Chapter 3 Her Own Handwriting

Hazel's POV

"You're stalling," Osric said, without even looking up.

"I'm not stalling. I'm organizing."

I wasn't organizing. I was searching the counter like my life depended on it, shoving aside receipts and rubber bands and a chipped mug full of pens, looking for anything , a recipe card, a checklist, a single word from Beatrix that might tell me what to do next. Somewhere under this mess had to be a plan. Beatrix always had a plan. She was the kind of person who labeled her spice jars in alphabetical order and still color-coded them by smell.

My fingers hit paper folded in quarters, tucked under the old cash register where nobody would look unless they were desperate. I was desperate. I pulled it free.

Gone to get what I need. Back by morning. Don't worry, sweetheart , you've got this.

For one whole second, my chest loosened. Relief hit before I could stop it, warm and stupid and immediate, the kind that comes from being told exactly what you wanted to hear.

Then I actually looked at the handwriting.

The g in going had that little backward loop I'd had since third grade, when my teacher made me redo my cursive worksheet four times. The w in worry slanted left instead of right, a habit Mom used to tease me about because nobody else in the family wrote it that way. I knew this handwriting. I'd know it anywhere.

It was mine.

I hadn't written this note.

My breath caught somewhere behind my ribs and refused to come back out smooth. I read it again, slower, waiting for it to turn back into something normal, something Beatrix had scrawled in her loose, looping hand that never quite matched the lines on the page. It didn't change. Every letter sat exactly the way my own hand would put it, down to the little hook I always added on my lowercase y's without meaning to.

"Everything okay over there?"

Osric's voice cut across the room, low, unbothered, like he already knew the answer was no and was only asking to see what I'd say.

"Fine." The word came out thin. I cleared my throat and tried again, steadier. "Found a note. Beatrix left instructions."

That wasn't a lie, exactly. It just wasn't the whole truth, and I had no plans of handing him the whole truth , not when I didn't understand it myself yet, not when the alternative was standing in front of a stranger admitting that something had written in my own hand without my permission.

I carried the note closer to the lamp on the counter, tilting it toward the light like that might reveal a trick, a smudge, some proof that I was wrong. The paper was ordinary. The ink was ordinary. Only the words were impossible.

Don't worry, sweetheart. You've got this.

Beatrix never called me sweetheart. Not once, not ever. She called me kid, or Hazel Jane when she was annoyed, or nothing at all when she was too busy ringing up a customer to bother with names. Sweetheart was a word my own head reached for sometimes, late at night, when I needed someone to say something kind to me and there wasn't anyone around to say it.

Whoever wrote this note knew that too.

My hands had started shaking again, small and steady, like a phone buzzing on silent. I set the paper down flat on the counter and pressed both palms against it, trying to hold it still, trying to hold myself still along with it.

"You went pale," Osric said.

I hadn't heard him get up. He was standing on the other side of the counter now, close enough that I could feel the strange, dense warmth coming off him, like standing near a fire that hadn't decided yet whether it wanted to burn anything.

"I'm fine," I said again, faster this time, the kind of fast that gives a lie away before the words even land.

"You keep saying that."

"Because it keeps being true."

He looked at the note under my hands, then back at my face, and something in his expression sharpened , not soft exactly, but focused, the way you'd look at a lock you were starting to suspect didn't have the key you thought it did.

"Let me see it."

"It's nothing. Just , instructions. From my aunt."

"Then you won't mind showing me."

He held out one hand, palm up, patient in a way that made refusing feel childish. Every instinct in me said to hand it over, to let someone else look at this and tell me I wasn't crazy, that handwriting couldn't just appear in a stranger's hand overnight, that there was some boring explanation I hadn't thought of yet.

I didn't hand it over.

I folded the note along its original creases instead, quick, and slid it into my back pocket before I could talk myself out of it. If I showed him , if I let him see my own handwriting staring back at both of us , I'd have to say the words out loud. I'd have to admit that something in this shop knew me well enough to fake my own hand, and that meant admitting I didn't understand this place at all, not one bit, and I already had a stranger in front of me waiting for proof that I did.

I wasn't going to give him that either.

"It's personal," I said. "Family stuff. Not really your business."

His jaw tightened, just barely, like he'd caught the lie and decided, for now, to let it go unanswered. "Fine," he said. "Keep your secrets." He said it lightly, almost like a joke, but his eyes didn't match his voice at all , they stayed fixed on my back pocket a second too long, like he was memorizing exactly where I'd put it.

I turned away before he could look any closer, walking back toward the cauldron like I had somewhere urgent to be, like my legs weren't the only thing keeping the rest of me from folding.

Beatrix wrote back by morning. Beatrix wrote don't worry.

Except Beatrix hadn't written any of it. Someone else had reached into whatever part of me held my own handwriting and pulled it out, careful, exact, good enough to fool me for a whole three seconds before the truth caught up.

Someone wanted me calm tonight.

Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to make sure I didn't start asking the right questions until it was already too late to do anything about the answers.

I pressed one hand flat against the cauldron's cool metal side, steadying myself, and made myself breathe slow through my nose the way you're supposed to when you don't want anyone watching to see you fall apart.

It didn't work.

Behind me, Osric's voice came again, quieter now, almost careful. "Hazel."

I hadn't told him my name.