmother’s wedding dress. She could faintly recall trying it on as a child, claiming to be the Queen of England stopping by for tea. One corner of the image caught her eye. A jar sat on the windowsill, just barely visible over the curve of her shoulder.
Hazel’s breath stilled. Her expression dimmed.
She remembered that jar.
A makeshift savings plan, coins and wrinkled dollar bills she’d collected from bake sales and by helping in neighbours’ gardens. Her heart sank like a stone. She’d poured every spare coin into that jar for months. Hoping and planning for a trip to Hartford. One of the first promises her father had made and never kept.
With her stomach in knots and her throat thick with emotion she didn’t dare name, Hazel brushed the photo aside and kept going.
There were more photos from that year. Christmas lights wrapped around the porch, her grandmother’s birthday dinner, a blurry selfie Hazel had taken with her presents piled on the bed behind her. And in the background, the jar again. This time, filled to the brim and nearly overflowing. Inside, there was more than enough for a bus ticket, maybe even a plane ticket. She’d been so sure. She’d counted every dollar three times.
But instead, on Boxing Day, an envelope had arrived. Inside there had been no ticket, no handwritten note to explain. Just a card. Cheerful, coated in red and green glitter that scraped rough against her fingers. Across the front of the card was a photo of her father’s new wife smiling down at her very round, very pregnant belly. Beneath it, a slanted font read:Merry Christmas from the Newest (and Soon-to-Be One Bigger) Family on the Block.
There was no customization, no explanation. No mention of Hazel, either, the daughter he’d left behind.
A few days later, he had called. She remembered how tightly she’d clutched the phone, her tiny hands damp with sweat. Dread had pooled low in her stomach, though she hadn’t known the name for it at the time. Her father had tried in that broken, matter of fact way of his, to explain that with a baby on the way, there was just too much chaos for Hazel to come visit. She hadn’t responded; hadn’t told him she understood, though she could tell that he so clearly wanted her to.
When they’d hung up a mere few minutes later, Hazel walked quietly to her room and collapsed face-first into her pillow. The sobs came in hard, ragged waves.
Her grandmother never asked what happened. She just pushed open the door and sat on the edge of the bed without saying a word. As Hazel’s cries swelled, her grandmother’s hand found her back and began tracing slow, soothing circles.
When the tears dried and her breaths began to even out, the bed creaked quietly as her grandmother stood. She crossed the room in silence, stepped out into the hall, and pulled the door mostly shut, leaving just a sliver of warm light to spill in from the hallway. A gentle reminder that she wasn’t alone.
Hazel swallowed hard and shoved the stack of photos aside, her hands trembling. There weren’t many more after that, anyways. She closed the bin, her fingertips lingering on the plastic lid. The heat pressed in from the window now, heavy and unmoving. Still cross-legged on the rug, she closed her eyes and breathed deep.
Then, when her heart had settled and the ache in her chest had cooled, she rose. She placed the bin back on the shelf and turned toward the rest of the day.
Her suitcase remained where it was, half-unpacked.
By the time she made it down the stairs and out the front door, the sun had climbed higher. The streets of Bar Harbor glowed in that distinct late-summer way: edges sharp with clarity, soft in colour, like someone had filtered the world through a warm lens.
Rise was only a few blocks away, but Hazel walked slowly. She needed the air. She needed the space between the house and the bakery, the old life and the new. As she passed familiar buildings, her gaze caught on the details— window boxes overflowing with geraniums, a chipped bench outside the hardware store, the cracked corner of the stop sign where she and her friends used to meet for bike rides.
Above the rooftops, just past the last row of shops and along the curve of the waterfront, the lighthouse on the Ells Pier stood in quiet silhouette against the pale sky.
It hadn’t changed. Narrow, weatherworn, and still. She could just make out the shape of the gallery rail, the subtle glint of glass at the top where the lamp had once shone come nightfall. Even dormant, it felt watchful, like the kind of place where someone might live alone with a thermos of coffee and a good pair of binoculars. Someone who liked the quiet.
Hazel paused for a breath, letting her eyes linger on the familiar outline. She used to spot it from her bedroom window as a kid, just the faint suggestion of it through the trees. Some nights, she’d sit on the windowsill, knees hugged to her chest, and count how long it took for the light to sweep across the harbouronce dusk fell.
The keeper of the light had been a kind of story to her then. A maybe-man. Someone steady and solitary, who walked the narrow stairs with wind in his collar. She liked to believe he stayed up all night, just in case. That someone was always awake, always watching, always there.
