28. Mia
MIA
The grocery store smelled like floor cleaner and cold produce. I grabbed a cart and pulled out my list. Milk. Bread. The cereal Avery liked. The one with the loops. Not the green ones. She'd decided last week that green loops tasted like trees.
I'd been avoiding this errand for days.
Not because of the list. Because of the parking lot. Because of the drive into town. Because every time I left the property now, the space between the cottage and the rest of the world grew thinner. And I had to pretend it didn't.
The produce section was quiet. A woman in a fleece vest was squeezing avocados. A teenage boy stocked lettuce with headphones in, mouthing lyrics. Normal. All of it normal. I reached for a bag of spinach and tossed it in the cart.
My phone buzzed. The regular one. Tony.
Avery wants to know if you're getting the good crackers.
I typed back. Which ones are the good ones?
The fish ones. She was very specific.
I smiled. Put the phone away. Found the crackers.
The cereal aisle was three rows over. I rounded the corner and scanned for the box. Purple. Avery would accept no substitutes. I spotted it on the second shelf and reached up.
"Mia, isn't it?"
I turned.
Elijah Brooks stood at the end of the aisle with a basket hanging from his forearm. Jeans, a gray sweater, hiking boots. He could have been any other man in Rockford on a weekday morning. Relaxed. Friendly. His blue eyes were warm.
"Hi." I kept my voice even. "Elijah, right?"
"Good memory." He moved closer. Not fast. Casual. The way someone approaches when they're in no hurry. "How's Tony doing? I heard about that business with Angelina. Terrible."
"He's fine."
"And that little girl. Avery?" He said the word and something shifted behind his gaze. So fast I almost missed it. "She must be, what, five now?"
"She's great."
He tilted his head. Studied me. Not the way Tony studied me, with that artist's gaze that saw color and light and the things I tried to hide. This was different. Colder. Like someone reading a label before deciding whether to buy the product.
"You're not from Colorado, are you?" he asked.
"California."
"Ah." He nodded. Smiled. "I love California. Whereabouts?"
"All over."
The answer was too short. I knew it the second it left my mouth. A normal person would have said a city. Los Angeles. San Diego. Something specific. I'd given him a wall instead of a door.
His smile didn't change.
"I've been thinking about investing out here," he said. "The ski resort up the mountain. Gorgeous property. I put an offer in last week." He adjusted the basket on his arm. "Rockford's a special little town. The kind of place people come to disappear, you know?"
My fingers tightened on the cart handle.
"I should get going." I pulled the cart back. "Tony's waiting."
"Of course. Of course." He stepped aside. Gentleman. Perfect posture. That warm, practiced smile. "Tell Tony I said hello. And Avery."
I nodded. Turned toward the register. My heart was doing something unsteady but I kept my pace normal. Calm. One foot, then the other. I picked up a carton of eggs from the cooler. Set them in the cart. Reached for bread.
His voice came from behind me. Close. He hadn't moved toward the register. He'd followed.
"Have a good day, Ms. Winslow."
The eggs hit the floor first.
I didn't hear the crack. I didn't hear anything. The world compressed into a single point. His face. His blue eyes. His pleasant, easy smile. The two words that had just come out of his mouth.
Ms. Winslow.
Not Mia. Not Hayes. Winslow. The name on a press badge in a New York newsroom. The name on a diploma from Columbia. The name Cory said the night he proposed. The name the nurses used when I woke up in a hospital bed. A bullet in my spine. A dead man in the morgue.
An orange rolled off the display and bumped against my shoe. I didn't pick it up.
Brooks tilted his head. "Are you alright?" His voice was gentle. Concerned. The expression of a man who had just helped a stranger with her groceries.
I couldn't speak. My mouth opened and nothing came out. Air moved in and out of my lungs but my body had stopped processing it. I stared at him and he stared back. That blue gaze. So calm. So empty of anything resembling surprise.
He'd known. Before the aisle. Before the conversation. Before he walked into this store and positioned himself three rows from the cereal. He'd known who I was and he'd walked me through every pleasantry like a script he'd rehearsed.
I turned. I walked out of the store. My cart sat in the aisle with the fish crackers and the spinach and the purple cereal. I left it there. The automatic doors parted and the cold hit my skin and my legs kept moving and then I was running.
