"How," she said, slowly, "is that any of your business?"
"It is just —"
"You have walked into my room without knocking, without being invited, and now you want to have a conversation about my clothes."
"I was going to close the door. It was open."
"Then close it from the outside."
"I just think —" He stopped. Started again. "We have been here a month. I have my room arranged. I think it is reasonable to —"
Elizabeth raised one hand. A clean, complete gesture that meant stop and meant it.
"Whatever you think," she said, "is your business. Not mine." She put the earring in and reached for the second one. "And not all of us have a clinical need for everything to be in its place at all times."
"That is not what I —"
"It is exactly what you said. You walked into my space and the first thing you did was point out what is wrong with it." She set her hands flat on the dresser for a moment. "That is exactly what you always do."
The room was very quiet.
"Always," Darcy said.
"Always."
"Elizabeth —"
"It is actions like this." She turned to face him properly. Her voice was level, not raised. "You walking in here without thinking. Then standing there telling me what is wrong. This is why I had questions about us. Eight years ago. This is exactly —"
"You ended things because my room was tidy."
“I ended things because you cannot let people exist around you without assessing them.” Each word was measured, deliberate. “Because you notice every little thing that is not the way you would have done it and you cannot leave it alone. Because you have this version of how things should be and anyone who does not fit it is somehow lesser to you. Because I found out that you—”
“I have never once criticised you for—”
“You are doing it right now.”
Darcy stopped, his thoughts catching up with what she had just said. “You found out what?”
She faltered, the words she had already let slip seeming to catch up with her. Her mouth parted slightly, as though to take them back.
“Forget I said anything, Darcy.”
Darcy opened his mouth to argue, but he could not find the words. The ones she had almost said caught somewhere in his mind and refused to settle. She had come close—closer than she ever had—to saying why she had left him with nothing but a message and no explanation.
His eyes drifted to the bed, then back to her, as though the answer might be there if he looked long enough.
She stood there in her nightgown, her hair loose, her earrings still in, watching him with that same steady directness she had always had, and for a moment, nothing aligned the way it should have.
“Please leave my room, Darcy.” She said after a brief moment.
“Elizabeth.” He said her name quietly, as though it might be enough to make her reconsider.
"I do not want Mia waking up and drawing conclusions because you are coming out of my room in your joggers at six in the morning and I am standing here in my nightgown." She turned back to the dresser and picked up her hairbrush. "Close the door on your way out."
He stood in the doorway for a moment longer.
He wanted to ask what she had been about to say. The sentence had a shape to it, a weight, the specific gravity of something that had been held for a long time and had almost come loose. She had pulled it back and he did not know what was inside it and he had been not knowing for eight years and the not knowing was in this room with them right now and she was brushing her hair and looking at the mirror and not at him.
