Chapter 1 - The Question at 30,000 Feet
Mara. How old are they?
I stared at the message until the letters blurred.
Theo was still trying to rescue a blue crayon from beneath the seat in front of him. Ivy had returned to the window, her stuffed rabbit tucked beneath her chin, watching baggage carts move through the snow outside as if nothing in the world had changed.
But everything had.
Twenty feet away, behind a navy curtain and a row of passengers pretending not to be irritated by the delay, Lucas Vale was waiting for my answer.
For almost three years, I had imagined this moment in a hundred different ways.
I had imagined him finding out through someone else.
I had imagined a photograph surfacing online.
I had imagined Theo wandering away from me in a grocery store and somehow colliding with the one man in America whose face was regularly printed in business magazines.
I had even imagined telling Lucas myself.
In none of those versions had I been trapped inside an airplane with nowhere to go.
My phone buzzed again.
Please.
One word.
No accusation.
No threat.
Somehow, that was worse.
I typed, erased, typed again.
They turn three on January fourteenth.
I pressed send before I could stop myself.
The message showed delivered.
Nothing came back for almost a full minute.
Then:
Is Theo my son?
My lungs tightened.
Another message appeared before I answered.
Is Ivy my daughter?
I closed my eyes.
Three years of bedtime stories.
Three years of fevers, first steps, grocery bills, daycare pickups, spilled milk, tiny shoes, and answering questions I had always known would eventually become harder.
Who is my daddy?
Why don't we have one?
Did he know us?
Did he want us?
I had told myself I was waiting until they were old enough.
Then I told myself I was waiting until Lucas's life was less chaotic.
Then I told myself I was protecting them from becoming a headline attached to his name.
Eventually, I stopped pretending there was a perfect time.
There was only the truth and my fear of what it could cost.
Theo popped back upright with the crayon clenched triumphantly in his fist.
"Got it."
"Good job."
He tilted his head.
"Mommy, why are you sad?"
"I'm not."
"You got your sad eyes."
I wiped beneath one eye before a tear could escape.
Across the aisle, Ivy looked at me.
Then she looked toward first class.
That was when Lucas stepped through the curtain.
The flight attendant caught him immediately.
"Sir, we need everyone seated. We're preparing for departure."
"I know."
His voice had changed.
Not much.
Just enough that I heard the control inside it.
Lucas had always become quieter when he was furious.
He looked past the flight attendant.
At me.
Then at Theo.
Then at Ivy.
The flight attendant touched his arm.
"Mr. Vale."
"I'm going back."
He did.
But before the curtain closed, his eyes held mine.
My phone buzzed.
I won't ask again in front of them. But I need the truth when we land.
My fingers hovered over the screen.
Then, because there was nothing left to preserve except whatever dignity I still possessed, I typed:
Yes.
Both of them.
I watched the word delivered appear beneath the message.
For the next three hours, Lucas did not text me again.
That silence was worse than anger.
The plane finally took off forty-two minutes later.
Theo fell asleep before we reached cruising altitude, his cheek pressed against my arm. Ivy stayed awake another hour, drawing crooked houses on the back of an airline magazine.
I kept imagining Lucas on the other side of the curtain.
Doing the math.
January fourteenth.
Our breakup had been in late April.
I had discovered the pregnancy twelve days later.
I had called him once from my kitchen floor with the positive test beside me.
No answer.
That part had become the story I used to justify everything that followed.
He didn't answer.
He had already chosen his company.
He was already moving on.
Except now I could not stop wondering whether I had built three years of decisions around a single unanswered call.
The cabin lights dimmed.
A few hours later, Theo woke needing the bathroom.
I unbuckled him and walked him up the aisle.
The forward restroom was occupied, and the flight attendant pointed us toward the small galley space beside first class.
That was where Lucas was standing.
He had no jacket on now.
White shirt.
Sleeves rolled to his forearms.
His expensive watch looked absurdly familiar.
So did the way he stood with one hand braced against the counter when he was forcing himself not to pace.
Theo stopped.
Lucas did too.
For one strange second, they simply stared at each other.
Theo looked him up and down.
Then he smiled.
That crooked half-smile.
Lucas's face lost all color.
"Mommy," Theo whispered loudly, "that's the airplane man."
"I know."
"Why's he looking at me?"
Lucas swallowed.
"Because you look like someone I used to know."
Theo considered that.
"Who?"
Lucas's eyes met mine.
"Me."
My heart cracked open.
Theo laughed because he thought Lucas was joking.
The restroom door opened.
I ushered him inside before the conversation could become something no three-year-old should have to understand in an airplane galley.
When I came back out, Lucas was waiting.
He kept his voice low.
"Since when?"
"Lucas—"
"Since when did you know?"
Theo was washing his hands behind the door.
I stared at Lucas.
His eyes were red.
That shocked me more than anger would have.
"Twelve days after I left."
He shut his eyes.
His jaw flexed once.
"You knew before I closed the Singapore deal."
"Yes."
"You knew when I came back to Chicago."
"Yes."
"You knew when they were born."
"Yes."
He looked away.
The plane hummed around us.
I had known Lucas poor.
I had known him exhausted.
I had known him arrogant, brilliant, distracted, tender, cold, scared, and so ambitious he sometimes forgot his own body needed sleep.
I had never seen him look destroyed.
