2. Talia #2
The hallway outside the conference room is blessedly cooler, quieter, and empty enough that I can breathe without an audience.
I make it halfway to the elevators before my knees remember they are allowed to be unsteady.
Wonderful. Apparently, all it takes to rattle me is one expensive suit and my own name in Declan Ward's voice.
I press the elevator button harder than necessary.
By the time the doors close, my reflection in the mirrored panel looks composed again. Hair smooth. Blouse neat. Mouth steady. No visible evidence that the past just stepped into a merger meeting and took a seat across the table.
Good. Visible evidence is where trouble begins.
By the time I reach home, Flynn is sitting cross-legged in the middle of the living room rug, wearing dinosaur pajama pants, one sock, and the pilot goggles he insisted were necessary for “night operations.”
Mrs. Smith looks up from the couch with the expression of a woman who has survived a very small hurricane.
“He negotiated for twenty more minutes before brushing his teeth,” she says.
I set my bag down and try not to smile. “Did he win?”
“He presented charts.”
Flynn beams at me. “They were very good charts.”
“I’m sure they were.”
Mrs. Smith gathers her purse with a tired laugh. “He ate dinner. Mostly. Homework is in the folder. He asked about the airplane story twice.”
My hand stills on the strap of my bag.
“Thank you,” I say, keeping my voice even. “I’m sorry he kept you late.”
“He was fine.” Her gaze softens. “You look tired, mama.”
“I’m fine.”
She gives me the look every woman over sixty seems to master, the one that says she heard the lie and is choosing mercy.
“Sleep,” she says, patting my arm on the way out. “Both of you.”
When the door closes behind her, Flynn launches himself at me with the full force of a child who has never once considered the structural limits of another person’s spine. I catch him, laughing despite myself.
“Careful, pilot.”
“Emergency landing,” he says into my blouse.
“On me?”
“You were the runway.”
“That seems unfair to the runway.”
He pulls back and grins, and for a second, everything in me softens so completely it almost hurts.
Flynn has Declan's eyes. I try not to think about that often because it’s a useless, dangerous thought, one that turns ordinary moments into evidence I have to live around.
But sometimes, when Flynn looks up at me like this, bright and curious and so beautifully unaware of every complicated choice that came before him, I see the man I left behind before I see myself.
That’s not Flynn’s fault. It’s not mine either. At least, most days, I believe that.
“Bedtime,” I say, smoothing a hand over his hair.
“I have important plane questions.”
“You always have important plane questions after bedtime.”
“That’s when my brain is awake.”
“Convenient.”
He gives me a serious nod. “Very.”
I walk him down the narrow hall to his bedroom, stepping over a wooden train, two picture books, and a paper airplane that has seen better days. His room smells faintly of crayons, laundry detergent, and the lavender soap he claims is “too fancy” but asks for every bath.
The walls are covered in drawings of airplanes. Some are recognizable. Some appear to be aircraft designed by an engineer with a personal grudge against gravity. Every single one has been taped up with uneven enthusiasm.
Flynn climbs into bed and immediately reaches for the stuffed penguin he insists is an airport inspector. I tuck the blanket around him.
“One story,” I say.
“Airplane story.”
My heart gives one hard, stupid knock against my ribs. I should have retired that story years ago. Or, at the very least, should have changed the details. I should not have let one lonely, reckless night become something soft enough to survive in my son’s bedtime routine.
But Flynn loved the version with the woman who missed her flight and the man who said airports were just places where stories changed direction.
He loved the argument about whether clouds looked like ships or mashed potatoes.
He loved the part where the man made the woman laugh so hard she forgot she was sad.
He doesn't know that the man in the story was real, or that I was the woman beside him. He doesn't know that sometimes fiction is just the truth wearing a safer coat.
“Not tonight,” I say gently.
His face falls. “Why?”
“Because it’s late.”
“It’s always late when you say no.”
The boy has a future in cross-examination.
I sit on the edge of the bed and smooth the blanket again, even though it doesn’t need smoothing. “Pick another one.”
He studies me for a moment, his eyes too perceptive for six. “Did something happen at work?”
My throat tightens. “No.”
He squints, and I have never been more aware that honesty is a complicated thing to teach a child when so much of his life has been built around omission.
“Nothing you need to worry about,” I amend. That, at least, is true.
Flynn rolls onto his side, clutching the penguin to his chest. “Are you ever going to see the man with the airplane story again?”
Everything inside me stops. There are questions children ask because they’re curious, and questions they ask because some part of them has been gathering pieces when you thought they weren’t looking.
I sit very still.
“What made you ask that?”
He shrugs, suddenly shy. “I dunno. You looked sad when Mrs. Smith said it.”
My face betrayed me in my own home after I spent all afternoon surviving Declan Ward in a room full of executives.
I reach over and brush his hair back from his forehead. “The airplane story was a long time ago.”
“Stories can come back.”
I close my eyes for half a second. His small voice is sleepy now, the edges softening as exhaustion finally catches him.
“Maybe,” I whisper.
But Flynn is already drifting, his lashes lowering, one hand curled around the airport inspector penguin like it holds clearance for takeoff.
I stay beside him until his breathing evens out. Only then do I let myself remember the hotel room, the balcony, and the city lights spread below us.
Declan laughing softly as I stole half the blanket and denied it with legal-level confidence. His mouth at my shoulder. His voice saying my name in the dark, lower than I expected, gentler than I was prepared for.
Talia.
One night was not supposed to change my life, but my son sleeps surrounded by paper airplanes. I stand slowly, careful not to wake him, and turn off the lamp. The room falls into a soft blue darkness, broken only by the nightlight shaped like a moon.
At the doorway, I look back once. Flynn shifts in his sleep and murmurs something I can’t quite make out. My chest aches with a love so fierce it leaves no room for regret, even when regret comes looking.
Declan Ward can look at me like the past has questions. He can sit across from me in conference rooms with that charming mouth, those dangerous eyes, and all the unfinished things neither of us ever said.
But he doesn't know what my life is like now. He doesn't know the cost of that night, or about the little boy asleep beneath airplane sheets, dreaming of skies he hasn't learned can lose things.
I step into the hallway and pull the door almost closed.
“He doesn't need to know,” I whisper.
The words are quiet, even if they don't feel true.