No damage. No broken locks. Nothing anyone could point to later.
Mia could’ve been stuck for a while. Late. Annoyed.
The thought followed him all morning.
Until Mia came back.
She didn’t slam doors or raise her voice. That would’ve been easier. Instead, she found him puttering around the barn likenothing had happened, wiping down a workbench that didn’t need it.
“You didn’t get the battery checked,” she said.
Semantics. He’d meant to. And if she thought it was the battery, he wasn’t about to correct her.
“You said you had,” she shot back. “You said it was handled.”
He opened his mouth, then closed it. Semantics. He’d meant to. That should count for something.
“My van died on the side of the road,” she continued. “I hit a tree. I lost a client.”
Something shifted in his chest. Not guilt. Irritation.
“You should have followed up,” he said before he could stop himself. “You know how busy things get around here.”
Mia stared at him in disbelief. “You’re blaming me?”
“I’m saying you rely on a lot of things just working,” he replied. “And they don’t always.”
She shook her head. “Forget it.”
Then she turned and walked away.
Roy watched her go, waiting for the guilt to come roaring back.
It didn’t.
Instead, a quiet sense of justification settled in. She’d assumed. She always did. Expected things to fall into place because she willed them to.
By the time he left and met his girlfriend later that afternoon, the guilt was gone entirely.
They sat in his living room, the curtains half-drawn against the afternoon sun, her legs tucked beneath her on the couch like she belonged there.
“She was upset,” he said.
She hummed, unsurprised. “Of course she was.”
“Mia blamed me for the battery,” he said, not correcting it.
She smiled faintly. “Did you lie?”
“No, but she assumed,” he replied.
She nodded. “People who assume don’t like it when things stop going their way.”
Roy leaned back, the tension draining from his shoulders.
“Maybe,” she continued gently, “she needs to learn that things don’t just happen. They’re handled, or they’re not.”
He thought about that, and for the first time since morning, the tight knot in his chest loosened.
