Mia’s voice came back to her, clear and immediate.
“I just want to be alone for a bit.”
Elizabeth’s fingers curled slightly against the door.
She had followed her upstairs.
She could see it now as though it were still happening—Mia standing near the desk, one hand gripping the edge of it as though she needed something solid to hold on to. Her shoulders drawn in. Her face set in that careful, deliberate way, as though she could hold everything together if she just tried hard enough.
The effort of it had been the worst part.
Elizabeth had stepped into the room anyway. Said something—she could not quite remember what now—something meant to soften it, to make it smaller.
It had not worked.
Mia had cried anyway.
Quietly. Stubbornly. Trying, even then, not to make it a bigger thing than it already was.
Elizabeth had stayed. Had not left, even when Mia turned away, even when it was clear she did not want company. She had stayed until the tears slowed, until the room settled into something that looked manageable again.
But even as she had stepped back into the hallway—
Even as she had closed the door—
She had known.
It had not fixed anything.
Elizabeth exhaled, the breath leaving her slower this time, less sharp, but no less heavy.
Her hand dropped from the door.
She crossed the room, not quickly, not with intention, but because standing still had begun to feel like its own kind of pressure. She stopped near the window, though she did not look out of it, her gaze settling somewhere just below the glass, unfocused.
Then her thoughts turned to the man she had just left downstairs.
The one who had not shown up. The one who had made Mia cry.
He had forgotten. That had been clear from his face the moment she accused him.
Elizabeth folded her arm loosely, then tightened it, then loosened it again, the motion unconscious.
He had not argued. He had accepted it, quietly, with a kind of unguarded apology that did not sit easily with what she expected of him.
That was what did not fit.
Elizabeth shifted her weight, one hand coming up briefly to her temple before dropping again.
He should have argued.
He should have explained, deflected, justified—done something to reduce it, to make it sound like an oversight rather than what it was.
He had done none of that.
He had stood there.
Taken it.