The parking lot. My car. I yanked the door open, dropped into the seat, slammed the lock down. Both hands on the steering wheel. Shaking. Shaking so hard my teeth were clicking.
He knows.
My eyes locked on the store entrance. Glass doors. People walking in and out. A mother with a stroller. An old man with a reusable bag. No Elijah Brooks. He didn't come out. Or if he did, I didn't see him because my vision had narrowed to a tunnel and everything at the edges was dissolving.
He knows who I am.
I sat there for ten minutes. Maybe longer. My hands wouldn't stop. The key was in my pocket and I couldn't get my fingers to close around it. When I finally jammed it into the ignition, I had to try three times because the shaking turned every motion into a guess.
The drive back took fifteen minutes. I white-knuckled the wheel the entire way. The mountain road twisted and climbed and my brain ran a single track on repeat. He knows. He knows. He knows. The pines blurred past. The sky was big and clear and I couldn't look at it.
I pulled up to the cottage. Killed the engine. Sat.
The burner phone was in my jacket pocket. Lucas's number was one button away. One call and the machinery would start. A new name. A new town. A van at the end of the driveway and twelve hours to pack a bag and become someone else. Again.
I pulled the phone out. My finger hovered over the call button.
My eyes closed.
Avery's face. Those wild dark curls and her father's green eyes. The way she'd started pressing her nose against mine before bed. She said it was how the Eskimo people said goodnight. She'd learned it from a book I read her.
"Mimi, can you read me a story?"
Tony on the cottage porch two nights ago. His voice flat and controlled and his hands shaking as he told me the worst thing that had ever happened to him. Because he trusted me. Because I'd earned something I didn't deserve.
I put the phone down.
The car door opened heavier than it should have. My legs were rubber but they held. I walked up the path to the main house. The kitchen light was on. Through the glass, I could see them.
Tony stood at the counter, sleeves pushed to his elbows, flour on his forearm. Avery stood on a step stool beside him, her entire face coated in something white.
She was stirring a bowl with both hands, tongue poking out in concentration. The kitchen looked like a flour bomb had detonated.
Tony was watching her with a look that made my chest crack open.
I pushed through the door.
Tony looked up. His smile started, then stopped. He saw it. Whatever was on my face, he read it the way he read everything. In one breath. All of it.
"What happened?"
My gaze went to Avery. Then back to Tony.
"We need to talk. Tonight. After she's asleep."
My voice was steady. My hands were behind my back so he wouldn't see them trembling.
Tony didn't push. He didn't ask again. He pulled out the chair beside Avery and set a mug in front of it. Coffee. Black. Still warm.
Avery turned on her step stool. Flour in her eyebrows. A streak of something sticky across her chin.
"Mimi! We're making COOKIES." She held up the wooden spoon like a trophy. Batter dripped onto the counter.
I sat down. I wrapped my hands around the mug. The warmth seeped into my frozen fingers.
Tony watched me over Avery's head. His look asked every question his mouth didn't. I held his gaze and tried to tell him without words that I was sorry. For what I was about to do. For what I'd already done. For all of it.
Avery stuck her finger in the batter and licked it.
"Daddy said I'm the boss of the cookies."
"You are," Tony said. He hadn't looked away from me.
I watched them. This man and this little girl, covered in flour, in a bright kitchen that smelled like butter and sugar. The life I'd built on a lie. The life I loved more than the truth I owed them.
Tonight I would sit across from Tony at this table and I would tell him everything. Who I was. My voice on a news desk. Cory. The bullet. The stalker who had just called me Winslow in a grocery store with a smile that made my blood freeze.
The FBI. Dale. The cameras. The burner phone. Every lie I'd stacked between us since the day I walked through his door.
And when I was done, he would either understand or he wouldn't.
I lifted the mug. Took a sip. The coffee was bitter and hot and it burned all the way down.
Avery held out the spoon. "Taste it, Mimi."
I leaned forward and tasted the batter. It was too sweet and there was an eggshell in it and it was the best thing I'd ever put in my mouth.
"Perfect," I said.
Avery beamed. Tony's hand found the back of my chair. Not touching me. Close.
Outside, the sun sat low over the mountains. The glass walls held the light. And somewhere in this town, a man with blue eyes was finishing his groceries, unhurried, patient, because he already had what he came for.
He had my name. And now I had to decide what to do with it before he decided for me.