The Boy With My Eyes

The red crayon rolled across the aisle and stopped against my shoe while I was reviewing the final numbers on a $780 million acquisition.

I picked it up without thinking.

A little boy stood beside my seat, waiting for it.

He couldn’t have been more than two and a half. Sandy-brown hair curled over his forehead, and his green eyes were fixed on the crayon in my hand. When he smiled, a small dimple appeared in his left cheek.

I had the same dimple.

“Mine,” he said, pointing.

“I figured.”

I handed it to him.

He studied my face for another second, then turned toward the row behind me.

“Mommy, that man has my eyes.”

My hand stopped over my laptop.

A woman several rows back looked up.

Cassandra Hayes.

For three years, I had wondered why she’d disappeared from my life.

Now she was standing in the aisle of a Christmas Eve flight to Denver with a little girl on her hip and terror written plainly across her face.

The little girl had Cassandra’s dark hair.

She had my eyes too.

“Luke,” Cassandra said quietly. “Come back here, sweetheart.”

The boy trotted toward her.

I closed my laptop.

There were messages coming in from my CFO, two attorneys, and the acquisition team. If we didn’t sign before midnight, months of work could unravel.

I didn’t read any of them.

I walked toward Cassandra.

“How old are they?”

She tightened her arm around the little girl.

“Damon.”

“How old?”

Luke was drawing again, kneeling on the empty seat beside her.

Cassandra looked at him before answering.

“Two years and eight months.”

I did the math immediately.

My stomach dropped.

“Cassandra.”

“Not here.”

“Are they mine?”

Her eyes closed briefly.

Then she nodded.

I grabbed the top of the seat in front of me because suddenly the airplane didn’t feel steady.

“Both of them?”

She looked at me as if the question itself exhausted her.

“They’re twins.”

Luke looked up from his paper.

“Mommy, does he know us?”

Neither of us answered him.

The Letters I Never Read

I moved into the empty seat across the aisle once the flight attendants finished service.

Cassandra put Violet down beside Luke and gave both children crackers. Violet kept one hand wrapped around a worn gray stuffed elephant.

I couldn’t stop looking at them.

Luke ate the crackers by breaking each one exactly in half.

I did that as a kid.

Violet rubbed the satin edge of her elephant against her thumb when she got sleepy.

There were hundreds of questions in my head, but only one came out.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

Cassandra stared at me.

“I did.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“I wrote to you eleven times.”

I shook my head.

“I never got a letter.”

“I called your office. I emailed. I went there twice.”

“Then somebody would’ve told me.”

Cassandra’s expression changed.

Not anger exactly.

Something more tired.

“That’s what I thought too.”

She reached under the seat and pulled a canvas tote toward her. From the bottom, beneath coloring books and children’s snacks, she removed a large envelope.

The corners were bent.

She handed it to me.

Inside were letters.

Some had been opened.

Most hadn’t.

Several were stamped RETURN TO SENDER.

I recognized every address.

My old condo in Portland.

Prescott Technologies.

The temporary apartment I’d used during an expansion.

One envelope had been addressed directly to my executive office.

I opened it.

There was an ultrasound photograph inside.

Two tiny shapes.

On the back, Cassandra had written a date.

Underneath it were four words.

There are two heartbeats.

I looked at her.

“I never saw this.”

“I know what you’re going to say.”

“No. You don’t.”

“You’re going to tell me your assistant handled your mail. Or somebody made a mistake. Or you were traveling.”

“Because I didn’t get these.”

Her voice stayed quiet.

“Then explain the phone call.”

I stopped.

“What phone call?”

Cassandra glanced toward the children.

Luke was coloring four figures now. Violet was making red circles on another page.

“About six weeks after they were born, someone called me.”

“Who?”

“She didn’t give me a last name. She said she worked around you.”

“What did she say?”

Cassandra hesitated.

Then she looked directly at me.

“She said you knew.”

I felt my fingers tighten around the letter.

“Knew what?”

“That Luke and Violet had been born.”

I stared at her.

“And?”

“She said you’d decided it would be better if there wasn’t contact.”

“That’s a lie.”

Violet looked up at the sharpness in my voice.

I lowered it immediately.

“Cassandra, that’s a lie.”

She nodded slowly.

“I know that now.”

That hurt in a way anger couldn’t touch.

“What else did she tell you?”

“That Prescott Technologies was going through an important period. That questions about children from a former relationship could become public. That you had worked too hard to let a personal situation damage the company.”

I could barely get the next words out.

“And you believed her?”

Cassandra’s face tightened.

“You canceled our wedding because of work.”

I said nothing.

“You missed my father’s memorial because you were closing a deal.”

I looked down.

“You once left Thanksgiving dinner twenty minutes after arriving because somebody in Chicago needed you.”

She wasn’t exaggerating.

That was the problem.

“So yes, Damon. I believed her.”

The Photograph in the Envelope

There was another photograph inside the envelope.

Two newborn babies lay beside each other under white hospital blankets.

Luke’s mouth was open.

Violet’s fist rested against his cheek.

I turned it over.

Cassandra’s handwriting was on the back.

They both have your eyes.

I read it twice.

Then a third time.

“How old were they here?”

“Two days.”

I ran my thumb along the edge of the photograph.

“Were they okay?”

Cassandra’s expression softened slightly.

“Luke was small. Violet was smaller. We stayed in the hospital a little longer than expected, but they were okay.”

“Were you alone?”

She didn’t answer.

That was answer enough.

I looked toward Luke.

He was still drawing.

Four people.

Three were colored in.

The fourth was only an outline.

“Who’s that?” I asked.

Luke covered the drawing with his arm.

“Not done.”

Cassandra almost smiled.

My phone buzzed again.

11 unread messages.

Then another.

I turned it face down.

Cassandra noticed.

“You don’t have to do that.”

“Do what?”

“Pretend your life stopped because you found us.”

“I’m not pretending.”

“You have a company waiting for you in Denver.”

“I have two children sitting six feet away from me.”

She looked down at her hands.

I wanted to tell her I’d fix it.

The words almost came out.

But I was good at fixing companies. Contracts. Numbers. Problems that had deadlines and measurable outcomes.

There was no contract that could give me back Luke’s first word.

No amount of money could tell me what Violet had been like as a baby.

So I asked something else.

“What do you want me to do?”

Cassandra looked surprised.

“Right now?”

“From now on.”

She watched me for several seconds.

“Show up.”

“That’s it?”

“No expensive gifts. No lawyers arriving tomorrow. No deciding that because you’re Damon Prescott, you suddenly get to rearrange everybody’s life.”

I nodded.

“Okay.”

“They don’t know you.”

That sentence landed harder than anything else she’d said.

“I know.”

“You don’t get to walk in and ask them to call you Dad.”

“I won’t.”

“And don’t promise them things unless you’re going to do them.”

I looked at Luke.

“When can I see them again?”

Cassandra hesitated.

“We’re staying with Daniel tomorrow.”

Her brother.

I remembered the house.

“Christmas morning?”

“Around nine.”

“I’ll be there.”

Her eyes stayed on mine.

“Don’t say it unless you mean it.”