“Can I See the Girls?”
Mara’s eyes moved slowly from my face down to my prosthetic leg.
She looked stunned — not by the prosthetic itself, but by the fact that I was standing there confident and steady.
She’d expected the injury to break me.
Instead, it had pushed me toward a life I’d never imagined.
I gave her a brief rundown of what had happened after she left.
The late-night sketches.
The patent.
The manufacturing deal.
The company.
I wasn’t telling her to impress her. I just wanted her to understand that while she and Mark were building their life together, I’d been building one for my daughters.
“You bought our house?” she asked weakly.
“My company bought a foreclosed property for a community project,” I said. “I didn’t know it was yours until I saw the paperwork.”
Her eyes filled with tears.
“I made a mistake,” she said. “I know I did. I was scared and confused.”
I said nothing.
Then she asked the question I’d been expecting since I got there.
“What about Katie and Mia? Could I see them? Just once?”
For a moment I was back in that nursery.
Holding two crying babies on the floor while her note sat on the dresser.
Every fever. Every birthday. Every first step. Every night they’d called out for me.
“They stopped waiting for you a long time ago,” I said quietly. “I made sure they never had to feel abandoned again.”
Mara looked down.
