Chapter 6: Gray-Blue Eyes
The paternity results came back on a Thursday.
I already knew what they would say.
I think I had known since the bathroom mirror.
But seeing the number on the page — 99.998% — made my hands go still in a way that had nothing to do with surprise.
I called Mara.
"The results are back," I said.
A long pause.
"Okay," she said.
"I'd like to come over.
If that's all right."
Another pause.
Shorter this time.
"The boys get home from school at three-fifteen."
"I'll be there at three."
I arrived with nothing.
No gifts, no prepared speech.
I sat across from Mara at the kitchen table and put the document between us.
She looked at it for a moment without touching it.
"I never doubted it," she said quietly.
"Neither did I.
Not really."
She looked up.
"So what does this mean?
Practically.
For them."
"It means I want to be in their lives.
Not as a visitor.
As their father." I kept my voice steady.
"I know I have no right to walk in and expect anything.
I know six years happened.
I'm not asking you to pretend otherwise.
I'm asking for the chance to show up consistently, for as long as it takes, until they decide for themselves what they want to call me."
Mara was quiet for a moment.
"Milo already asked me about you," she said.
"When?"
"The morning after you came.
He said, 'Mom, that man has the same eyes as us.
Is he related?'" She almost smiled.
"I told him you were someone I used to know."
"What did he say?"
"He said, 'Were you friends?' And I said yes.
And he said, 'Then why did he look so sad?'"
I didn't say anything.
"He's the one who notices things," Mara said.
"Mason is the loud one.
Max is the one who fixes everything — he's already taking apart small appliances and putting them back together.
Micah is the quiet one.
He draws.
He's been drawing since he could hold a crayon." She paused.
"They're real people, Ethan.
They're not an idea.
They're not a situation to be resolved.
They're four actual boys who have been through a lot."
"I know."
"Do you?"
"No," I said.
"Not yet.
But I want to."
The front door opened at three-seventeen.
Four backpacks hit the floor in sequence.
Then four voices, overlapping, filling the apartment with the specific noise that four six-year-olds make when they've been sitting still all day and have finally been released.
Milo saw me first.
He stopped in the hallway.
The others nearly walked into him.
"You're back," he said.
"I am."
He considered this.
"Are you staying for dinner?"
Mara made a sound that wasn't quite a laugh.
"That depends on your mother," I said.
Milo looked at Mara.
Mara looked at me.
Something passed between us that wasn't forgiveness yet — it was too early for that — but it was the beginning of a door that had been closed for six years opening just slightly, letting in a thin line of light.
"I'm making pasta," Mara said finally.
"You can stay."
Micah, the quiet one, had been watching me from the edge of the hallway.
He walked over slowly, stopped in front of me, and looked up.
Then he held out a folded piece of paper.
I opened it.
It was a drawing.
A man and a woman and four small figures standing in front of a building.
The man had gray-blue eyes — two small careful dots of blue crayon.
"I drew that this morning," Micah said.
"Before school."
I looked at him.
"How did you know to draw me?" I asked.
He shrugged, the way six-year-olds do when they know something they can't explain.
"You looked like you belonged with us," he said.
That evening, my mother's attorney called my phone twice.
I watched the screen light up and go dark.
May you like
Light up and go dark.
I didn't answer.
