4. Mia
MIA
The cold woke me up.
Not the gentle kind that nudges you under the covers.
The kind that crawls into your bones and sets up camp.
My back was on fire. Every vertebra from my hips to my shoulder blades screamed against the cheap mattress.
The February air had seeped through every crack in this apartment like it owned the place.
I rolled onto my side. Pain shot down my spine and settled into a dull throb at the base. The radiator under the bay window sat there doing nothing. Dead metal. I stared at it for a long time, willing it to click on.
It didn't.
Get up, Mia. This is your life now.
Three blankets. I'd pulled them all on top of me. I'd slept in my socks, my hoodie, and my thickest sweater, and I was still freezing. My breath didn't fog, but it came close. The bed was a crime against spines. The pillow was a flat rectangle of regret.
I sat up and rubbed my eyes. My hair was a disaster. Dark brown, tangled from sleep, waist-length and wild in a way that would have made my old stylist cry. No blowout. No highlights. No camera-ready anything.
Good.
I shuffled to the bay window in my socks and looked down at Main Street. Snow covered everything. The awnings over the shops. The parked trucks. The sidewalk someone had cleared and salted in a crooked line. It was quiet. Still. The kind of morning where the world holds its breath.
Then I saw her.
A tall woman with dark hair, crossing the street toward the coffeehouse on the corner. She hit a patch of ice and her feet went out from under her. She caught herself, arms windmilling, and then she laughed. Head thrown back. The sound carried all the way up to my window.
She looked free.
I watched her disappear inside the coffeehouse. A golden light spilled out onto the snow for a second. Then it was gone.
The coffeehouse. The one with the light on in the back last night. The window where I'd whispered my new name to the dark.
I pulled on jeans, grabbed a clean t-shirt, and found my reading glasses on top of Persuasion.
No makeup. No contacts. I'd ditched the violet lenses on day one.
My real brown eyes stared back at me in the narrow glass above the bathroom sink.
My nose ring caught the light. Small. Silver. Barely there.
Nothing like Hadley Winslow. That was the whole point.
The key stuck in the lock on my way out. I jiggled it. Swore at it. Same as last night.
Cold slammed into me the second I stepped outside. I tucked my chin into my jacket and crossed the street. I stepped around the same patch of ice that had nearly taken out the dark-haired woman.
I pushed open the door.
Warmth. Coffee. The hiss of a machine. Chatter from a table by the window where two older men argued over a newspaper.
And behind the counter, the woman from the ice patch, now wearing the brightest red lipstick I'd ever seen at eight in the morning.
Red dress. Red lips. A smile so big it could power a small town.
"'Allo!" She leaned over the bar like we were already friends. "You must be the new girl. I'm Emma. Come in, sit down, tell me everything."
I blinked. "How did you know I'm..."
"New? Love, I know every face in this town, and yours isn't one of them." She grinned. "Yet. What's your name?"
"Mia. Mia Hayes."
"Mia." She said it like she was trying it on. "I like it. Sit. What do you drink?"
"Coffee. Black. Huge."
Her face lit up. "That's my favourite too. None of that syrupy nonsense. I'll make us both one."
She disappeared behind the espresso machine and I slid onto a stool at the counter.
The place was small, cozy, lived-in. Mismatched chairs.
A chalkboard menu on the wall. Plants on every windowsill.
It smelled like roasted beans and something baked.
Cinnamon, maybe. A sign behind the register read LUMIA in hand-painted letters. Emma's place. She'd built this.
Emma came back with two mugs. Massive ones. She set mine down and perched on a stool on her side of the counter, her chin in her hand.
"So. Mia Hayes. Where are you from?"
"California."
"What brings you to our frozen little paradise?"
"Work. I'm a transcriber. Starting a job up the mountain in a few days."
Emma's eyes went wide. "Wait. You're the one working for Tony Rossi?"
The way she said his name. Like it came with footnotes.
"I think so? The artist?"
