Quiet. That’s what it was. Even more so than usual. She knew they wouldn’t be upset about dinner. Just because she usually cooked didn’t mean they couldn’t. They were grown men, after all.
“What’s up? Where’s Hannah?”
Nick finally looked up, his eyes and face unreadable. There was a time both were so clear he didn’t even need words. But now, anything he might feel for her was hidden behind a dark storm. Which is what his face reminded her of, a storm that had settled, made itself at home and refused to move on.
“Nick?”
“She went to bed,” he said, leveling his hard eyes on her. “She was already in bed when I got home.”
“Okay.” There was obviously more.
“Zach said she was exhausted from the outing you forced her on today. One that caused her complete and total freakout.”
Zach slid a look at Nick. “That’s not exactly what I said.”
Mia looked from one man to the other.
Zach dished up a bowl of spaghetti and excused himself, leaving the two of them.
“I told you she wasn’t ready,” Nick said.
“I thought she needed a push. That it was time for her to give it a try. Just to the grocery store. It might help if we encouraged her more. I was with her the whole time.”
“And she had a panic attack that left her exhausted. Do you still think you know what’s best?”
His tone was cutting, and clearly, he wasn’t asking. He was saying something.
“How bad was it?”
“Not as bad as some,” she said. “Worse than others. I handled it.”
“Right.” He went back to his file.
By handling it, she meant she’d gotten Hannah to a smaller space as soon as she could. When they were home, it was her closet. Today it had been the car. It had taken a while, but Hannah had been able to get her breathing slowed and heart rate under control without drugs, which Mia considered a huge step forward. Nick obviously wasn’t in the mood to hear anything positive.
“I’m sorry. I thought it would help. I made a mistake. I’ll go check on her.” Recovered from her surgeries enough to bathe and dress herself again, Hannah mostly ignored her presence. She didn’t take it personally. If Hannah wasn’t asleep, she’d read to her until she was.
Mia returned to the kitchen to find Nick still sitting in the same place, intently focused on his files. “Big case?”
“They’re all big.”
“Right. Do you want a beer?”
“No.”
“Ice tea?”
“No.”
She kept asking, kept knocking at his walls. A toothpick against ten feet of concrete. “How was your day?”
“Fine.”
“How’s Carl? Did his wife have the baby yet?”
“No.”
She dumped a bag of lettuce into a bowl and started slicing a cucumber. She chopped up carrots into small pieces the way they all liked them, cut cherry tomatoes in half, and added those. “I researched that place Hannah’s doctor told me about. I—”
“I said I didn’t want to talk about it. Said it the last five times you brought it up.”
And Hannah still sat in the dark, cried, barely ate, barely spoke. “Nick—”
“I said no. Did you not hear me? Have you not seen her? She can barely leave the house and you want to send her off to strangers? Are you insane?”
“You’re not listening to me,” she said calmly.
“I’m sick of listening to you. I’m fucking sick of listening to you every single day telling me she did this or that, telling me she’s getting better when she’s not. Telling me every single day what you think we should do and how you think she’s improving and how I should forget and move on. That’s my sister in there! I was responsible for her. I was supposed to take care of her. Maybe you can forget. I can’t.”
He sighed, not looking at her. She knew he didn’t mean it, told herself he didn’t. She’d watched him bear the weight since he was nineteen. Knew this about him. That he needed to control and protect and how it ate at him when he couldn’t. Understanding him didn’t mean he couldn’t hurt her, and slowly, little by little, she’d begun to withdraw behind a shield of her own.
“I know you, Nick,” she said after a moment. “I know you want what’s best for her, but maybe she needs more help than you can give her. I think we should talk about it, together.”
“It’s my decision. You’re not her mom.”
That was a slap.
She wasn’t Hannah’s mother, but she was something, wasn’t she?
“You don’t just send someone away because things get hard, Mia. To make your life easier. If you think I’d send her off, alone, make her think I don’t want her, you don’t know me at all.”