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The phone falls from Mia’s hands. It clatters onto the table. The noise echoes around and around the walls. Her hands shake. Her breathing comes in sharp pants and she digs her nails into her legs.
Don’t do that, comes Ethan’s voice from a lifetime ago, don’t do that, Mia, hey, don’t hurt yourself.
The next sob rasps against the inside of her throat and comes out a whine. She wheezes her eyes shut and tries to banish the feeling of Ethan, Ethan, Ethan. But it’s too late: the blackness blurs into rotting wood and sodden floors and the constant whine and chitter of vermin and she’s stumbling through the house and there, there he is—
Her eyes fly open and she staggers to the kitchen, fumbling for a glass and shoving it under the freezing tap. She takes one, two, three big gulps. Heaving with her hands braced against the counter.
She’s not there. She’s not there. She’s in her shitty apartment, with her own god-awful paintings on the walls, with those terrible throw pillows she and Rose made fun of in the store. She’s fine. She’s fine.
It takes too long for her to calm down. She can hear Rose’s disapproving look as she thinks it— Would you tell me it’s stupid to have panic attacks?— and gives herself a shake. She puts the glass in the sink to wash later and goes back to the sofa, staring at her phone on the coffee table.
God, she’d nearly had a heart attack when Chris called her. She was scrambling out of bed, going for her keys, ready to race through the fucking barricade if she had to, only for Chris to tell her that Rose had a nightmare and wanted to talk to her.
She laces her fingers together and puts her elbows on her knees, staring at the phone. Hearing Rose cry make her chest hurt, it always had. From when she was a baby and it was all she knew how to do, all the way up until just now where the poor girl— she’s still a girl, she’s just a child, she’s been through so much— was sobbing after having a nightmare and Chris had to call her.
Mia scrubs her hands over her face. For a second she lets herself imagine a world where Rose was here, with her, where she could run down the hall and open the door and they could hug and talk and do all the things a mother was supposed to do when her daughter had a nightmare. The world shifts—even better, if Ethan were here, he would be up as soon as he heard the first cry, his footsteps quick down the hall and the low echoes of his voice crooning that it’s okay, Rosie, I’m here, Dad’s right here, you’re safe, it’s okay.
Dark water lapping against broken wood and a voice whispering in her ears—
She gives herself a shake.
This was not that fantasy world. Ethan was dead. Rose wasn’t here.
Fuck, Rose couldn’t even call her Mom over the phone.
She buries her face in her hands and lets out a long groan. She should’ve anticipated that Rose would have questions, what teenager doesn’t? It was a miracle it took her this long to ask. Part of Mia worried that as soon as Rose found out something about the Bakers, about anything that had happened, she’d be pestering Mia about it. About what happened, why they weren’t around anymore, whether or not they were family.
Mia flinches at the very thought, screwing her eyes shut and pressing her hands hard to her temples. She’s not there. She’s not there. Eveline is not here. Eveline is gone. Eveline is dead. Rose is here. Rose is not Eveline. She went through a whole journey inside the Megamycete that proved she wasn’t Eveline.
Eveline was still a part of the Megamycete.
A growl escapes her throat and she scowls at the floor. She throws herself up and stomps over to the light, flicking it on and grabbing the box from the shelf. She clears the coffee table with a careless sweep of her arm and sets up the paint as angrily as she can. Her hair tied back in the messiest bun in the world and the drop cloth only barely covering the glass, she reaches blindly for a color and smears it on the page.
She’d gone through psychiatrist after psychiatrist after getting out of that hellhole, half to just get things over with and try to have some level of normalcy with Ethan, and half because none of them seemed to get that she was working for the Connections, she knew what Eveline was, and she was still trapped in the Baker house for three years. They went from treating her like a bioterrorist to a helpless woman in the blink of an eye. The only one who hadn’t was ironically the one that saw the rest of Chris’s team, Dr. O’Shaughnessey.
I want you to try and find another coping mechanism, he’d said during one of their sessions, something that you can use to get some of your feelings out in a way that isn’t as destructive.
What, she’d scoffed, you want me to draw or paint my feelings?
Give it a try. If you do it once and decide I’m full of shit, come back here and tell me and we’ll try something else.
It worked and she hated him a little bit for it.
So, here she was: in the middle of the night, still coming down from a panic attack, smearing paint in a well-used sketchbook. She doesn’t bother to clean her brush or switch to another one, just grabs a different color and squirts it onto the page. Bits splatter up her hands on onto her arms. She wipes her face and leaves a big streak over her nose. A big glob falls off the book and onto the drop cloth.
