Alexei looks at Luca. Then at me. Then back at Luca. His face cycles through something too fast and too complicated for a four-year-old to sort.
“You’re our real daddy?” he asks Luca. Not me. Luca.
“Yes.”
Alexei looks down at the train car in his hand. Back up at Luca.
Then the biggest smile I have ever seen on my son’s face breaks across it like it’s been waiting a long time to get out. “I KNEW it,” he says.
Luca blinks. “You knew?”
“I didn’t know. But.” He waves the train car between himself and Luca like it explains everything. “We’re the same. You and me. We like the same things, and we think the same, and Mila said I even look like you.” He’s almost bouncing now. “So I knew. Kind of. I just didn’t know I knew.”
Mila hasn’t moved. She’s working through something slower and deeper than her brother’s immediate joy. I can see it happening in her face.
“But Mama said our daddy was dead,” she says quietly.
“I know, baby,” I manage.
“She said he went to heaven.”
“I made a mistake. A big one. I’m so sorry.”
She looks at me for a long moment. Then back at Luca.
“You’re him?” she asks him. “You’re our daddy?”
“Yes. I’m him.”
Her chin wobbles. “You were here the whole time,” she says.
“Yes.”
Something breaks open in her face and she launches herself at him with the full force of a small person who has decided, and Luca catches her and she wraps her arms around his neck and starts crying into his shoulder. Not sad crying, the other kind, the kind that comes from relief so big a four-year-old body doesn’t know what else to do with it.
Alexei sets his train car down carefully and climbs into the space beside his sister. He doesn’t cry. He just leans against his father’sarm with that smile still on his face, quieter now, like something has finally settled into place inside him that needed settling.
Luca holds both of them. He looks up at me over their heads, and I look back at him, and for a moment, the only thing in the world is the three of them on the playroom floor.
“You’re not going to go to heaven now, are you?” Mila asks against his shoulder.
“No.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
She tightens her arms around his neck. Alexei reaches up and pats his father’s arm twice with one small hand, matter-of-fact, confirming something.
Then Alexei pulls back slightly and looks at me. The smile is still there, but something else has come into his face alongside it. Something quieter. His eyes are steady on mine, and I know what’s coming before he opens his mouth.
“Mama,” he says. “Why did you say he was dead?”
The question lands softly. No accusation in it yet. Just a four-year-old asking his mother a simple question and waiting for a simple answer.
“Because I made a mistake,” I say. “A very bad one.”
“But you said it lots of times.”
