12. Declan #2
When the project is finished, he holds the model carefully in both hands, turning it toward the light with the kind of pride that makes the entire room narrow around him.
There is glue on his fingers, marker on the side of his hand, and a small smear of blue paint near his wrist. His hair has fallen over his forehead, the cowlick winning whatever battle Talia must have fought with it that morning.
I want, suddenly and fiercely, to know all those mornings—not as an idea or a regret, but as a life.
I want to know how he likes his cereal, which shoes he refuses to wear, what makes him laugh when he’s overtired.
I want school pickups, permission slips, and the kind of ordinary knowledge no one earns in one afternoon.
The want is so sharp I have to breathe through it.
Flynn is not a deal I can close. He’s not a problem I can solve quickly enough to make the ache go away.
He’s a little boy who needs time, patience, consistency, and adults who understand that wanting to belong in his life does not mean you automatically do.
I’m still realizing that when the room changes.
Not dramatically. The children keep talking. The teacher keeps organizing supplies. Ethan continues trying to convince everyone that his plane should have flames on the side because “fast things need fire.”
But I feel it anyway, the slight shift in attention near the doorway.
I look up.
Talia stands just inside the room.
For a moment, she doesn’t see me noticing her.
Her attention is on Flynn, who is showing his airplane to the little girl across from him, explaining how the wing had “a situation” but is now “more stable.” Talia’s face relaxes in a way I’ve only seen when she looks at him, all the fear and discipline and careful distance easing into something warmer.
Then her gaze moves to me. Whatever she expected to find, it wasn’t this.
I am on the floor beside a folding chair, sleeves rolled, tie loosened, with glue on my watch and a strip of tape stuck to my trouser leg. One wooden airplane rests in my hand while another waits beside my elbow for what appears to be emergency tail repair. I should probably feel ridiculous.
I don’t.
Flynn spots her a second later. “Mom!”
He grabs his airplane and runs to her before anyone can stop him, holding it high enough that the propeller nearly clips a volunteer’s arm.
Talia crouches automatically, accepting both Flynn and the plane with the practiced balance of a woman who has caught enthusiasm, elbows, and fragile projects at the same time more than once.
“Look,” he says. “It flies now.”
“I can see that.”
“Mr. Watch helped. The wing was wrong, and the glue was too much, and Ethan poked someone with a propeller, but not hard.”
Talia’s eyes flick to me over his head.
“That sounds eventful.”
“It was,” Flynn says with great satisfaction. “Can I show Ethan the propeller again?”
“Carefully.”
“I know.”
He runs off, though at slightly less alarming speed this time, and the space he leaves behind feels larger than it should.
I rise from the chair, brushing sawdust and craft debris from my trousers. Talia stands too, holding herself with the same careful control she wore in the hotel hallway and the conference room and every place where life has asked too much of her.
“I didn’t know he would be here,” I say.
“I know.”
“I was here for the site review.”
“I know that too.”
She looks back toward Flynn. He’s already surrounded by two other children, his plane lifted proudly between them while he explains the repair with animated hands.
The sight does something to her face I can’t quite name.
Fear is there, yes, because fear is never far from her when Flynn and I occupy the same room.
But so is wonder, and something fragile that she seems determined not to let grow.
“He asked for help,” I say, because I need her to know I didn’t push my way into this.
Her gaze returns to mine. “And you gave it.”
“Yes.” There’s no safe answer after that.
For several seconds, we stand in the middle of the activity room while children laugh around us and a teacher starts collecting glue bottles before the situation can become unrecoverable.
It shouldn’t feel intimate. Nothing about glue, construction paper, and a field trip should feel intimate. Yet somehow, it does.
“I know one afternoon doesn’t change anything,” I say quietly.
Her mouth tightens, but she doesn’t interrupt.
“I know I missed six years. I know I don’t get to walk into his life because I want to and expect that to be enough.” I glance toward Flynn, who is now showing Ethan how to spin the propeller without removing it entirely. “But I’d like the chance to earn whatever comes next.”
Talia looks at me then, fully, and for a moment I see every part of the war she’s fighting with herself. The mother who wants to protect her son. The woman who remembers last night. The person who has carried every decision alone for so long that sharing even one of them feels like losing control.
“You don’t get to audition for fatherhood,” she says.
“No.”
“That’s not how this works.”
“I know.”
Her voice trembles on the next breath, even though she manages to keep the words steady. “Children aren’t projects, Declan.”
“I know that too.”
Flynn laughs across the room, bright and proud and completely unaware that the two adults watching him are trying to figure out how to build something more fragile than any airplane on that table.
Talia looks toward him again, and when she speaks, the fear is still there. But it’s not alone anymore.
“I don’t know what comes next.”
For the first time all afternoon, I don’t try to answer.
I simply stand beside her and watch our son hold up his crooked airplane like it’s the best thing he’s ever made.