⸻
Milo tugged at my sleeve again. “Can I say hi to her?”
⸻
I looked down at my son’s earnest, uncomplicated face, considerably less tangled up in adult complications than the rest of us standing in that terminal.
⸻
“Go ahead,” I said.
⸻
Milo walked over to Ivy with the easy confidence only a seven-year-old can manage, looking up at her seriously.
⸻
“I’m Milo,” he said. “I think I’m your brother.”
⸻
Ivy’s careful composure finally cracked, tears filling her eyes as she knelt down to his level. “I think you might be right,” she said.
⸻
We didn’t resolve everything that afternoon in that airport terminal. I want to be honest about that. Weston and I had a considerably harder conversation once we got home, working through exactly how much trust had been quietly tested by four months of careful, well-intentioned silence.
⸻
“I need you to promise me something,” I told him that night, both of us sitting at our kitchen table long after Milo had finally gone to sleep, still buzzing from the excitement of the day. “Whatever comes up next, however big or small, you tell me. Immediately. Not once you’ve decided how to package it.”
