Chapter 1
Hazel's POV:
Duncan Trevelyan reached for my phone. "Play it again."
I pulled it away and played the recording again. Wrapped in his cashmere coat, Sabrina Ashford said through tears, "I'm sorry. I begged him to stay. If you want to blame someone, blame me."
Duncan adjusted her collar before looking at me. "Change your clothes. I'll take you to the hospital."
"No." I picked up the keys to my mother's apartment. I was too exhausted to hear another explanation.
"You shouldn't go alone right now."
Last month, my mother, Rose McCauley, had sat in her wheelchair and said, "I'd love to see the sunset over the Avelin River one more time."
He'd tucked the blanket around her legs. "I'll drive you tomorrow."
The next day, my mother had been waiting so long that her hands were cold by the time he called from a gallery reception.
"Take a cab. Sabrina is meeting investors for the first time. I need to be here with her."
I headed for the door. Duncan caught my wrist. "It's raining. How can I let you go like this?"
There was a wine-red lipstick mark on his cuff. Before I could speak, Sabrina braced herself against the coffee table. "Duncan, I can't breathe..."
He let go of me at once and turned to settle her on the sofa. "Slow breaths. Where's your medication?"
As the elevator doors closed, he was still searching through her handbag.
At the hospice, Agnes Rowe, the nurse, hugged me. For the past three months, whenever she worked the morning shift, she'd c***k my mother's curtains so she could see the trees outside. Today, the curtains were shut.
"She wouldn't let us turn off the lamp. She said you were afraid of the dark, and the hallway was too long."
My mother was already wearing the blue dress I'd brought her the day before. I touched the collar. I had sewn on the top pearl button myself, and the thread tail was still tucked inside.
"You pulled it too tight. I'll fix it at home," she'd complained with a smile yesterday. I tucked the thread end flat and stood by the bed, hollowed out by the thought that she would never wake again.
Agnes gave me a canvas bag. Along with my mother's belongings was an unfinished stained-glass lamp. Mom had restored old glass all her life. When she was young, she repaired church windows. Later, she repaired lamps in the shop below her apartment.
The shade formed a small window and still needed one final piece of yellow glass. A tiny H was engraved in the brass base: the first letter of my name.
Duncan texted me.
Duncan: I'll handle the funeral. Sabrina's asleep. I'll come over soon.
Fifty minutes later, Ryan Keats, Duncan's assistant, handed me paperwork for a cemetery plot. He looked uncomfortable. "Mr. Trevelyan couldn't get away, so he sent me to bring you the paperwork and arrange transportation if you needed it."
"Mom already chose a place. She wants to be buried beside my grandmother."
"But the other plot has been paid for."
"Then get a refund."
I called the funeral home my mother had chosen. Once they took her away, I returned to her apartment. Old newspapers covered the workbench, and glass fragments sat sorted by color in jam jars.
In a drawer, I found an offer letter from the Greymere Glass Restoration Center. Mom had kept it for me. Back then, I had wanted to take her to Greymere with me, but she asked, "If you and Duncan lived apart, what would he say?"
"He loves you. After I'm gone, I hope you'll still have someone beside you."
So I never accepted the job. Now I only wanted to leave Valebridge and breathe again.
I opened my laptop and replied to the center.
Hazel McCauley: I accept the position.
The moment I hit send, a key turned in the lock.
Duncan came in and saw the unlit lamp on the table first.
