She had even hired a media consultant because she expected photographs of Noah holding the trophy to appear beside our company logo the next morning.
I had told her several times that perhaps we were putting too much pressure on him.
Vanessa always answered the same way.
“Children rise to expectations.”
Noah never argued with her.
That should have worried me more.
The host opened the final envelope.
“For the first time in Willowcrest Academic Tournament history, our grand prize goes to a team achieving a perfect cumulative score across mathematics, systems reasoning, engineering design, and the final collaborative challenge.”
Vanessa reached for Noah’s hand.
He pulled it away.
She did not seem to notice.
The host smiled.
“Congratulations to Leo Bennett and Ethan Bennett of Bellmere.”
The auditorium exploded.
I stopped breathing.
Two boys stood from a row near the center aisle.
Both were fifteen.
The same age as Noah.
Tall for their age.
Dark hair.
Lean shoulders.
One slightly broader than the other.
The first boy, Leo, walked toward the stage with the controlled expression of someone trying not to grin too widely.
The second, Ethan, failed completely and smiled at everyone he passed.
Then the camera found them.
Their faces filled the giant screen.
My hands went cold.
Leo had my nose.
Not similar.
Mine.
The same high bridge that had made me hate every school photograph until I was seventeen.
Ethan had the shape of my jaw and the small indentation beneath his lower lip that my father had and I had inherited.
But their eyes were not mine.
Their eyes belonged to Claire Bennett.
I knew before the host repeated their surname.
Bennett.
Claire’s surname.
The boys stepped onto the stage.
Fifteen years disappeared.
I was twenty-seven again, standing in Claire’s apartment while she held a pregnancy test in both hands.
I remembered her face.
Terrified.
Happy.
I remembered saying we needed time.
I remembered the opportunity Vanessa’s family had offered me the same month.
Funding for a company I had spent four years trying to build.
Connections.
Investors.
A future larger than anything I believed Claire and I could create alone.
I remembered telling Claire I was not ready to become a father.
She had stared at me as though I had spoken in another language.
“You were ready yesterday.”
“Yesterday was different.”
“No. Yesterday you didn’t have Vanessa Cole offering you a career.”
I told her that was unfair.
It was not.
Three weeks later, I moved out.
A month after that, I left Bellmere for a year to build the first version of our company.
Before I left, I knew Claire was still pregnant.
That fact matters.
For fifteen years, I had softened the memory whenever I told it to myself.
We were young.
The relationship had already been failing.
I did not know whether the pregnancy would continue.
Claire wanted a life I could not give her.
Every sentence contained enough truth to sound respectable.
None contained the whole truth.