Rose hadn’t known how Mia would react to questions about Eveline. How could she have? It wasn’t like they’d ever talked about Eveline before, even briefly. And how could Rose know what Mia’s temperament was like when it wasn’t on their supervised-not-supervised meetings where all they did was pretend like they were normal? It wasn’t Rose’s fault. She was the adult. She was the one who was supposed to have a better handle on herself and help Rose, the child, figure things out. That’s what a mother does.
Her hands stutter. Paint splatters again.
She wasn’t an idiot. She noticed that Rose hadn’t been able to call her Mom the whole time.
Guilt makes her breath turn sour and she drags her nails through the paint. The pain in her chest roils with the churning in her gut until she has to lean over the trash can in case she throws up. Memories of being pregnant with Rose, laid up in bed on too many medications to remember, with her body unsure whether to feed the baby or attack the mold. Ethan, not knowing what was going on or why his wife was suddenly so sick, and her not knowing whether to cry with happiness that they were doing it, they were going to have a little girl, or with terror that Eveline might come back, take control of her again. And then seeing Rose, her little Rose, looking so much like Ethan with her sandy hair and blue eyes, and her little face looking up at Mia like a child should, loving their mother with everything they have because it’s all they know, and wanting to throw her at Ethan and run far, far away and never look at her again.
A sob leaves her as she scratches the paint, bits chipping off under her nails. Part of her wants to drive to the compound anyway, even though she knows she’s gonna see Rose tomorrow, just to see her now, make sure she’s alright, just to see that she’s alive and okay and everything.
Chris is there. Ethan is with her. She’s fine.
The worst of the nausea subsides and she glances at her hand. Blue, green, and some other color mangle the middle of her palm and she gets up and goes to the sink. She turns the water warmer and scrubs at the paint. The low sound of the water running gives her something to focus on.
She’d be a fool to think Rose would just drop everything, wouldn’t she? She’s wanted to know why Eveline wanted a family so badly. Why? What sort of nightmares was she having where that was the question?
She turns her hand over to start cleaning the paint from under her nails. In truth, she only has some suspicions about why Eveline was so driven by the idea of a family. It made the most sense to transport her that way, as the child with her parents. And it wasn’t like they told her it wasn’t real, not the way they probably should have. Or should they have? The child was unstable enough as it was, learning that her supposed family was just a guise to get her transported to another facility was—was—
She blinks at the zing of pain. She looks down and notices a paint chip lodged under her nail, still under the water. She stares at it.
Eveline was just a child. A child capable of destroying the population of a small country, a child that held her prisoner for three years, a child that infected an innocent family and drove them to insanity, but still just a child.
She hadn’t known anything other than the lab. The lab and the tests and then she was out and had a family. A fake family, one that would only exist for the duration of a boat ride, but a family.
And then they tried to kill her.
Mia curls her fingers into a fist and grits her teeth. Eveline was the reason she suffered in that wretched house for three years. Eveline was the reason her husband died. Eveline was the reason the Bakers died, that all of those innocent people died, and she needed to be stopped.
She was just a child.
She infected a family that were just trying to help. She forced Zoe Baker to spend three years trying to avoid being murdered by those she loved. She turned that small estate into a living nightmare.
She just wanted to be loved.
She drove Mia insane. She took over her body and poisoned her with the mold. She made her lure Ethan to his death and made her attack him with knives, chainsaws, made her cut off his hand.
She just wanted a family.
Not for the first time that night, she has to reach up and scrub frustrated tears from her eyes, wincing at the sting of the soap. Her fingers come away blue and she remembers the paint on her face. She turns off the sink and goes to the bathroom, scrubbing at the mark until the water runs clear. The light flickers. She grabs a towel and pats her face dry.
She’s going to see Rose tomorrow. They’re going to go get smoothies. They’re going tot all. Rose has questions. She’s going to have to find some way to answer them. She’s going to have to find some way to apologize to her daughter for shouting at her. She’s going to have to find some way to live with herself and all the mistakes she’s made. She’s going to have to find some way to be a mother.
She goes back to the living room. The paint sits innocently on the mess of a coffee table. All the coasters and books and magazines are scattered across the floor. Her sketchbook sits drying in the faint neon lights from beyond the creaky window. Her phone is partly covered by the drop cloth.
She cleans off the bottles and puts them back on the shelf. She folds up the cloth and stashes it in the box. She carries the still-wet sketchbook into her room and puts it on the dresser. She puts everything back on the coffee table. She picks up her phone and plugs it back in next to the bed.
She hesitates for a moment, then she opens the nightstand drawer and takes out a photo.
She took it right after Rose fell asleep in Ethan’s arms, in their house in Romania. The camera looks over his shoulder onto their daughter’s sleeping face. Rose has a little smile and the photo captures the side of Ethan’s turned face as he smiles down at her.
