ASTERWICK 13 - Mira (Patreon)

10.17.26 – 8:00 p.m.

Mira Holloway’s House – East Asterwick

Mira Holloway - Current: 5’8” 145 lbs

The dress was sleeveless. Mira had not intended to buy a sleeveless dress. That was the part she kept telling herself. She’d found it while June was cussing about women’s sizing in a nearby dressing room. Dark green. Soft crepe. V-neck. Fitted at the waist and loose enough through the skirt that Mira had decided it possessed several admirable practical qualities.

None of those qualities explained why she’d stood in front of her mother’s bedroom mirror for almost a minute looking at her arms. They looked good. She wanted to chastise herself but it was undeniable. Her shoulders gave the dress structure. Her arms were defined without being large, the new muscle obvious mainly because Mira knew exactly what had occupied that skin a week ago. A stranger would probably assume she worked out. Mira knew better.

She had bought the dress one size larger than the saleswoman recommended. Six hours later, she was beginning to think this qualified as foresight. Mira turned sideways. The skirt fell just above her knees and still moved freely around her legs. It skimmed the new curve of her waist and hips instead of clinging. She had paired it with black tights and low black ankle boots—the only date-appropriate shoes she owned that did not already feel like they belonged to a child. “Don’t you dare.” She said to her body out loud. Her reflection offered no guarantees.

She tried pinning her hair up, pulled it loose again, and put in a pair of small silver earrings from her mother’s jewelry box. Her phone lay faceup on the dresser. No new message from June, though Mira had drafted and deleted three versions of a cautious hello without sending any of them. The sample tube from the forest remained sealed inside a metal thermos in the kitchen cabinet because apparently her life now included improvised containment procedures. At eight twenty, headlights washed across the curtains. Mira pulled on her fitted black coat and didn’t risk another glance at the mirror.

Grant stood on the porch in a charcoal jacket over a pale blue button-down, no flannel anywhere. Mira stopped with one hand on the door. “You own other clothes.” “Borrowed them for the occasion.” He glanced down at himself. “The owner expects them back by ten.”

“That seems strict.” “He knows what I do to sleeves.” Mira laughed, which helped. Then he looked at her properly, and the laugh became something warmer and less manageable. “You look beautiful,” he said. Grant delivered it like a fact he had rehearsed and still did not trust himself to say. That helped too.

“You look alarmingly employable,” Mira said. “There she is” he replied with a smirk. The restaurant was called Alder House, a narrow brick place two blocks from Harbor Coffee with amber lamps, linen-covered tables, and wineglasses thin enough to make Mira nervous. Rain softened the windows. A pianist murmured from hidden speakers. Silverware sat polished and aligned, each fork suggesting a separate test she had failed to study for.

Grant pulled out her chair, then nearly caught his cuff on it. He recovered without dignity. “Smooth,” Mira said. “I own a business. That is the same as having social skills.” “It absolutely is not.” A police cruiser crossed Alder at the next intersection, blue light sliding over the wet glass without a siren. Two diners glanced up, waited for drama, and returned to their menus when none arrived.

Mira ordered the salmon because it sounded delicate. Then she added roasted potatoes. Then bread. When the server mentioned soup, her stomach tightened with such enthusiasm that she ordered that too and pretended not to notice Grant pretending not to notice. “So,” she said after the server left, “you know where I live, what time I wake up, how I take coffee, and which grinder noise makes me threaten violence. I know you own six dark flannels and hate cardamom criticism.”

“Seven flannels.” “Impressive.” Grant folded his napkin across his lap. “My sister says the same thing. Usually before mailing me shirts with color.” “You have a sister?” “Older. Leah. She lives in Spokane, teaches middle-school science, and believes my life would improve if I owned anything yellow.”

“Would it?” “No. Yellow is an unstable color.” The bread arrived. Mira told herself to take one piece and discovered she was halfway through the second while Grant explained that he had not planned to own Harbor Coffee. He had planned to leave Asterwick, study architecture, and design buildings that made magazines use words like bold and conversation.

“What happened?” “My dad had a stroke during my second year. Not catastrophic, but enough that my mother needed help and the family hardware store needed somebody who could lift lumber and pretend to understand invoices.” He said it lightly. His thumb moved once along the stem of his water glass.

