Page 28 of Rise
The words scraped. She felt them like grit beneath her skin, abrasive and presumptive. Her grip on the phone tightened slightly and her pulse beat once, hard, against the base of her throat. There was a pause— small, but razor-sharp— where she could feel herself recalibrate. Where she had to remind herself tostay even. To not rise.
Getting the house ready to sell.
Like it was that simple. Like it hadn’t belonged to the one person who’d stayed.
Hazel opened her mouth to respond and then closed it. And in that second, her mind floated, untethered, to a memory she hadn’t visited in years.
She was seventeen, a high school junior, the first time she’d agreed to visit her dad in Hartford after so many cancelled plans that came before. Her stepmother, Dana, had greeted her at the door, warm but vaguely apologetic, guiding her into their too-clean home with its pristine wood floors and neutral-toned rugs. Her half-siblings, Colette and Levi, were tiny then, still spilling juice and squealing through the hallways. There had been noise, laughter, and the clatter of Lego bricks against the hardwood.
And amongst the chaos, her father had stood in the doorway to the living room, his coffee in hand. He’d been smiling in that slow, quiet way that people smile when they’re watching a life they’re proud of. Watchingthem.Not her. His eyes hadn’t even lifted toward her when she’d entered the room.
Instead, he’d looked at Colette with something soft in his eyes, a quiet sort of awe. A sweetness she had never known from him, not even when she was little. Not even when she’d tried so hard to earn it.
Her stomach had ached so badly, so immediately, that she’d excused herself almost the moment she’d walked in and locked the door to the powder room behind her. It smelled like lemon polish and some type of strong cleaning solution, like bleach. She remembered staring into the mirror, palms braced on either side of the sink, wondering what she lacked. Wondering what he saw in them that he’d never seen in her.
She hadn’t visited again. Refused the few times he’d offered after that.
Hazel blinked herself back into the present, the memory like a bruise pressed under her ribs.
“I’m not sure I’m selling it,” she admitted, surprising even herself as the words slipped past her lips.
There was a beat of silence on the other end. “You’re not?”
“I haven’t decided,” she said. “Things are different now.”
And they were. In so many ways she hadn’t even named yet.
Her gaze flicked back toward Beck.
He was still watching her, still waiting. His shoulders were relaxed, but there was a quiet sharpness in his eyes, like he saw more than he let on. Like he’d caught the subtle shift in her stance, in her tone, though he was too far to make out her words.
She didn’t think about what that meant. Didn’t draw the line from her hesitation to leave to the person quietly rooted across the room.
“Well, when do you plan to go back to Boston?” her father asked. “Back to work?”
The question landed like a wrong key in a familiar song, too loud and just slightly off-pitch.
“I’m not sure,” she said, drawing out the words. “I might not go back.”
She didn’t offer anything more— didn’t admit to quitting the job she’d once beensoproud of.
There was another pause on the other end of the line, another exhaled breath— this one, though, was sharper. It held more surprise.
“Why’s that?”
She closed her eyes, just for a second. She didn’t want to explain this to him, not now, and maybe not ever. Not when she hadn’t even taken the time to explain it to herself yet.
Hazel took a long, steadying breath, and then tried again.
“I don’t know, Dad. Bar Harbor feels more like home than I expected, I guess.”
The silence that followed wasn’t thoughtful, it was blank. Like her words didn’t compute. Like they had gotten lost along the way.
“Well,” he said eventually, “if you need me to come out there, help you settlethings… I can.”
And then, just barely, Hazel heard it.
Dana’s voice, muffled but insistent in the background. Coaching, prompting.Offer to go out there. She mightneedyou.
