25. Reed
Reed
Walsh closes in four days.
It’s the first thing that comes to mind when I open my eyes in the morning.
Four days to the shareholder meeting. Seven to the judge’s deadline.
The board called yesterday and Vincent was too pleasant, which means Sharpe has something in his pocket and is waiting for the right moment to take it out.
Harper cried last night. The quiet kind, face turned into her pillow, rabbit pressed to her chest. I sat on the edge of her bed for forty minutes. She didn’t tell me what was wrong and I didn’t push, because I already know.
Mia has gone quiet. She’s still here, still in the kitchen before anyone else, still warm with Harper, still doing everything that was ever asked of her and more.
But her light is on past midnight, there are half-eaten plates in the sink at hours that don’t make sense, and twice this week I’ve walked into the kitchen and found her standing at the counter with a glass of water going warm in her hand, not drinking, not moving, just standing there.
I watched her press two fingers below her sternum and breathe through her nose on the stand. I’ve seen her do it in the kitchen late at night when she doesn’t know I’m there. I’ve been calling it stress because stress is a problem with a solution and I’m good at solutions.
Saturday morning I run out of that excuse.
She’s at the kitchen sink when I come in, her back to me, both hands on the counter edge. There’s nothing in the sink, nothing running, just her hands braced on the porcelain, her shoulders up near her ears, her breath coming in through her nose one count at a time.
I pour coffee and watch her reflection in the window. The count runs itself, each piece clicking into place. The nausea, the untouched food, the courtroom chair, the mornings I’ve found her at this sink with her hands braced like she’s waiting for something to pass.
I set my coffee down.
“Mia.”
She turns around. Her face is tired, her eyes showing nothing she hasn’t decided to show, and she’s already bracing for whatever this is before I’ve said it.
“When were you going to tell me?” I ask.
“Tell you what?”
“You’re pregnant.”
The kitchen goes quiet enough that I can hear the city outside, forty floors down, going about its morning.
She doesn’t deny it. She holds my gaze, jaw tight, and says, “I don’t know that.”
“You’ve been nauseous for weeks,” I say. “You nearly passed out on the stand. You haven’t finished a meal since the engagement party.”
“That’s stress,” she says. “Almost six weeks of cameras, custody hearings, and Vanessa would do it to anyone.”
“It could be,” I say. “But is it?”
She looks at me, but she doesn’t answer, which is as close to a yes as we’re going to get.
I reach for the thing I always reach for when the pressure gets high enough, which is control, and I aim it at the wrong person.
“How long have you suspected?” I ask.
“Reed.”
“I need the timeline,” I say, and I hear how it sounds and I keep going anyway because stopping now means standing in the gap between what I know and what I’m about to do, and I don’t know how to stand there.
“The court case, the judge’s deadline, the seven days.
If you’re pregnant, it changes what the judge sees.
It changes the whole picture. And I need to know if you knew that before you took the stand. ”
Her body goes rigid. “What exactly are you asking me?”
I look at her across the kitchen and the words are out before the part of me that knows better has finished forming the objection.
“Did you plan this?” I say. “To change the judge’s decision. To make the arrangement harder to walk away from.”
Mia’s face changes in a way I haven’t seen before.
It isn’t hurt or anger, and it isn’t the smile she puts on when she needs something to hide behind.
This is what’s underneath all of that. This is what she looks like when there’s nothing left to put between herself and the person who just said the worst possible thing, and I am that person right now.
“Did I use you,” she echoes, her face contorting in disgust.
I don’t take it back. I know I should because I know exactly what I’ve done. But taking it back means admitting that I asked it, and admitting that I asked it means looking directly at what it says about me. I’m not ready to do that.
“The timing isn’t unreasonable to question,” I argue.
She looks at me for a long moment. Her chin is up, her arms are crossed, her eyes are very bright and very still, and there is nothing warm in them right now.
I have taken years of learning not to trust people and aimed it at the one person in my life who has never given me a single reason to point it in her direction.
When something scares me badly enough I reach for control. I reach for it the way other people reach for a drink, the way Vanessa used to say I reached for it, and I told myself she was wrong because she was angry when she said it. Right now, I’m out of arguments on that front.
“I. Would. Never,” she says, then turns and walks down the hall.
I stand at the counter and hear the wardrobe open, the soft drag of a bag across the floor, a drawer, then another, followed by the wardrobe closing and her footsteps crossing the room.
I don’t move.
I have spent thirty-eight years making sure the damage I do stays at a distance I can manage.
I built my walls up for it, set the boundaries, and systems to protect myself and Harper.
But Mia got through all of it. I let her in, piece by piece, morning by morning, and then the pressure hit hard enough that I reached for the oldest move I have, which is to find a reason not to trust the person standing closest to me before they can find a reason to leave.
It works every time. It works because I make it work. And every time it works I end up exactly where I am right now, standing in my own kitchen in the early morning with my coffee going cold.
She stops at the front of the hall. One second, long enough that I hold my breath, then the front door opens and closes.
She’s gone.