It was Mia's home now. It was also, as of two days ago and one lawyer's office, Elizabeth's home too. And Darcy's.
Elizabeth was still working out how she felt about that.
"Mr. Darcy?" Elizabeth looked up from the box she had been sorting through. She stressed theMrthe way you stressed aword that was doing something you had not sanctioned. "Did he ask you to call him that?"
"That's what his staff calls him." Mia reached for an apple from the bowl on the counter. "And he and my dad are the same age. It felt strange calling him by his first name."
"Mr. Darcy," Elizabeth repeated, as if testing the phrase and finding it structurally unsound.
"I like it." Mia bit into the apple. "It makes him sound like someone out of one of those old novels you read."
Elizabeth gave a small, unimpressed sound. "That feels dangerously accurate."
Mia watched her for a moment. The swinging leg slowed.
"You don't like him, do you?"
Elizabeth did not answer immediately. "That is not —"
"It is," Mia said. Not unkindly. Just certain. "I know you don't."
"Mia —"
"You used to come round all the time." Mia turned the apple in her hands, looking at it rather than at Elizabeth, which made it easier to say. "When I was little. You and him both. Not together, but, you know. Around. And then at some point you stopped being in the same room without it getting weird. I noticed.”
Elizabeth was quiet for a moment. She set down the folder she had been holding.
"That is adult stuff," she said. "You do not need to worry about it."
"I'd understand."
"You are fifteen."
"So?" Mia looked up. "I talk to my friends about their boyfriends all the time. I'm not going to fall apart because two adults had a situation."
Elizabeth blinked. "He was not my boyfriend."
Mia's expression shifted. Sharp with something that looked very much like the particular satisfaction of a suspicion confirmed.
"He wasn't," Elizabeth said, hearing herself. "He is not my type."
"No?"
"No. He is —" She paused, searching. "Bland. No colour. No sparkle. Just principles and silence and very strong opinions about where things should be placed."
Mia's mouth curved. "MMD," she said.
"I beg your pardon?"
"Monochromatic Mr. Darcy." She said it easily. "That's what Mum used to call him sometimes."
Elizabeth stared at her.
The laugh came before she could stop it. Short and real and slightly helpless, the kind that arrived without permission and left just as quickly, fading into something quieter, something that sat closer to the bone.
Charlotte, she thought. You called him that and you never once told me.
Mia smiled properly. Brief, but real. The second Elizabeth had seen since the accident, and it cost something to receive, as small good things often do when everything else is still raw.
