PART 2
For several agonizing seconds, I couldn’t find any words. “Told me what?”
Evelyn looked down at the children. The older twin opened his eyes and stared at me with an expression so familiar it physically ached in my chest.
“Their names are Leo and Toby,” she said softly.
“How old?”
“Five.”
I dropped to my knees on the cold airport floor. “Are they mine?”
Evelyn nodded once.
She reached into her worn tote and pulled out a stack of papers bound with a thick rubber band: unopened letters addressed to my office in Chicago — all stamped RETURN TO SENDER — copies of emails sent to an old account I’d stopped using, and a cashier’s check for $60,000 signed in my mother’s elegant handwriting.
“Your mother offered me this check to disappear,” Evelyn said, her voice dropping to an icy whisper. “I turned it down. Three days later, she told me you already knew about the pregnancy and wanted nothing to do with us.”
I went pale. “That… I never knew, Evelyn. I swear I never knew.”
“I believe that now,” she whispered.
Evelyn added that three days after that conversation, her lease was abruptly canceled by her landlord, and my family’s corporate attorney formally served her with a notice warning that any further attempt to contact me would be treated as harassment and extortion.
“Why are you back in Chicago now?” I asked, my heart pounding.
Evelyn pointed at the departure board. “Because your mother found us again.”
My phone buzzed violently in my hand.
MOTHER Calling…
I slid to answer, and Eleanor spoke without any greeting. “Marcus, don’t believe a single word that woman tells you.”
I stood up slowly, scanning the terminal. “How do you know I’m standing with her?”
Evelyn was staring past me, eyes wide with fear.
Fifty yards away across the concourse stood my mother, Eleanor Vance, flanked by Raymond Vance — our family’s senior corporate counsel. Raymond held a thick gray legal folder.
Stamped across the front cover were two names: LEO VANCE MONTGOMERY
TOBY VANCE MONTGOMERY
