Under_The_Whispering_Door_by_TJ_Klune

learned from her mother, a heavyset Polish woman who called Wallace
pociecha. The scent of peppermint filled the room.
His mother looked up at him standing in the doorway, and he was ten and
forty all at the same time, in his sweats and flip-flops, but also in flannel
pajamas, his hair a mess, his toes bare on the cold floor. “Look,” she said,
showing him the candy canes. “I think it’s the best batch yet. Mamusia would
be proud, I think.”
Wallace doubted that. His grandmother had been a frightening woman with
a sharp tongue and blunt insults. She died in a home for the elderly. Wallace
had been sad and relieved all at once, though he’d kept that thought to
himself.
He took a step toward his mother, and at the same time felt the warm
bloom of the tea as it slid down his throat and settled in his belly. It tasted
like the candy canes smelled, and it was too much, too jarring, because it
couldn’t be real. Yet he could taste her candy canes as if she were really
there, and he said, “Mom?” but she didn’t respond, instead humming along as
Bing Crosby gave way to Ol’ Blue Eyes.
He blinked slowly.
He was in a tea shop.
He blinked again.
He was in the kitchen of his childhood home.
He said, “Mom, I—” and there was a sting in his heart, a sharp jab that
caused him to grunt. His mother had died. One minute she was there, and the
next she was gone, his father speaking gruffly into the phone, telling him it’d
been quick, that by the time they’d caught it, it’d already been too late.
Metastasized, one of his cousins had told him later, in her lungs. She hadn’t
wanted Wallace to know, especially since they hadn’t spoken in close to a
year. He’d been so angry at her for this. For everything.
This is what the tea tasted like. Memory. Home. Youth. Betrayal.
Bittersweet and warm.
Wallace blinked and found himself still in the tea shop, the cup shaking in
his hands. He set it back down on the counter before it spilled more.
Hugo said, “You have questions.”
In a shaky voice, Wallace replied, “That is quite possibly the biggest
understatement ever spoken by the human tongue.”