"The artist." She grabbed an iPad from beneath the register and started swiping. "Gorgeous-looking but also a little... brooding." She turned the screen toward me. "That's the house."
I almost dropped my coffee.
Floor-to-ceiling glass. Two stories of steel and timber set against a lake. Mountains behind it, snow on the peaks, and the whole thing reflected in the water below. A dream that nobody would be brave enough to build.
But someone built it.
Cory would have loved this. The thought slipped through before I could catch it.
I swallowed. Took a sip from my mug. Pushed it down where it belonged.
"The town calls it The Castle," Emma said. "Tony built it himself. Well, not himself. He designed it. Hired people. You know what I mean."
"It's incredible."
"Wait till you see it in person." She leaned forward.
"He doesn't come into town much. Keeps to himself.
But everyone up there is lovely. Sophia, his housekeeper, is an absolute gem.
And Jamie, his best friend, he's..." She paused.
Color crept into her cheeks. Her gaze dropped to her mug. "He's nice. Kind."
I filed that away.
"Oh, and there's a waitress at the diner down the block. Cleo. She's from New York."
My stomach tightened. A tiny pulse of cold. New York. I took another sip of coffee and kept my face neutral. "Cool."
Emma opened her mouth to keep going when the door opened behind me. A blast of cold air. I turned.
A woman stood in the doorway. Short. Petite. So beautiful it knocked the thought clean out of my head. Short hair, close to her head. Dark brown eyes that swept the room and landed on me with the warmth of an ice pick.
She let the cold air in, then shut it out. She walked to the counter. Dancer's poise. Every step precise, deliberate. She didn't look at me again.
"'Morning, Ava." Emma's voice had changed. Careful now. "This is Mia. She's new in town."
Ava glanced at me. "Hi."
One word. Then she turned to Emma. "Just a coffee. To go."
A thought nagged at me. Her face. The way she moved. The angle of her jaw and the line of her neck. I knew her from somewhere and I couldn't place it. Not from TV. Not from a party. Somewhere else. Somewhere I'd been sitting in the dark.
It clicked.
NYSMBC. The New York School of Modern Ballet Company. A performance I'd attended two years ago. Front row seats. A gift from Evie for my birthday. The lead dancer had been small, fierce, electric. She'd danced like the stage owed her a debt and she was collecting.
The words were out before I could catch them.
"You're Ava Fielding."
Silence.
Ava turned and looked at me. Full attention this time. Those dark eyes locked on mine and I could see the question forming. The suspicion. Who are you? How do you know that name?
My heart kicked against my ribs.
No. No, no, no. Too specific. Too New York. A woman from California wouldn't know a dancer from a New York ballet company. I'd just handed her a thread and if she pulled it, everything would unravel.
"A cousin took me to a show once," I said. My voice stayed even. "Years ago. You were amazing."
Ava studied me for a long beat. I held her gaze. My pulse pounded so hard I was sure she could hear it.
"Thanks," she said. Flat. She grabbed her cup from the counter, gave Emma a nod, and walked out.
The door closed. I let out a breath.
Emma waited until Ava's figure had crossed the street and disappeared. Then she leaned in. "Don't take it personal. She's a bit prickly."
"She's your..."
"Stepsister. My dad married her mum when I was twelve. Ava grew up here. She was a ballet dancer in New York for years, but she came back. We don't talk about why." Emma's voice had softened. "She'll warm up. Eventually."
I nodded. My hands were still shaking in my lap. I pressed them against my thighs and willed them to stop.
That was too close.
Never again, Mia. Keep your mouth shut.
I finished my coffee. Emma invited me to supper. I said yes because she was the kind of person you say yes to. She wrote her number on a napkin and slid it across the bar with a wink.
"Welcome to Rockford, love."
I drove up the mountain after I left the coffeehouse. I needed to get my bearings before I started work. The road climbed through pine trees, switchback after switchback, the valley falling away below. My secondhand SUV groaned on the steeper stretches. The heater rattled.
Then I came around a bend and saw it.
The glass house. Sitting on the ridge above the lake like it had always been there.
