13. Mia
Mia
Iwake up to an empty bed.
The sheets on his side are cold, which means he’s been gone long enough to matter. I lie there for one stupid second convinced he found a reason to be somewhere else before the smell of coffee reaches me.
I pull his shirt off the floor. It smells like him, cedar and dry-cleaned wool, and I put it on anyway because my dress is somewhere in this room and finding it requires more effort than I have right now. I do locate my underwear before following the coffee smell down the hall.
The voices reach me before the kitchen does.
Harper is talking, Reed responding, and then they’re both laughing at the same time.
I stop in the doorway.
He’s at the stove in yesterday’s dress pants, no shirt, no shoes, hair untouched, bent over a pan of scrambled eggs like they might fight back. Harper is on her stool behind him, spatula in hand but not deployed, rabbit under her other arm, watching the pan with her chin tilted up.
“You have to keep moving them,” she tells him.
“I am moving them.”
“Faster. They’re going brown.”
“They’re not going brown.”
“That’s brown,” Harper says, pointing at the pan.
Reed checks the pan, cuts his eyes to Harper, then back to the eggs. “That’s golden.”
Harper tilts her head. “Mia would say that’s brown.”
He goes quiet for a second, then laughs, his head dropping forward, one surprised exhale, shoulders shaking once. I wrap both hands tighter around the doorframe and stay where I am.
He turns from the stove and sees me.
His eyes move from my face to his shirt, which covers exactly as much as it needs to and no more, then back up. Neither of us moves.
“Mia!” Harper swivels on her stool. “You slept so long. Your hair is really sideways.”
“I really did,” I say. “Morning.”
“Daddy’s doing the eggs,” she says. “I’ve been helping.”
“Supervising,” Reed says, already turning back to the stove. He slides the eggs onto a plate, pours a mug of coffee, crosses the kitchen, and hands it to me.
I take it. His fingers brush mine, he smiles, then returns to the stove.
I sit next to Harper and wrap both hands around the mug. Reed sets a plate in front of each of us and takes the head of the table. Harper is already three sentences into her volcano plan before I’ve picked up my fork. Reed listens to every word of it, then patiently asks about the lava composition.
I drink my coffee, trying not to look at his hands, remembering how they were touching me yesterday. I look at them anyway, stare for three long seconds, then go back to my eggs.
Harper looks up from her plate. “How come you slept so long?”
“I was out late,” I say.
“How come?”
Reed takes a sip of coffee at exactly the wrong moment. He coughs into his fist, sets the mug down, clears his throat once. I’m very interested in my eggs. Heat crawls up my neck and I can’t stop it. When I risk a glance across the table Reed’s ears are pink all the way to the tips.
“Grown up stuff,” he says.
Harper watches us both. “What kind of grown-up stuff?”
“Juno’s at the bakery this morning,” I say instead. “I called her before we left for dinner last night. I suspected it might run late.
Reed nods, accepting the sudden change of topic. “She opened for you this morning?”
“She’s done it before. She has a key.” I push eggs around my plate. “It’s a lot to ask though.”
“That’s really nice of her,” Harper says.
“She’s the best,” I agree.
Reed sets his fork down and looks at me across the table.
“Tell her thank you from me. And tell her that if there’s anything her tattoo studio needs, equipment, contractors, whatever she’s been putting off, I want to cover it.
She’s taken on a lot because of this arrangement and I haven’t done anything about that. ”
“I’ll talk to her,” I say.
He nods and returns to his eggs.
Harper finishes first, drops her fork, and tells us the volcano will win because it has to, carries her plate to the sink and disappears down the hall. Reed and I eat in silence.
I turn my mug in my hands.
“Vanessa didn’t want out,” he says. “She wanted the version where leaving was her idea.” He picks up his coffee.
“Eight months with the colleague. The plan was to go public, give the interview, Reed Hawthorne is cold and impossible and she deserved better. Walk away clean with everyone on her side.” He takes a sip.
“I found out three weeks before she called the journalist. My lawyers moved first.”
I watch his face. “So she signed the divorce papers because you had the receipts.”
“She signed because the court filing would have named dates, times, how long it ran, and the fact that Harper was home for all of it.” His jaw tightens, releases. “She walked away clean. I got Harper. That was it.”
“And ever since,” I say, “she’s been making you the villain in a story she wrote.”
“She needs a reason that isn’t her own choices.” He turns his coffee mug. “I’m the most available one.” He looks at me. “And then the gala happened.”
“Where I showed up,” I say.
“Where you showed up,” he says.
I study the table. His shirt on my body, his coffee in my hands, his eggs on my plate. I think about last night, what we did and shared, his silence when I told him not to let me regret it.
“I don’t know what to do with any of this,” I say.
He looks at me across the table, no boardroom face on, flour on his dress pants somehow.
“You don’t have to figure it out alone,” he says. “We’ll work through it together.”
I wait for the rest of it, the but, the clause that makes it conditional. It doesn’t come. He holds my gaze and means it, which hits harder than anything Vanessa said last night.
Harper comes back in her school uniform, bag already on, rabbit under her arm, still talking about the volcano.
Reed finds her library book under the couch cushion, puts it into her bag, then holds her jacket open.
She backs into it. He zips it, checks the collar, and fixes the left sleeve.
All of it without a word, all of it muscle memory from a thousand mornings exactly like this one.
Harper stops in front of me on her way to the door, rabbit tucked under her arm. She looks at me for a second, chin down, like she’s working something out. “You’re not going anywhere today, right?”
I glance at Reed. He’s straightening Harper’s bag strap, not looking at me, letting me come up with the answer.
“I’ll be here when you get back,” I confirm.
Harper nods once, turns back to her father.
He crouches down and she wraps both arms around his neck, one second, then she’s pulling back when a knock comes at the door.
Lucia lets herself in and Harper is already moving toward her, bag swinging, still talking about the volcano to anyone who’ll listen.
The door closes behind them both.
Reed pours himself a second coffee. His phone buzzes before he gets it to his mouth. He checks the screen, sets the mug down, and puts it on speaker.
“Celeste.”
“Turn on the news,” she says, not bothering with a greeting. “Vanessa just gave an interview.”