Page 109 of Rise
And that word— that false claim ofworry—it prickled at something broken and unhealed within her, a flash of white-hot anger stirring itself awake in the pit of her stomach.
As ifhehadn’t left her in the very heart of that feeling. As ifhehadn’t stood at the edge of her childhood and decided the weight of it was too much to carry. As ifhehadn’t packed up and walked away, hands lighter without her in them.
She gripped the counter again, harder this time. Her arm was shaking from the effort of it. She turned for a moment and stared out the front window, at the faint hints of the world continuing on outside the bakery, outside of this moment. As if her world wasn’t slowly closing in around her, the pressure forcing her body to curl in on itself. Like it had that first day back in Bar Harbor, out on the front stoop, before someone had come along and offered an olive branch. A way out. A hint of light at the end of the tunnel.
“I really don’t think you’re in any position to worry about me beingoverwhelmed,”she said. Her voice was quiet, but there was iron in it. Something dangerous, finally unburied. She could feel the seams of her composure beginning to rip free. Her eyes pressed shut and silently, she begged her father to let it go, to move on. To apologize, maybe, or wish her a Merry Christmas, and then say goodbye. Theycould try again in a few months, when this anger had faded and drifted away on the westward wind.
She wanted to let this be over, to try and forget he’d called at all.
But instead, he went still on the line. She could feel the weight of it and instantly, she knew— there would be no letting this moment go, not for him.
“What does that mean?”
Hazel swallowed. Her heart was a drum against her ribs now.
“It means,” she said, drawing the words out. “Don’t you think I might’ve beenoverwhelmedat seven, when my mother was sent away and my father just...left?”
The words dropped one by one like stones into still water. He remained silent on the other end.
“And what about when you told me I’d visit you, live with you? And then you just stopped calling instead. You got remarried, had more kids, built a life. One I was never a part of.”
Her voice cracked. She hated how young she sounded, how brittle the words came out.
“I waited for you,” she said, almost a whisper. “I waited. For years. But you never came back. Even though you promised.”
The silence now wasn’tjustsilence, it was abandonment, reflected back in real time.
Hazel’s breath came hard and unsteady. She pressed a hand to her chest like she could calm the thunder beneath it.
“Why can’t you justsupportme?“ she asked, voice raw and breaking. “Why can’t you ever just sayI’m proud of you, Hazel?Or that you see how hard I’m trying? Or even that you’re glad I’m okay?”
She waited. And waited.
But he didn’t say any of those things.
Instead, his voice came back like a door swinging shut, smooth and detached like it always was. It was as though he hadn’t heard a single word she’d said, as if she hadn’t just torn herself open and bared her pain to him in hopes that he would finallyseeorunderstand.
“You could still come for Christmas, if you want. The invitation’s open, Haze. It always has been.”
Hazel stared at the counter, blinking back the sting in her eyes.
His offer was too casual, too hollow, like inviting someone to fill a seat at a dinner reservation. Like he hadn’t missed twenty Christmases before this one, like he hadn’t left twenty versions of her sitting alone with unopened presents and unanswered calls and an ache in her chest too big for her small body to carry.
She laughed, but it wasn’t a laugh, not really. It was a sound scraped from the bottom of her lungs, ragged and empty.
“This won’t be the first Christmas I’ve spent without you,” she said, each word cracked at the edges. She paused, drawing in a trembling breath. “I’d rather stay here,” she continued, her voice dipping a bit lower. “Where I’m wanted. Where someone actually cared about me, once.”
Then, before he could respond, before he could say something cutting or careless or worse,nothingat all, she hung up.
She stood there for a long time afterward, the phone still in her hand, the silence loud enough to drown in.
The oven beeped. Somewhere in the distance, a car passed on the road, kicking slush up onto the sidewalk, spraying the edge of the front window.
But Hazel didn’t move. She couldn’t, not yet.
Minutes later, she found herself further into the kitchen, though she couldn’t remember her legs carrying her there. One moment, she was standing motionless in the hallway, the phone screen still warm in her palm. The next, she was sliding a tray of uncooked croissants into place with hands that moved on muscle memory alone. Her body knew what came next. Whisk, fold, preheat, brush with cream. But inside, everything was fogged and muffled, like the sound had been turned down on the part of her that usually felt tethered to the moment.
But she kept moving, counting out pastries, setting timers she didn’t check, rotating trays in the oven as the smell of browning butter thickened around her. Her mind didn’t settle, not once, not even when she began setting the first delicate batch behind the glass display case. Her fingers were steady as she worked but her heart was not.
