22. Mia
MIA
The popcorn was almost ready when Avery screamed from the living room.
Not a real scream. The kind a five-year-old produces when a weather map shows a thunderstorm icon over Colorado. She was convinced the lightning would come straight through.
I grabbed the bowl and walked in. She was kneeling on the couch cushions, nose an inch from the screen, pointing at a green swirl over Denver.
"Mimi, look. A tornado."
"That's a cold front, baby."
"It's green. Green means tornado." She said this with the authority of someone who had watched one nature documentary and now considered herself an expert.
I sat down beside her and tucked my legs underneath me. The bowl sat heavy in my lap. Avery grabbed a fistful without looking away from the TV.
Butter on her fingers. Kernels in the couch cushions. A normal evening.
Tony was in his studio. I could see the glow of the track lights through the glass walls if I turned my head. Sophia had gone home hours ago.
She'd left rice and a note on the counter that said Avery ate all her vegetables. Don't believe her if she says otherwise.
This was the kind of evening I used to dream about.
Not the specifics. I couldn't have invented Avery or the glass house or the mountains outside. But the feeling.
Warm air. A child close enough to hear. Nowhere I had to be.
In my old apartment in New York, after the shooting, I used to lie on my couch and stare at the ceiling. After the months in the hospital. After the physical therapy that made me cry into my pillow every night.
I'd try to imagine what safe meant.
Not a word I said out loud. Not a thing I admitted to wanting.
But the image was always the same. Lamplight. A kitchen that smelled like someone else's cooking.
Laughter that wasn't mine but belonged to someone I loved.
I had that now.
I reached over and wiped the butter off Avery's chin with my thumb. She squirmed away.
"Mimi. I'm watching."
"You're also wearing the popcorn."
She ignored me. The weather segment ended and a news anchor appeared. A woman with red hair and a practiced smile.
Avery lost interest and reached for the remote.
"Leave it on," I said. "Let me see the forecast for tomorrow."
But the forecast didn't come.
The anchor's expression shifted. The smile tightened. A graphic appeared over her shoulder.
The words hit me before the image did.
Missing journalist Hadley Winslow: one year later.
Then the photograph.
Blonde hair. Professional blowout. Full makeup. The red lipstick I wore for every broadcast because my producer said it popped on camera.
A navy blazer with gold buttons. I was looking directly into the lens.
The confidence of a woman who had never been shot. Never been hunted. Never had her entire life packed into a carry-on bag by an FBI agent at 3 a.m.
I stopped breathing.
The room tilted. The bowl turned to lead in my hands.
That's me. That woman on the screen is me.
"She's pretty, Mimi."
Avery's voice came from far away. From the bottom of a well. From another planet.
I couldn't move. The photograph pinned me to the couch.
The anchor was talking. Words I couldn't process because my pulse was too loud.
"She looks like you."
Ice. Every drop of blood in my body turned to ice.
Avery tilted her head. Studied the image the way she studied everything. With total focus and zero mercy.
My voice came out steady. I don't know how.
"You think so? That's sweet, baby."
Avery shrugged. "Her eyes are different. Yours are nicer."
The segment moved on. A commercial break. Something about car insurance.
Avery grabbed more popcorn and kicked her feet against the cushion. She was already gone. Already thinking about the next thing.
I sat there.
The bowl in my lap. My hands white around the edges. My chest so tight I could count every rib pressing against my skin.
Twenty seconds. I held it together for twenty seconds.
Avery yawned. The big, theatrical kind.
"I'm not tired."
"Bedtime, Pickle."
"But the tornado."
"Cold front."
"But."
"Teeth. Pajamas. Bed."
She groaned the way only a five-year-old can groan. Like I'd asked her to carry a mountain.
I stood up. My legs worked. That surprised me.
The bedtime routine took eleven minutes. Teeth. Face. The pajamas with the little pandas on them.
Three sips of water from the cup on her nightstand. The stuffed bear tucked under one arm. I pulled the covers up to her chin and brushed the curls away from her forehead.
"Mimi?"
"Yeah, baby."
"The tornado lady looked sad."