She runs her finger over Rose’s plump cheek. She puts the photo back in the drawer and lies down in bed.
Many miles away, her daughter falls asleep with the same furrow between her brows.
“We were going to sell her.”
She sees Chris glance at her out of the corner of her eye. She keeps watching Rose as she walks through the farmer’s market, stopping at the stalls with fresh bread or bouquets in little pots of water. Chris looks around—probably at one of the agents she’s not supposed to know is here—and takes a step closer.
“Eveline?”
Mia nods. “The trip to Argentina was supposed to be my last. After Eveline went there, I guess—she would’ve gone to the highest bidder.”
Chris doesn’t say anything for a moment. Two kids run by, chasing a dog heading for the free dog treat bowl. Rose stops at a place selling organic honey.
“The Connections is no more,” he says eventually, “we put a stop to them. There won’t be another Eveline from them to sell.”
“I know.”
“Unless you think—“
“No. There won’t be. I’ve told you everything I know already.”
They lapse back into silence. They have to move a little out of the way when people keep bumping into them. Rose turns around, looking for them, and Mia raises her hand. Rose spots them and smiles, and she sees Rose look at Chris and smile too.
“She called you.”
“What?”
“The night she had the nightmare. She called you.”
He shifts, leather jacket creaking. “Yeah, she called me.”
The confirmation settles in her gut and churns. Rose called Chris. The man who left Ethan to die. The man who made them move to Romania, where Miranda kidnapped her, stole her body, and broke Rose into pieces, where Ethan was killed. The man who keeps her in a government compound where she has no friends, where they look at her like she’s a freak, a dangerous bioweapon to be exploited and controlled. The man who didn’t hesitate to tell the higher-ups that she was with him, no one else. The man who stuck his neck out for her to keep her safe. The man who made sure that she could see Mia and go to school and visit Ethan’s grave, who took her out for ice cream when she was sad and went to her side when she had a nightmare and needed someone to be there.
“Mia,” she hears, and she’s been quiet for too long, “I didn’t—I never meant to—“
“Thank you for looking after her.”
Chris stutters to a halt. She turns to look at him. He clearly wrestles with whatever it is he was going to say before he swallows it and just gives her a sharp nod. She nods back and turns find Rose. She’s found a stall selling what looks like dish towels and tote bags. She has a brief and fleeting image of Rose as one of those hippies with her hair flowing from under a low headband and a big tunic dress and shakes it away.
The girl loves Ethan’s jacket like it’s her blanket, she wouldn’t give that up for anything.
That’s my girl.
“She’s really something,” comes Chris’s voice and she realizes she must’ve spoken out loud, “you should be proud of her.”
Mia glances at him. He’s watching her too, and he has that soft expression that he gets when he looks at her—or at them, when they’re on the couch cuddled up or laughing about something stupid. She’s not sure he would believe her if she told him what he looked like. She’s not even sure he knows he’s doing it.
“I am proud of her,” she says, “I always am.”
“Yeah.”
“You should be too.”
Now Chris turns and stares at her, eyes wide. Because they don’t talk about this.
They don’t talk about how Chris volunteered to train her and Ethan personally. They don’t talk about how he stayed on their case long after his involvement should’ve been over to do so.
They don’t talk about how he willingly relocated to Romania with them when his whole life was still in the States. They don’t talk about how he helped them move in and shared meals at their house while they were still getting settled.
They don’t talk about how Chris knew Ethan’s favorite wine or what sort of food he didn’t like. They don’t talk about how the two of them got drunk after Ethan died and how long it took for Mia to be okay with doing that.
They don’t talk about how Chris used to look at Ethan. They don’t talk about the time Mia came home and found Chris huddled protectively around Ethan as he cried into his shoulder.
They don’t talk about how Ethan woke up from a panic attack once and immediately asked for Chris. They don’t talk about how Chris skipped a recon mission to sit with Ethan in silence for four hours.
They don’t talk about how both of them had thick voices and tears in their eyes as they flew away from the destroyed village.
Chris is looking at her like this right now because they don’t talk about this.
So they don’t.
They stand there for a few more minutes until Rose comes back and asks them what the hell they’re doing. She hands them each little maple candies and links her arms through theirs as they walk through the market. They try fancy pastries and dried meat and buy overpriced sandwiches from a woman with frizzy hair and a sparkly glasses chain. They sit on a nearby park bench and talk about something else, anything else.
Rose gives her a long hug when it’s time for her to go. Chris nods as they climb into his truck and drive off. She goes home with a fresh loaf of bread. She goes to her room and takes out the photo again.
She kisses her fingertips and touches Ethan’s cheek, then she goes to have a glass of wine.