PART 1: The Girl With Silver Eyes
I had spent most of my adult life convinced that every problem had an answer if I simply worked hard enough to find it. At thirty-nine, I owned a thriving real estate development company in Chicago, spent more time traveling than at home, and had enough money to live well for several lifetimes.
Yet on a Thursday afternoon in October, a little girl clutching a worn stuffed rabbit showed me just how much I had missed.
My name is Preston Calloway, and I was flying from Chicago to Boston for a business conference. I had booked first class, hoping to finish going over a contract before we landed.
Instead, I found a four-year-old girl beside my seat, struggling to hoist her backpack into the overhead compartment.
She had light brown hair in two uneven braids, a pale pink sweater, and a stuffed rabbit tucked under one arm.
“Excuse me, mister. Can you help me with my bag?”
I smiled and stood.
“Of course. Are you traveling all by yourself?”
She shook her head.
“My mommy is sitting back there. She said I could sit here because a nice lady changed seats with us. Mommy doesn’t like airplanes very much.”
I lifted her backpack and set it safely overhead.
“Well, I’m Preston. What’s your name?”
“I’m Willa. Willa Hartwell. I’m four and three quarters.”
She held up four fingers, then tried and failed to stretch out a fifth.
I laughed.
Then she looked straight into my eyes.
My smile faded.
Her eyes were an unusual silver-gray, with a darker ring around the edge. They were exactly like mine.
And when she smiled, a small dimple showed in her left cheek.
The same dimple I had inherited from my father.
For a moment, I couldn’t understand why looking at this child made my chest feel so strangely tight.
Willa settled into the seat beside me and carefully placed her stuffed rabbit in her lap.
“His name is Captain Buttons,” she explained. “He’s been everywhere with me.”
“He looks like a very experienced traveler.”
“He is. But he’s scared of thunderstorms, so I have to hold him.”
She spoke with the kind of seriousness only a young child can manage.
As the plane rolled toward the runway, Willa asked whether I had children.
“No,” I answered. “I don’t.”
She tilted her head.
“Why not?”
I hadn’t expected the question.
“I guess life just worked out that way.”
She thought about this for a moment.
“My mommy says families don’t always happen the way people plan.”
Something in those words caught my attention.
“Your mommy sounds pretty smart.”
“She is. She fixes old books at a library, and she makes pancakes shaped like bears.”
I smiled.
“That sounds like an excellent combination.”
Willa opened her backpack and showed me a drawing of a house with a blue roof, a woman in a yellow dress, and a little girl holding a rabbit.
There was also an empty space beside them.
“Who’s supposed to stand there?” I asked.
She looked down at the paper.
“That’s where my daddy goes. Mommy says I can draw him when I know what he looks like.”
A sudden sadness came over me.
“You haven’t met him?”
“No. Mommy says he doesn’t know about me yet.”
I glanced toward the rows behind us.
“What’s your mommy’s name, Willa?”
She answered without hesitation.
“Meredith Hartwell. But Grandma calls her Merry.”
The name hit me so abruptly that I stopped breathing for a second.
Meredith Hartwell.
Five years earlier, Meredith had been the woman I planned to marry.
And then she had vanished from my life.
I met Meredith in a small bookstore in downtown Chicago when I was thirty-three.
She worked there while finishing her graduate degree in library science. I had ducked inside during a rainstorm and accidentally knocked over a display of travel books.
She laughed instead of getting annoyed.
I bought three books I didn’t need, just to keep talking to her.
Our first date lasted nearly five hours.
Meredith wasn’t impressed by my company, my expensive apartment, or the people I knew. She cared about ordinary things, like remembering birthdays, keeping promises, and making time for Sunday breakfast.
For two years, she turned my hectic life into something peaceful.
We talked about marriage, children, and buying a small house with a garden.
Then my company started expanding into several new states.
I began traveling constantly.
Meredith told me she felt as though she was slowly turning into a visitor in my life.
I promised things would get better after one more major project.
They didn’t.
Our last argument took place the night before I left for a three-week business trip.
“I don’t need a bigger house, Preston,” she told me. “I need someone who actually comes home.”
I was exhausted and defensive.
“Everything I’m doing is supposed to build our future.”
“But you’re missing our present.”
I said things I regretted almost at once.
She walked out of my apartment that evening.
When I got back from my trip, her belongings were gone.
I tried calling, but her number had changed. I sent messages to the email address I had for her, yet none of them were answered.
Eventually, I persuaded myself that she wanted a clean break.
It never occurred to me that she might have been trying to reach me too.
Back on the airplane, Willa was studying me closely.
“Mister Preston, are you sad?”
I swallowed.
“I was just remembering somebody.”
She nodded as if she understood perfectly.
“Mommy gets sad sometimes when she thinks nobody is looking.”
I turned toward her.
“Does she?”
“Sometimes she looks at a picture in her drawer. It’s a man standing beside her at a lake.”
My heart began to pound.
Meredith and I had taken a photograph beside Lake Michigan during our second summer together.
It had been one of her favorites.
“Does your mommy ever talk about that man?”
Willa hugged Captain Buttons.
“She says he was somebody she loved very much. But sometimes grown-ups make mistakes, and then they don’t know how to fix them.”
I looked toward the back of the airplane.
Somewhere behind me was Meredith.
And beside me sat a little girl whose age, eyes, and smile had suddenly made five years of unanswered questions impossible to ignore.
“Willa, may I ask you something?”
“Okay.”
“When is your birthday?”
“February nineteenth. Mommy always makes strawberry cupcakes.”
I remembered when Meredith had left.
The dates fit.
I gripped the armrest, trying to stay calm.
“Those sound wonderful.”
Willa smiled and held out Captain Buttons.
“You can hold him if you want. He helps when people feel worried.”
I took the rabbit.
For the first time in years, I had no idea what to say.
