Chapter 2 - Shadows Across the Glass
The rain had cleared by the time my Uber dropped me off outside L'Aura, an upscale Mediterranean restaurant in downtown Chicago where Evelyn had insisted we celebrate my routine physical clearance. Evelyn loved this place; its soaring glass facades, minimalist white-linen tables, and celebrity-chef pedigree matched the aesthetic of the high-end residential towers my firm designed.
I pushed open the heavy glass doors, my mind still reeling from Dr. Harrison’s office. The sterile scent of the medical clinic had been replaced by the rich, earthy aromas of rosemary, truffles, and grilled lamb.
Evelyn was already seated at a corner table near the front window. She looked immaculate, as always, her blonde hair pulled back into a sleek chignon, a emerald silk blouse catching the soft amber glow of the Edison bulb overhead. She was reviewing architectural sketches on her tablet, looking every bit the high-powered senior partner at her law firm.
"You're twenty minutes late, Luca," she said without looking up immediately, though a warm smile played at the corner of her lips. "Did Harrison find a third kidney in there, or did you get lost staring at your own reflection again?"
"Something like that," I muttered, sliding into the leather banquette opposite her. I picked up the heavy leather-bound menu, but the letters swam before my eyes. My stomach was a knot of cold lead. How was I supposed to tell Evelyn—the woman I had married two years after the divorce, the symbol of my "fresh start"—that the foundation of our entire relationship, and the justification for my cruel abandonment of Natalie, was built on a foundation of quicksand?
Evelyn set her tablet aside and leaned forward, her sharp blue eyes narrowing slightly. "You're pale. Seriously, Luca. What did the doctor say? Is it bad?"
"No," I said quickly, forcing a stiff smile that didn't reach my eyes. "No, the opposite. Everything is... clear. Perfect, actually."
"Well, that's fantastic news! We should order champagne." She flagged down a passing waiter with a practiced flick of her hand. "Bring us a bottle of the 2018 Veuve Clicquot, please."
"Evelyn, wait, I—"
"Stop being a pessimist, darling. You've been stressing over these fertility and health metrics for months, ever since we started talking about trying for a family ourselves. Now that you've got a clean bill of health, we can finally move forward. We can talk about the brownstone in Lincoln Park, the nursery, all of it."
The word family hit my ears like a physical blow. A family with Evelyn. It made logical sense. It was clean, premeditated, mature. But as I looked at her hopeful, expectant face, a sudden, suffocating wave of panic washed over me. I wasn't thinking about nurseries or brownstones. I was thinking about the empty nursery in my old penthouse—the one Natalie had painted a soft, soothing sage green before I tore her world apart.
I opened my mouth to speak, but movement beyond the expansive restaurant windows caught my peripheral vision.
A pedestrian was walking past the rain-slicked sidewalk outside, pushing a high-end, silver-framed stroller.
Normally, city strollers were background noise in downtown Chicago—a blur of stressed mothers, nannies on phones, and whining toddlers. But something about the graceful, deliberate posture of the woman pushing this particular stroller made every sound inside the restaurant instantly mute.
The clatter of silverware, the murmur of adjacent conversations, Evelyn’s voice talking about champagne vintages—it all dissolved into absolute zero.
I stopped breathing.
My gaze locked onto the silhouette framed by the glass. The woman paused at the crosswalk, waiting for the pedestrian signal to change.
She turned her head slightly to check for traffic.
The ambient light from a streetlamp caught her profile. The soft curve of her jaw, the dark sweep of her hair tied back in a loose clip, the elegant tilt of her neck.
Natalie.
For one agonizing second, reality fractured. The restaurant vanished. The legal documents, the corporate success, the upscale dinner, the life I had meticulously built over the last four years to prove I was better off—all of it dissolved into thin air.
Because Natalie was not alone.
Resting side-by-side inside the deep bassinet of the stroller sat two tiny bundles, wrapped in matching knit blankets.
Twins.
My brain refused to process the visual data. Twins. Natalie, who for five years had supposedly shared my barren biological fate, was standing twenty feet away from me on a Chicago sidewalk, pushing a double stroller with two infants.
"Luca? Are you even listening to me?" Evelyn’s voice cut through the fog, sounding distant, like it was traveling through a long tunnel. "The waiter is right here."
I couldn't look away from the window. My hands gripped the edge of the wooden table so hard my fingertips thundered with throbbing pain.
Outside, one of the babies in the stroller stirred, letting out a soft yawn that pulled down the edge of a pale blue blanket. The infant turned its tiny head toward the restaurant window, blinking against the late-afternoon glare.
Dark, thick curls crowned its round, peaceful face.
And then, the baby opened its eyes.
May you like
Deep, slate-gray eyes. The exact shade of a stormy Michigan lake. The exact shade that stared back at me every single morning when I looked in the bathroom mirror.
My eyes.
