Mia let out a long, controlled breath.
It was the kind that costs more than it looks like it should, drawn in slowly through the nose, held for just a moment in the chest where it had time to do its work, then released through barely parted lips in a thin and measured stream, the way you might release pressure from something that could otherwise crack.
Anyone watching might have called it composure. They would have been right about the shape of it, if not entirely about the contents.
She stood at the window with her arms folded loosely beneath her ribs, not holding herself so much as simply occupying her own space with a kind of deliberate stillness, and she looked out at the garden without really seeing it, the grey morning light settling over the hedgerow, the lawn still damp, a bird moving across the far edge of the grass and then lifting away into a sky the color of old pewter.
None of it registered. It was scenery. Background.