The morning sun hit the windows and the whole structure glowed.
Steel beams, timber frames, walls of glass stretching from the earth to the roofline.
The mountains rose behind it. The lake sat in front, dark and still, holding a perfect reflection.
I pulled over and sat there with the engine running.
Cory. He would have stood here for an hour. He would have sketched it on a napkin, on his hand, on the back of a receipt. Arches and light. That was what he'd always chased. He would have talked about sight lines and cantilevers and the way the glass caught the landscape and brought it inside.
I pressed my palms against the steering wheel and breathed.
Someone tapped on my window. I jumped.
A man stood by my door. Mid-to-late thirties. Kind hazel eyes. A sweet, lopsided smile. He wore a heavy coat and a knit hat pulled down to his eyebrows. A teddy bear in winter gear.
I cranked the glass down.
"You must be the new transcriber," he said. "I'm Jamie. Jamie Maslany."
"Mia Hayes."
"Sophia told me you'd be starting soon. Were you heading up to the house?"
"Just getting my bearings."
"Come have brunch." He said it like it was obvious. Like there was no world in which I wouldn't want to.
"Oh, I don't want to intrude."
"You're not intruding. Sophia's been cooking since six. There's enough food to feed the entire town. Come on."
I hesitated. He waited. Patient.
"Okay," I said.
"Fair warning." He stepped back and that lopsided smile turned into a grin. "Tony Rossi is an ornery pain in the ass, but he'll come around."
The house was even more spectacular up close. I parked behind Jamie's truck and stood in the driveway, staring. The glass walls reflected the sky and the pines and the snow. Everything was open. Everything was visible.
Everything except the man who lived inside.
The front door opened and warmth poured out. A woman stood in the doorway. Late forties, maybe early fifties. Dark hair streaked with silver. A presence that filled the frame even though she wasn't tall. Her whole face warmed when she saw me.
"You must be Mia. I'm Sophia. Come in before you freeze to death."
The kitchen smelled like spices. Onion, cumin, a warmth that went straight to the back of my brain and pulled out a memory of my grandmother's kitchen.
Sophia set a plate in front of me. Eggs. Toast. A curry that had no business being that good at ten in the morning.
"Eat," she said. It wasn't a request.
I ate. Jamie sat across from me with his own plate.
The kitchen was huge, open, with a breakfast counter and stools.
Through the glass walls I could see the lake, the mountains, the pine trees heavy with snow.
The kitchen light was on even though sunlight flooded the room. Sophia's light. The one she left on.
"This is incredible," I said. The food. The house. All of it.
Sophia sat down next to me. "Where's your family, Mia?"
"Scattered. My grandmother passed a few years ago. She was from Kerala."
Sophia's face changed. "Kerala?"
"She made the best curry I've ever had." I paused. "Until today."
Sophia touched my arm. "My husband's family is from Kerala too. His mother taught me most of my recipes."
A knot loosened in my chest. Not pain. The quiet shock of being recognized. Of being in a kitchen that smelled like home when you didn't know you needed one.
Jamie caught my eye across the table and the corner of his mouth lifted.
We sat there for an hour. Sophia refilled my plate twice. Jamie told stories about the town. Sophia corrected him. The house was quiet and full of light. Tony Rossi never appeared.
But I could feel it. A presence in the far wing. A stillness that wasn't empty.
Sophia walked me to the door when I left. "Come anytime," she said. "I mean that."
I believed her.
The drive back down the mountain was quiet. The SUV rattled through the switchbacks. The valley opened up below, Rockford half-buried in fresh snow at the bottom.
I glanced in the rearview mirror. The glass house was getting smaller behind me, catching the midday sun, glowing against the ridge.
Something made me look higher. At the far wing. At a window I hadn't noticed before.
A figure. Standing behind the glass. Perfectly still. Watching me leave.
My spine tingled. Not fear. Something else. Something I hadn't let myself feel in a very long time.
I turned my eyes back to the road.
It's nothing.
It wasn't nothing.