She approached carefully, making sure I wasn’t using this to trap her somehow.When she sat, she didn’t touch the food right away.Just watched me with that sharp attention I’d come to expect.
We ate in silence.Spoons tapping ceramic.Snow against the shutters.Fire settling on its logs.I’d eaten with people knowing someone might pull a gun across the table.I’d eaten in rooms where good posture meant survival.I’d eaten alone enough times to lose count.But nothing matched the way she watched me now—assessing, questioning, trying to understand a puzzle she didn’t want to solve.
Halfway through her bowl, she stopped.Set her spoon down with too much care.Looked at me like she was lining up a shot.
“Why was I spared?”
Her voice didn’t shake, but it had edges.She’d been carrying the question since the night I found her.I’d known it was coming eventually.Didn’t make answering it easier.
I set my spoon down so I didn’t snap it in my hand.Took a breath that didn’t help.
“You weren’t supposed to be there.”
She froze.The words didn’t land all at once—first confusion, then recognition, then impact.She stood so fast the chair legs scraped across the floor.She didn’t look at me, not directly.She paced instead, arms wrapped around herself like she needed something holding her together.
“So I lived by accident,” she said.“Because of timing.Because of coincidence.Because I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, just not wrong enough.”
There was nothing to add.Nothing to soften.She turned back to me and there were tears on her face now, though her voice stayed controlled.
“They died because someone paid you.And I lived because someone didn’t.”
“Yes.”
Her laugh didn’t belong to humor.It belonged to breaking.
“Who paid you?”
“I don’t get names.I don’t ask.”
Her expression twisted.“Of course you don’t.Pull the trigger, get your paycheck, don’t think too hard.Easier that way.”
She spoke like she wanted to hurt me.It worked.Not because the words were untrue, but because they were exactly true.
I stood slowly, kept distance, approached without threat.She didn’t back up.Didn’t look away.
“I know what I am,” I said.“Nothing I say changes what I did.”
She looked at me like she was trying to see the person beneath the damage and didn’t know if one existed.
“Then why am I alive?”
There were no tactical answers left.No training to fall back on.I had broken protocol the second she opened her eyes in that closet.
“I don’t know,” I said.The truth scraped its way out.“I should have killed you.I couldn’t.”
The fire cracked.The wind hit the wall hard enough to make the shutters rattle.She sat again, not because she trusted me, but because her legs were done.I returned to my seat too, not because I knew what to do, but because there was nothing left to say.
She didn’t look at me.I didn’t look away from her.
Some truths don’t change anything, and still change everything.
She now knew the answer she’d needed.I now knew she would carry it for the rest of her life.We sat with that reality in the dim light—two people bound together by an act I’d carried out and a mistake I couldn’t undo.
Outside, the storm kept trying to bury the cabin.
Inside, silence did the same.
Night pressed hard against the windows, turning the frost into a second layer of ice.The storm had gotten worse, the wind hammering the cabin like it wanted the walls to fail.I added wood to the fire because if the heat dropped even a little, Mia wouldn’t stand a chance.Neither would I.
