Part 1: The Crayon That Got Away
On Christmas Eve, a wealthy technology CEO took his seat on a flight from Seattle to Chicago, set on closing a $740 million business agreement before midnight. Then a little boy’s blue crayon rolled to a stop beside his expensive leather shoes, and everything changed.
“Excuse me, sir. Can you help me? My crayon escaped.”
The businessman leaned down to pick it up, then froze when he saw the child’s face. The boy had his unmistakable gray-green eyes and the very same small dimple beside his mouth.
Before he could ask anything more, a familiar woman’s voice drifted from the back of the plane. “Bennett, sweetheart, come back to Mommy.”
He turned toward the sound and found himself looking at the woman he had loved nearly three years earlier. In her arms was a little girl who looked just like him.
What he learned on that flight would make his $740 million deal seem almost meaningless. Yet the most unsettling revelation came afterward, when she showed him a document proving that someone inside his own company had received a message he was never supposed to miss.
At forty-one, Adrian Prescott had everything the business magazines said a successful man should want. He owned a waterfront home outside Seattle, often flew on private aircraft, and ran a technology company valued at several billion dollars. His employees admired his discipline, and his competitors respected his ability to make hard decisions without hesitating.
Still, on December 24, Adrian felt strangely unsatisfied.
His company, Meridian Technologies, was about to acquire a healthcare software developer called Clearhaven Medical for $740 million. The deal would expand Meridian’s work in children’s medical monitoring, a project Adrian had pursued for almost a year. Final negotiations were set for that evening in Chicago, and his chief operating officer, Tessa Caldwell, had already called him four times.
“Adrian, the legal team needs your approval before we can move forward. We cannot afford another delay.” “You’ll have it when I land,” he replied. He hung up, set his phone beside his laptop, and settled into his first-class seat.
A moment later, something small bumped against his shoe. It was a bright blue crayon.
A little boy in a forest-green sweater appeared in the aisle, looking embarrassed. “Sorry, mister. It got away from me.”
Adrian picked up the crayon and handed it back. “Well, we can’t have crayons running around an airplane, can we?” The boy laughed.
That was when Adrian really saw his face. The child’s eyes were a distinctive shade of gray-green, almost identical to his own. His light-brown hair curled slightly above his ears, and when he smiled, a small dimple appeared on his right cheek. Adrian had seen that exact expression in photographs of himself as a boy.
“What’s your name, buddy?” he asked. “Bennett. I’m almost three.” “Almost three? That’s a pretty important birthday coming up.”
Bennett nodded proudly. “Mommy says I’m getting big enough to help make pancakes.”
Adrian smiled, but something about the boy’s features kept bothering him. Then a woman called out from the economy section. “Bennett, honey, please come back. Your sister needs her crayons too.”
Adrian’s smile vanished. He knew that voice at once. It belonged to Camille Whitcomb, the woman he had once planned to marry.
He turned toward the rear of the aircraft. Camille stood beside a row of seats, holding a little girl against her shoulder. She looked older than he remembered, though nearly three years was hardly a lifetime. Her honey-blond hair now fell just above her shoulders, and faint signs of exhaustion showed beneath her eyes. But she was still beautiful in the quiet, natural way Adrian had always loved.
The little girl wore a cranberry-red cardigan and clutched a stuffed white lamb. When she lifted her face, Adrian’s stomach tightened. She had his eyes too, and the same straight eyebrows.
Camille saw him standing in the aisle. For several seconds, neither of them spoke. Finally she whispered, “Adrian?”
Bennett looked from one to the other. “Mommy, do you know this man?” Camille drew the little girl a little closer. “Yes, sweetheart. We knew each other a long time ago.”
Adrian could barely think. He and Camille had separated almost three years earlier, shortly before he left for an extended business assignment in Singapore. The children looked about two and a half. He remembered their last weeks together, the arguments, and the evening they had briefly found comfort in each other before everything ended. The dates were impossible to ignore.
“Camille, are these children…?” She glanced at the passengers around them. “Please, Adrian. Not here.”
A flight attendant approached and politely reminded him that everyone needed to be seated before departure. Adrian returned to first class. But the moment he sat down, he knew the next few hours would be unlike any flight he had ever taken.
