Page 68 of Off the Beaten Path

“She said ‘you should have been there.’ Rich, seeing as how she missed it,” Mia says with a roll of her eyes.

“We did everything we could to be there,” I say, my voice steely. “You didn’t.”

Mia holds up a hand, cutting me off. “I don’t want to argue about this. I just…” She trails off, avoiding my gaze once more, staring everywhere around the house but at me. I wonder what she thinks of the house I bought without her. She’s been here before, a few years back, but so much has changed since then. There are no longer toddler toys and tiny shoes. Now there are stray friendship bracelet beads and a pile of clothes that look like they should be way too big for our tiny daughter stacked in the corner, waiting to be folded and put away.

“I watched that video and I hardly recognized her,” Mia says finally.

“She’s growing fast,” I say, trying desperately to sound gentle when all I want to do is tell her she’s missing seeing her daughter grow up.

Mia swallows. “I want things to be better between us. All three of us.”

There’s so much baggage there, I don’t know how we will ever unpack it, especially with Mia halfway across the world, hours and miles away. But I refrain from saying that.

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t like how things are with us, that I don’t know my daughter, that I hardly recognize you.”

I cross my arms over my chest. “I haven’t changed.”

Mia gives me a soft smile. “You have, Holden. You’ve changed so much.”

My jaw tenses, all the words I’ve held back for years fighting to break loose. She doesn’t have a right to say these things, to waltz back into our lives and act like she knows us. Like shecaresabout us, when she’s spent the last four years proving otherwise.

She must recognize the look in my eye, because the smile falls from her face and she leans back on the couch, letting out a heavy breath. “How can I fix things?”

I stare at her, not knowing what she’s meaning, exactlywhatshe’s hoping to change. Things with her and June?Ourrelationship?

“Fix what, Mia?”

She sighs. “I hate how things are between us.”

“We’re not getting back together.”

Her gaze swings up to mine, surprise in every line of her face. “What?”

“I said we’re not getting back together.” My body is tense, my hands tightening on my biceps.

Mia blinks. “I don’t want to get back together with you, Holden. I’m seeing someone in Paris. I told you this, like, six months ago.”

Maybe she mentioned it during a phone call, but I don’t remember it. Her relationship status has never concerned me. I’m more concerned with her relationship with her daughter.

“Good,” I say finally.

“We were never right together. I don’t regret leaving.”

I expect that comment to needle me, to get under my skin and make me fume. But for some reason, it doesn’t. For the first time, I don’t regret her leaving either. Staring at her on our old couch right now, I know her leaving was the right thing, that we never would have worked even if she had stayed. I don’t like the circumstances or the way she abandoned her relationship with her daughter, but I’m surprised to realize that I’m glad she was brave enough to leaveme, to do the thing I probably never would have, no matter how unhappy we were.

“I just don’t like this…tension between us,” Mia says, waving her finger between us.

“Mia,” I say with a sigh, having a hard time keeping myself in check now.

“What?” Her voice raises.

“You can’t just walk out of our lives and expect things to be the same when you come back. It doesn’t work like that. June and I are a family. We work every single day to be a family. And you’re not part of it. Youleft.”

Mia’s jaw clenches. “Well, what if I want to be a part of it again? What if I want to figure out a way to do that?”

“From Paris?” I scoff.

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