Lily and Jonah
I crouched down in front of them, lowering my voice.
“Hey. Are you two okay?”
The girl looked at me first. Her eyes were wide, but she didn’t pull away.
The boy hid part of his face behind his stuffed dog.
“Where is your mother?” I asked softly.
The boy whispered, “She is not our mother.”
The words came out flat, like something he had repeated too many times.
I swallowed.
“What are your names?”
The girl answered first.
“I’m Maisie. This is Jonah.”
“How old are you?”
“Five,” Jonah said quietly. “We’re twins.”
Instead of standing over them, I sat down beside them on the bench. My security team remained at a distance—close enough to intervene, far enough not to frighten them.
“Is someone coming to pick you up?” I asked.
Maisie glanced at Jonah.
Jonah stared down at the floor.
Then Maisie slowly shook her head.
A cold weight settled in my chest.
“Do you know where your dad is?”
Jonah’s lips trembled.
Maisie whispered, “Daddy went to heaven in the spring. Brianna said we were too hard to take care of now.”
Julian turned away, muttering under his breath.
I looked back at the closed gate.
The woman in the cream coat thought she could disappear into the sky.
She was wrong.
I pulled out my phone and made a call.
“Hold that plane,” I said. “And locate the woman who just boarded in the cream coat.”
Maisie’s small hand slipped into mine.
And that was the moment everything changed.
