“I should have too,” he said.

Neither sentence erased the years.

Both were true.

After a while Elijah glanced toward the girls, who were now drawing airplanes with the volunteer’s markers.

“They know your name,” he said.

“Not enough else.

I told them you were sick when they were born.

I didn’t know the rest.

I do now.” He paused.

“Do you want to meet them?”
Olivia’s mouth trembled before she could answer.

“More than anything.

But only if it won’t hurt them.”
“They deserve the truth,” Elijah said.

“So do you.”
He walked with her to the seating area by the windows.

Ava looked up first, instantly guarded in the way serious children can be.

Leah grinned at Olivia automatically, then sensed the tension and went still.

Elijah crouched to their height.

“Girls,” he said gently, “this is Olivia.”
Leah tilted her head.

“Like the name in the cards?”
Elijah nodded.

Ava clutched her book.

“Our mom?”
Olivia’s breath hitched so sharply she had to put a hand over her chest.

“Yes,” she said, almost inaudibly.

Then again, stronger.

“Yes.

I’m your mom.”
Children often ask the question adults spend years avoiding.

Leah asked it first.

“Were you lost?”
Olivia gave a tearful laugh before she could stop it.

“In a way,” she said.

“I got very, very sick after you were born.

And some grown-ups made bad choices about what to tell each other.

I should have found my way back sooner.”
Ava’s eyes narrowed with the fierce concentration of a child deciding whether to believe the world.

“Did you stop loving us?”
“No,” Olivia said immediately.

“Never once.

Not for one minute.”
Elijah handed Ava the cedar box.

Inside was the first birthday card, a little bent at the corners.

Ava opened it carefully while Leah leaned in.

On the page was a paper star and a line in Olivia’s handwriting: For my girls on your first birthday.

I love you farther than airplanes fly.

Ava looked up slowly.

“You wrote this when we were one?”
“I wrote you something every year,” Olivia said.

Leah touched the folded star with one finger, as if it might disappear.

“Why stars?”
“Because when you were born,” Olivia said, and now she was crying openly, “I looked at you and thought I would follow you back from anywhere.”
Something in both girls softened then.

Not into instant trust.

Children are wiser than that.

But into attention, which is where trust begins.

Their flight to Austin was called twenty minutes later.

Olivia texted Jed and told him to send her Davos speech notes to the board chair, reroute the jet, and cancel the rest of her day.

When he called in panic, she silenced the phone.

For once, the world of money and scheduling would survive without her immediate command.

She spent the remaining minutes on the floor with Ava and Leah, drinking terrible airport hot chocolate and learning the smallest facts first.

Ava liked meteor showers, chapter books, and cinnamon toast cut diagonally.

Leah loved puzzles, hated socks with seams, and asked twelve questions without pausing long enough for all twelve answers.

When Olivia admitted she built planes, Leah stared at her as if this was the most convincing proof of motherhood possible.

At the boarding line, Ava held the