The bathroom door opened.
Theo emerged, wiping his wet hands on his shirt.
Lucas moved backward immediately.
He did not reach for him.
He did not touch him.
He only said, "Good hand washing."
Theo beamed.
"I'm good at it."
"I can see that."
We returned to our seats.
For the rest of the flight, I felt Lucas's presence like weather.
When we finally landed at O'Hare, snow was falling so heavily that the runway lights looked blurred.
Everyone stood too quickly.
Overhead bins opened.
Phones turned on.
Children cried.
Passengers complained about missed connections.
I tried to move fast.
Two backpacks.
One rabbit.
One carry-on.
Two sleepy children.
One secret no longer mine.
We made it into the terminal before Lucas caught up.
"Mara."
I kept walking.
He moved beside me.
Not in front.
Beside.
That small choice stopped me.
Theo was holding my left hand. Ivy was in my right arm, half asleep.
Lucas stared at them.
Then at me.
"Can we talk?"
"Not here."
"Then tell me where."
"My sister is picking us up."
He looked toward the windows.
"Half the roads are closing."
"She'll come."
"Mara."
"I said she'll come."
My phone rang.
My sister June.
I answered immediately.
"I'm at arrivals."
"Mara, don't leave the terminal."
My stomach sank.
"What happened?"
"Lake Shore Drive is a mess. There was a pileup near the ramp. I'm not getting through anytime soon."
I closed my eyes.
June kept talking.
"Take a hotel room. I'll come when the plows catch up."
Every airport hotel within walking distance was already showing sold out.
Of course it was.
Christmas Eve.
Snowstorm.
Delayed flights.
Perfect.
I ended the call.
Lucas had heard enough to understand.
"My car is downstairs."
"No."
"It has a professional driver and winter tires."
"No."
"Theo is falling asleep standing up."
I looked down.
He was.
Lucas softened his voice.
"I am not asking you to come home with me."
"Good."
"I'm asking you to let me get my children out of an airport in a snowstorm."
The words hit like a hand against my chest.
My children.
He heard himself.
His face changed.
"So that's what they are now?" I asked. "Five minutes after learning they exist?"
He went still.
"No."
I waited.
"They were my children five minutes before I knew too."
I had no answer to that.
Twenty minutes later, we were in the back of Lucas's black SUV.
Theo sat in a car seat his security team had somehow produced.
Ivy was in another.
Lucas sat across from them because neither child wanted a stranger beside them.
I sat between my babies and watched Chicago disappear behind white snow.
Theo woke enough to study Lucas.
"Are you Mommy's friend?"
Lucas looked at me before answering.
"I used to be."
"Did you fight?"
Lucas's mouth twitched.
"Sometimes."
"Mommy says friends say sorry."
I stared out the window.
Lucas said quietly, "Your mommy is right."
Then Theo leaned forward as far as his straps allowed.
"You smile like me."
Lucas stopped breathing.
Ivy opened her eyes.
"And you have my eyes."
No one spoke for the next ten seconds.
Lucas turned toward the window.
His hand covered his mouth.
When he looked back, whatever anger he had been holding had changed shape.
It was still there.
But underneath it was grief.
We reached his townhouse shortly after nine.
I had not seen it before.
He had bought it after we broke up.
A limestone mansion on a quiet Gold Coast street, elegant and expensive and nothing like the apartment where we had once eaten cereal for dinner.
His housekeeper had gone home for Christmas.
The place was silent.
Lucas carried our bags.
I carried Ivy.
Theo insisted he could walk.
Inside, Lucas crouched to Theo's height.
"There's a room upstairs with two beds. Would that work?"
Theo frowned.
"Are there dinosaurs?"
Lucas looked helplessly at me.
"No."
Theo sighed as if Lucas had failed his first major examination.
"Okay."
Ten minutes later, both children were asleep in a guest room.
I came downstairs.
Lucas was standing in the living room beside an unlit Christmas tree.
No ornaments.
No gifts.
No family photographs.
Just a billionaire's perfect house and a man who suddenly looked lonelier than I remembered.
He turned.
"Tell me why."
"I already did."
"No. You told me when you knew."
His voice broke on the next sentence.
"Tell me why I didn't."
I wrapped my arms around myself.
"I called you."
He stared at me.
"Once. Twelve days after I left. You were in Singapore. You didn't answer."
His expression changed.
Not guilt.
Confusion.
"I never got a call from you."
"I watched it ring."
"I believe you."
"Then what are you saying?"
He stepped closer.
"I'm saying I came back from Singapore and called you twenty-seven times in six days."
My heartbeat stumbled.
"No, you didn't."
"I did."
"I never got them."
"I emailed you."
"That account was closed."
"I sent a letter."
I froze.
Lucas watched my face.
"You sent what?"
"A letter. Eight pages. I gave it to my mother because she said she was seeing you."
Cold moved through me.
"I never saw your mother."
Lucas's face became frighteningly still.
"She told me you returned the letter unopened."
The room seemed to tilt.
"I never saw a letter."
Lucas said nothing.
Then he reached for his phone.
"Lucas."
He looked at me.
For the first time that night, fear replaced anger in his eyes.
"Mara, my mother knew we had broken up. She knew I couldn't reach you."
May you like
His thumb moved over the screen.
"And if she lied about the letter, I need to know what else she lied about."
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