“I came home for a semester. Then two. Dad recovered enough to criticize how I stacked plywood, which was encouraging. The store did not recover. Big-box place opened off Route Eight. We sold three years later.” “And coffee?” “The old ordering office was cheap because the plumbing was shoddy. I thought I could renovate it, sell coffee, and go back to school when things stabilized.” He smiled without much amusement. “Then Harbor started working.”

“You sound disappointed that it succeeded.” “Some days I am. That sounds awful.” “It sounds honest.” He met her eyes. “I like the shop. I like knowing half the town by their drink. I like that my parents can call if they need something. But sometimes I look at the old mill buildings and start redesigning them in my head. Better windows. Apartments people can afford. A public space that does not smell like fryer grease.”

“You could still do that.” “Maybe.” He looked toward the rain. “I have become very good at maybe.” Mira had worked beside him for months. She knew the scar across his right knuckle came from the pastry case and that he counted the drawer twice when worried. She had not known about architecture, Leah, his father, or the yellow-shirt campaign. She had reduced him to steady hands, rolled sleeves, good coffee, and the inconvenient shape of his mouth when he smiled.

June was going to be unbearable. Their hands nearly met when they reached for the butter. Grant withdrew first. “Very respectful,” Mira said. “Workplace boundaries.” “We are not at work.” “I am recalibrating.” She took the butter and let her fingers brush his on purpose. Grant looked at her hand, then up. The eye contact held long enough to make the room feel smaller.

“How long were you planning to recalibrate before asking me out?” Mira asked. Grant winced. “I considered it in July.” “July?” “You had been working for me three weeks. Asking then seemed less romantic and more like an employment-law case study.” “Wise.” “Then I waited, which became its own habit. By this week I was reduced to inviting a coffee-shop employee out for coffee inside a coffee shop.”

“A historic collapse under pressure.” “I appreciate your compassion.” The soup came, dark with mushrooms and herbs. Mira finished it faster than etiquette permitted. The salmon arrived before she could feel embarrassed, accompanied by potatoes, greens, and the clean bright scent of lemon. Grant told her about Leah replacing his apartment curtains while he was at work because the old ones made the room look divorced. Mira nearly inhaled a potato.

Outside, a siren rose from downtown. Red light rolled over the ceiling, faded, then returned in blue. The restaurant paused around it. A woman near the window lifted her phone. A server looked toward Alder Street. Then the siren moved on and civilization resumed at a lower volume. Grant cut into his steak. “You came back because of your mom, right?”

The question landed without force. Grant still saw it land. His fork stopped. “Sorry. That was not smooth either.” Mira looked at the rain moving down the window. She could refuse. He would let her. That was becoming a problem. “Yes,” she said. “She died in March. There was the house, paperwork, about forty years of things she considered too useful to throw away.”

“Hotel shampoo.” “A basket full. Also rubber bands sorted by size, instruction manuals for appliances she no longer owned, and batteries alphabetized by brand.” Grant lowered his fork. “Alphabetized batteries.” “Duracell before Energizer. She had standards.” The memory surprised a smile out of her. Her mother at the kitchen table with three dead flashlights, muttering about corrosion and the decline of manufacturing. For a second the woman returned whole—not ill, not secretive, not a problem Mira had failed to solve. Just irritated by batteries.

“We loved each other,” Mira said. “We were not always good at it.” Grant waited. “She was practical about everything except the things that mattered. Toward the end she started keeping notebooks in odd places. Newspaper clippings in cookbooks. Maps folded into drawers. She would call and ask where I was going that weekend, then get strangely specific. Was I hiking? Which direction? Had I been west of town?”

“Did she say why?” “No. If I asked, she changed the subject or told me the weather was turning. I thought she was becoming controlling. Or confused. Maybe both.” Mira moved one potato through a line of sauce. “After she died, I found a trail map. She had written a warning on it.” Grant did not ask what the warning said.

“Do you miss her?” he asked. Mira could answer dates. Places. Medical facts. Whether or not she missed her Mother was incredibly simple yet incredibly difficult to answer. “Sometimes.” She swallowed. “Sometimes so much I still reach for my phone. Sometimes I am angry enough that I can barely stand being in her house.”

