And then, unhelpfully, Darcy followed.
The look on his face when it had landed. The way he had stood there, as though the ground had shifted under him and he had not yet worked out how to steady himself.
Elizabeth turned her head slightly against the pillow.
That was not something she was going to think about.
She closed her eyes properly this time.
Sleep came slowly, carrying with it the quiet echo of a girl trying to be braver than she felt… and a man she understood more than she intended to.
TEN
HE HAD NOT MEANT TO SLEEP.
He had gone upstairs at half past seven with the intention of sitting on the edge of his bed for a few minutes and thinking through what he was going to do about Mia. That was all. A few minutes. Somewhere between sitting down and thinking, his body had made a different decision entirely, and when he opened his eyes again the room was dark and the clock on his phone said seven forty-seven.
He lay still for a moment.
Then it came back to him. First, the museum, then the attempted calls that didn’t come through because his phone was on DnD. An image of Mia in her coat at four o clock waiting for someone who had not come appeared in his head again. It was soon drowned by Elizabeth's voice, level and quiet, delivering each sentence like something she had already decided he needed to hear properly.
She cried.
He sat up and ran both hands over his face as he thought about those words.
Two words. That was all it had taken. She had not elaborated. She had not needed to.
He stretched, his back giving the complaint of someone who had slept badly on top of sleeping wrong, and sat on the edge of the bed in the dark listening to the house.
Then he heard it, voices downstairs. Two of them. Low and then a laugh, short and real, the kind that arrived without permission.
He stood up, threw a shirt on and headed downstair to investigate.
***
They were in the living room. Mia was on the sofa with her feet tucked under her, hair down, in the oversized sweatshirt she wore when she had decided the day was over. Elizabeth was at the other end with a mug and the remote and they were looking at something on the television and talking over it the way people talked over things they were not really watching.
They both looked up when he appeared in the doorway.
Elizabeth's expression settled into something neutral.
Mia's did something different. She looked at him. Then she looked away. Then she looked back, and her face did the thing fifteen-year-old faces did when they were trying to decide between sustained coldness and the inconvenience of actually acting playful with you when you have disappointed them. The coldness was already losing.
"Mia," he said.
"Hmm." She pulled the sweatshirt sleeves down over her hands.
"I owe you an apology."
"Mm."
"I forgot. There is no excuse for it. I told you I would be there and I was not there and I am sorry."
Mia looked at the television. "Leave me alone, Mr. Darcy."
"Mia —"
"You promised." She said it simply, into the middle distance, in the particular tone of someone who was notshouting because they did not need to. "You said you would take me. I cancelled on Priya. I got ready. You didn't show up." She pulled her sleeves further. "Leave me alone, Mr. Darcy."