"What tornado lady?"
"On the TV. The one who looks like you. She was sad."
My throat closed. I leaned down and pressed my lips against her forehead.
"She's okay," I said. So quiet I barely heard myself. "Go to sleep."
Avery closed her eyes. Three breaths later, she was out.
I stood in her doorway for a long time. Watching her breathe. The dark curls on the pillow. The bear tucked tight against her ribs.
I couldn't leave.
I didn't know what that meant yet. But I couldn't leave.
I backed out of the room and pulled the door almost shut.
Then I went to the kitchen. Gripped the edge of the counter with both hands and bent over.
She looks like you, Mimi.
Five years old. And she'd seen what adults couldn't see.
Through the brown hair and the scrubbed skin and the reading glasses. Through the complete absence of everything Hadley Winslow used to be. A child saw through all of it because she studied me every single day.
She knew the angle of my nose. The shape of my mouth. The exact color of my eyes.
She didn't see the disguise. She saw the face underneath.
Something broke loose inside me. Not a sob. Worse.
A shaking that started in my hands and moved up through my arms and locked in my shoulders.
Breathe. Breathe. Get it together.
I couldn't go to the cottage. Not tonight. Not alone in that little house with the mountain dark pressing against the windows.
I went to Tony.
He was in his studio. I could see him through the windows.
Track lights overhead. Paint on his forearms. A brush in his hand.
Lost in work the way only he could be lost. The rest of the world didn't exist when he painted.
I opened the door. His head came up.
I didn't say a word. I walked across the studio and wrapped my arms around his waist and pressed my face into his chest.
He went still. The brush was in his hand.
He didn't ask what was wrong. He set the brush down.
Both arms came around me. His chin settled on the top of my head.
He held me there. Against him. Inside of him, almost.
I could hear his heartbeat through his shirt. Steady. Sure.
I am going to lose this.
The thought came fast and absolute. I pushed it down before it could take root.
He didn't move. He didn't talk. He just held me.
When I finally pulled back, my eyes were dry. But the front of his shirt was damp where my face had been.
He looked at it. Then at me.
He didn't mention it.
"Stay?" he said.
I nodded.
He took my hand. Led me through the house. Past the kitchen. Past Avery's door.
Into his room.
We didn't talk. He pulled back the covers. I climbed in.
He climbed in behind me, still smelling like paint and turpentine, and wrapped his arms around me the way he had in the studio.
Chin on my head. Locked around me. His chest a wall behind my back.
I was small inside him. Folded in. Hidden.
The safest place I had ever been belonged to a man I was lying to.
Through the glass walls, I could see the stars. The black outline of the mountains. A sky so wide and clear it made me smaller.
She looks like you, Mimi.
The voice in my head wouldn't stop. So casual. So certain. The way children deliver truths that demolish adults.
I thought about the person on the screen. Blonde and polished and professional.
Someone who ate sushi for lunch at her desk and wore heels that cost more than my rent in Rockford. Who stared into a camera every night and told millions of people the truth.
She didn't exist anymore.
I'd killed her. Dyed her hair. Stripped off her makeup. Threw out her heels.
Gave her a new name and drove her across the country and buried her so deep that nobody on earth could find her.
Except a five-year-old with popcorn butter on her fingers.
Tony's breathing slowed. His arm was heavy across my waist.
I reached under the pillow for the burner phone. Typed two words.
TV segment.
Sent it to Lucas. Put the phone back.
Lucas would understand. He always understood.
Two words and he'd know. My photograph on every screen in America. A child in Rockford who saw through me.
Tony shifted behind me. His arm tightened. Even in sleep, he held on.
I shut it all out. The night. The cold. The silence. Pressed back into his warmth.
Something is coming. I can feel it.
The walls I'd built around Mia Hayes were cracking. A five-year-old's words were the hammer.
And somewhere beyond all of it, someone was hunting for the woman on that television. Someone who wouldn't stop until he found her.
I lay in the dark. Tony's heartbeat against my spine. His breath warm on my hair.
For right now, I was still Mia. Still safe. Still his.
For one more night.