Grant nodded once. No correction. No speech about grief. He let both things remain true. “I would miss anyone who alphabetized batteries,” he said after a moment. Mira laughed through the tightness in her throat. “She would have hated your drawer at work.” “ It is where organization goes to die.” Grant looked down at his plate. “Sounds like she was scared of something.”

The room lost its edges. Mira saw the third marker with its split pupil. The word MOUTH beneath her mother’s careful line. A perfect hole cut through the mountain. Iridescent liquid turning toward June. Bone shifting under torn cloth. A pale hand curling around a cedar trunk on a phone screen that should not have been recording.

Her mother had asked whether Mira was hiking west because she had been afraid. Not confused. Not controlling. Afraid. “I think she was,” Mira said. Grant’s voice stayed quiet. “Of what?” She could tell him. The urge rose so strongly it hurt. Hand him the whole impossible morning and let him help carry it. But the image of June filled the booth: six-two, wrapped in an emergency blanket, sobbing beside the welcome sign. Then the thing moving through the trees. The unknown number telling June she had brought it back.

Grant had parents in town. A sister in Spokane. A coffee shop full of people who knew where to find him. “I don’t know yet,” Mira said. Grant watched her for one long second. He knew it was not the whole truth. His mouth tightened at one corner, disappointment or concern or both.

“Okay,” he said. He meant it. Not I believe you. Not this is fine. Only that the answer belonged to her until she could give him another one. The server appeared with the dessert menu before Mira could become emotional enough to ruin dinner. “We have a chocolate torte, pear tart, and vanilla crème brûlée.” Mira opened her mouth to decline. “The torte.”

Grant looked down to hide a smile. “You noticed,” she said when the server left. “I own a coffee shop. Watching people eat is half my job.” “And the other half?” “Pretending not to watch.” “You have been pretending very hard.” “I assumed commenting on a woman’s appetite during a first date was a reliable way to prevent a second.”

“Strong instincts.” The torte arrived with two forks. Mira ate most of it. Grant defended his share with increasingly elaborate legal arguments. Their hands met over the plate, and this time neither moved away. For the first time all day, Mira felt almost normal. Then pressure gathered low in her stomach. Mira stopped in the middle of saying something about Grant’s unfair fork technique. Heat threaded up her back, gentle at first. Familiar.

No.

Her fingers tightened around nothing. She placed one hand flat on the table before it could close around the wineglass. “Mira?” “Please don’t freak out.” Grant leaned forward. “What?” The pressure deepened. The dress drew closer across her stomach and chest. Her tights compressed along her legs, and her boots pinched across the toes. “Please.” She heard the fear in her own voice and watched him hear it too. “Whatever happens, try not to freak out.”

Grant’s face changed. The easy awkwardness vanished. He looked at the exits, the server station, her hand flattened beside the ruined torte. Then he reached across the table and took it. “You don’t know what’s happening,” Mira said.

“No.” His thumb rested against her knuckle. His hand was warm and not completely steady. “I don’t.” He did not let go. The first shift ran through her spine. Mira inhaled sharply. Her back straightened against the chair, each small adjustment lifting her a fraction higher. The table edge dropped against her ribs. Her knees moved beneath the linen and met the underside sooner than expected.

Grant felt her hand gain more substance before he understood it with his eyes. His fingers tightened. Color left his face. Her boots compressed around her feet, toes pressing hard into leather. The coat draped over the neighboring chair seemed to retreat from her, its sleeves suddenly too short even before she tried it. Heat rolled across her exposed shoulders. The dark green crepe drew taut at the armholes as her shoulder line pushed outward, widening by degrees Grant could actually watch. The V-neck shifted higher against her collarbones. One side seam gave a tiny warning tick near her ribs.

Mira watched Grant. His eyes tracked upward as her viewpoint climbed, then fixed on her bare arms. The subtle definition she had resented in the mirror deepened in real time. Her biceps rounded and became fuller beneath the skin, not huge, but undeniably changing. Her shoulders spread farther beyond the dress straps, giving her silhouette a stronger, broader frame.

The waist drew taut before settling higher on her body. The hem edged upward over her tights as her legs lengthened beneath the table. His breath shortened. Fear showed plainly now—not panic, but the stunned animal fear of watching reality break at arm’s length.

