Part Seven: Mia
In all of this, Mia stood.
She stood where she had been standing when she held the spoon out — slightly to the side of the two main figures, within the arc of the scene but not at its center. She had watched Arthur stand up. She had watched Elena’s face change. She had listened to the recording and had not understood all of it but had understood its function, which was enough.
She was holding the spoon still.
Or rather, she realized after a moment, she was holding the space where the spoon had been — Arthur had taken it from her and she had not noticed the transfer, and her hand was closed around air.
A woman from the crowd came to stand beside her. Not one of the formally dressed guests but someone who had come through the same groundskeeper’s gap in the hedge, who had been following Mia at a distance from the cottage when she realized where the girl was going — Rose, Mia’s grandmother, who had heard the noise from across the grounds and had put on her shoes and come despite the instruction to rest, which she had immediately disregarded upon hearing what kind of noise it was.
Rose put her hand on Mia’s shoulder.
Mia leaned slightly into the hand. Just slightly — the lean of someone who has been holding themselves very straight for a very intense period and who has found, in the contact, permission to be nine years old again.
“You came,” Mia said.
“Of course I came,” Rose said.
“I didn’t tell you because you were ill.”
“I know,” Rose said. “We’ll talk about that part later.”
Rose looked at the scene in front of them — the security team, Elena, Arthur standing with the phone, the crowd of guests who were no longer pretending that everything was fine and were instead doing what people do when they have witnessed something significant, which is stand close to other people and talk quietly.
“You did right,” Rose said.
Mia looked up at her. “I wasn’t sure.”
“I know,” Rose said. “That’s how you know it was the right thing. The wrong things feel certain.”
