When Simone finally texted Trent with a time and place to meet the triplets, he read it so many times the words began to blur.
Saturday. 10 a.m. Boston Common. Playground near the Frog Pond. Don’t be late.
He arrived early with donuts and coloring books and a box of crayons, because he didn’t know how to show up as a father yet, but he knew how to try.
Simone arrived with the triplets holding her hands like she was the center of gravity.
“This is Trent,” she told them. “He is your father.”
Jordan’s first question was the one that mattered.
“Why weren’t you there before?”
Trent told the truth. Not the gentle truth. The real one, shaped for a child but still honest.
“I made a bad choice,” he said. “I was scared. I left your mom. I didn’t know you existed.”
Jordan studied him like a tiny judge.
“Why should we believe you?”
Trent swallowed. “You shouldn’t. Not yet. I have to show you.”
Zara’s question came next, smaller, but it cut deeper.
“Are you going to leave again?”
Trent looked at her watery eyes and felt something break inside him, something tender.
“No,” he said. “I won’t.”
She tilted her head. “How do we know?”
Trent breathed out. “You don’t. But I’ll keep showing up until you do.”
That was the beginning.
Not fireworks.
Not forgiveness.
Just the steady, stubborn choice to return.
Every week, Saturday at ten, he came back. Sometimes the kids warmed faster than Simone did. Elijah started hugging him like it was his job. Jordan asked questions about buildings and animals. Zara brought drawings, but didn’t call him Dad yet.
Trent didn’t push.
He let time do its slow work.
7. Lauren’s Fear and the Coffee Shop Truce
Meanwhile, Lauren lived with her parents in Newton, watching her life rearrange itself into shapes she didn’t recognize.
Marcus and Maya came home talking about Jordan, Elijah, and Zara like they’d always been part of the story. Like adults were the only ones shocked by genetics.
One night, Marcus asked, blunt as only a five-year-old can be:
“Are they our brother and sister?”
Lauren stared at her plate.
“Yes,” she said softly.
“Then why can’t we see them more?”
Because Lauren was terrified.
Not of Simone personally.
Of what Simone represented: the proof that Trent had loved someone else more deeply than he’d loved her. The fear that her children would look at Simone’s strength and success and decide Lauren was… lesser.
Her mother held her that night when she cried.
“You cannot be replaced,” Patricia Bennett told her. “You are the one who shows up.”
Lauren finally agreed: the siblings needed to be siblings outside of school.
But she asked for one condition.
“I want to meet Simone alone,” she told Trent. “Woman to woman.”
Simone agreed with one word: Okay.
They met at a café in Cambridge on a cold Thursday afternoon, two women carrying different kinds of hurt.
Lauren went first, voice shaking. “I was angry. But I realized you’re not my enemy.”
Simone watched her over black coffee. “No. I’m not.”
Lauren confessed what she’d been ashamed to admit: “I’m scared my kids will love you more than me.”
Simone didn’t laugh. She didn’t gloat. Her voice, when it came, was quieter than Lauren expected.
“I ate pasta five nights a week because it was cheap,” Simone said. “I cried over rent. I worked until my hands shook. That wasn’t glamorous strength. That was survival.”
Lauren’s eyes filled.
Simone leaned forward. “We are not competing. Your children need love, not ranking. And love isn’t a limited resource. It’s not a pie.”
Lauren let out a breath that felt like it had been trapped for months.
“Can we do this,” Lauren asked, “for the kids?”
Simone held her gaze.
“Yes,” she said.
It wasn’t friendship.
But it was a truce.
And sometimes, truce is the first humane miracle.
8. The Museum, the Word, and the Moment That Changed Everything
See more on the next page
Advertisement
<
See more on the next page
Advertisement
