Page 4 of Rise
As Hazel neared the front door, she noticed something jammed into the frame just above the latch.
A business card.
It had been placed with careful intention and angled in a way that saidI was here and you’ll remember that I came. The card’s glossy front caught the waning light like a challenge and Hazel stared at it for a moment, unmoving. The name stood out in curling blue script.
Lynn Weatherbie
Weatherbie Realty
She remembered Lynn from the funeral— tall, tidy, dressed in a tailored navy coat, heels clicking on the church floor. She’d approached quietly, not during the service itself, but after. It had happened when Hazel had been standing near the exit, raw and hollow, thanking strangers and vaguely familiar faces for their condolences. Lynn had sidled in close with a sympathetic murmur and a card already in hand, something about“just in case”and“should you be thinking about next steps.”Hazel hadn’t taken it then. She hadn’t even replied. Just looked at her, long enough that the woman flushed and backed away.
And yet, here it was.
Her name, her logo, her quiet insistence.
Hazel’s fingers moved before she could think better of it. She yanked the card free from the frame, the corner catching briefly on asplinter in the wood. The wind shifted behind her, lifting her hair from her shoulders and bringing with it the scent of pine and the distant sea, but all she could feel was the heat rising beneath her skin. That bone-deep frustration. That anger that bloomed not as fire, but as something heavier— like being underestimated. Like being watched by people waiting to see what you’d give up first.
She curled the card in her palm, the edges bending sharply. The thin cardstock crinkled with a soft, papery sound as her fingers balled into a fist.
She stepped inside.
In the hush of the entryway, she hung her canvas bag on the hook beside the old umbrella stand, fingers still twitching from the tension. Then, without looking, she shoved the card deep into the side pocket and let it vanish into the dark.
She toed off her shoes next, socked feet sinking into the old runner rug centered in the hallway.
The living room opened up in a familiar sprawl. Her funeral dress was slung across the arm of the couch, still holding the shape of her along the long, black seam.
She didn’t touch it. Couldn’t bring herself to.
Hazel moved instinctively toward the kitchen, filled a glass pitcher from the tap, and returned to make her rounds. She watered each of her grandmother’s dutifully cared for plants, one by one. Her fingers brushed leaves and straightened pots. Her throat tightened as she crouched beside a peace lily that had started to wilt at the edges.
“Sorry,” she murmured. “She always remembered. I should’ve.”
The house didn’t answer, but it felt like it heard.
Back in the kitchen, the overhead light hummed faintly. Hazel wiped her face with the back of her hand, not bothering to check if she was crying. She knew she was. The ache inside her was rising again, pressing against her ribcage and clawing its way up through her throat.
I should have been here.
She bit her lip until it hurt. Until there was a faint tinge of copper on her tongue.
Justone moreconversation. That was all she wanted. All she could wish for.
One more cup of tea on the back porch, watching the wind move through the trees.
There, her grandmother could’ve shared one last story about her days in the classroom: chalk dust in the air, the sharp scent of dry-erase markers clinging to her sleeves, the low hum of restless energy just before the lunch bell. Tales of impossible students who softened with time, of quiet ones who wrote poems in the margins of their math sheets.
Or maybe it would’ve been something deeper, something harder to share. She might have told Hazel another story about her late husband, the man Hazel never had a chance to meet. He’d died of a sudden heart attack one bleak November morning while Hazel’s mother was still pregnant. Before the postpartum depression and anxiety took root and twisted into something darker.
His death had been a shock that split her grandmother’s life into before and after. She had done what she could to keep his memory alive over the years; the way he whistled off-key while folding laundry, the particular way he laughed when something truly caught him off guard. And if Hazel looked hard enough, she could have sworn she still saw his imprint in that old green armchair in the living room. Each time her grandmother had shared small pieces of their love story, Hazel had listened with rapt attention— it was the sort of love she longed to find, someday. Quiet, steady, and enduring.
When he passed, the life insurance policy he’d left behind was enough to pay off the mortgage and pad her grandmother’s savings; a quiet inheritance that let her grieve in private without fearing the world would fall out from under her. She never remarried, never even looked at another man, though she hadn’t yet reached sixty when he died. Instead, she poured herself into her work. And later, into Hazel. She offered the kind of steadfast, enduring love that never needed grand gestures to be felt.
Justone moreday.
But the wishes were useless. There would be no more.
Hazel stared at the clean counter, hands braced on either side of the sink. Her reflection hovered faintly in the darkened window overlooking the backyard. She looked older than she remembered. More tired.