His hand trembled. He stayed. Pressure packed into Mira’s legs. Her thighs met the chair differently, stronger and heavier, lifting closer to the table as the tights began to fail. The small ticking sound returned as powerful thighs became too much for the thin membrane of the tights. Her abdominals bunched, bracing around organs that seemed to know exactly how to survive the impossible.

Her shoulders widened another fraction. Her exposed arms firmed from shoulder to wrist, biceps rising into clean athletic curves as Grant watched. Her breasts swelled and demanded space the dress could not give. It held but barely. Six hours old and already being asked to survive the impossible.

A server approached with the check folder, saw Mira’s flushed face, and stopped beside the table. “Is everything all right?” Grant looked up without releasing Mira. “We need a minute.” The server hesitated. Mira kept her expression still while another increment pulled through her spine. “Of course,” the server said, and retreated.

Outside, an ambulance passed hard through the intersection. Blue and red light moved across Grant’s frightened face. Mira’s hand closed around his. Too hard. Grant winced. She released him at once. “Did I hurt you?” “No.” “Grant.” He flexed his fingers. “A little.” Mira pulled both hands into her lap. Shame burned hotter than the surge. “I’m sorry.”

Grant stared at her for half a breath. Then he placed his hand palm-up on the table between them. Mira looked at it. “You don’t have to do that.” His throat worked. “I know.” She put her hand back in his, carefully this time. The last inch came quietly. Her knees shifted. Her boots became a concentrated ache.

The chair felt made for someone slightly smaller, its back lower against her shoulder blades. The dress tightened once more through her hips while the seam of her tights quietly split, her glutes proving too much them. The dress hem settled several inches higher than it had in her mother’s mirror. Grant’s hand seemed diminished inside hers, not small, only changed by comparison.

Then the pressure stopped. The absence hit harder than the change. One second her body had been full of movement; the next it was only hers again, altered and settled. Permanent. Mira breathed through her nose. The dress remained tight across her chest shoulders, and hips. Its armholes pressed high against newly fuller muscle. Its hem remained shorter. Her boots remained too small.

Grant stared at her. The restaurant continued around them with deliberate softness: forks against plates, low music, rain against glass. Nobody screamed. Nobody came running. A couple at the next table glanced over, saw a flushed woman holding hands with a pale man, and looked away.

“Are you hurt?” Grant asked. “No.” “Has this happened before?” Mira could still lie. The lie waited, polished by practice. “Yes.” Grant looked down at their joined hands. “This is what you meant when you said something happened.” “Part of it.” A muscle moved in his jaw. He wanted answers. He deserved them. Wanting them did not make him less frightened, and fear did not make him leave.

He signaled for the check. They paid in silence. Mira tried to slide her feet deeper into her boots and gave up. When she stood, the room settled around her at a subtly different height. The table seemed lower. The hanging lamp sat closer. Her chair looked narrower than it had when she arrived. The skirt tugged against her tights and stopped several inches higher above her knees.

Grant rose beside her. His eyes lifted a fraction to meet hers, in boots, she was taller than him now. A stranger would see a tall woman with the shoulders, arms, and posture of someone who trained seriously. The sleeveless dark green dress fitted too closely now, its narrow straps framing a visibly wider shoulder line. Her biceps rested fuller against her sides. Its waist sat higher. The crepe followed her hips and thighs without any of the forgiveness it had offered in Eugene.

Grant lifted her coat from the chair and held it open. Mira slid one arm in, then the other. Her arms filled the jacket sleeves completely, while the shoulder seams strained across the new width of her back. The cuffs stopped higher than they had an hour ago. Beneath it, the dress pulled tight enough that she could feel every careful breath. He noticed. She noticed him noticing.

“This is what you weren’t ready to explain,” he said. “Part of it.” Grant’s face remained unsettled. He looked toward the dark window, then back to her. “Okay.” The same word as before. It meant he did not understand. It meant he was afraid. It meant he was still there.

Another police cruiser swept past Alder House, followed by an ambulance moving toward downtown. Blue and red light crossed the linen tables, the wineglasses, Grant’s face, and Mira’s hands. Diners looked up again.

This time the room took longer to recover. Grant opened the door. Rain breathed cold against her overheated skin. Mira had spent dinner deciding whether she could trust him. Now, standing larger and stronger in a six-hour-old dress that had already become too small, she understood the decision had been made. She trusted him. Now she needed to figure out what that trust might cost him.