Iris POV
Lottie asked about her daddy at breakfast again.
Not for the first time. Not even for the fifth time. But this particular Tuesday morning, with the sunlight coming through the kitchen windows and Lucas eating toast soldiers with complete focus and Charlotte looking up at Iris with those grey eyes that had no business being on a three year old's face, it landed differently.
"Mama," Lottie said, very seriously, the way she said everything. "Poppy at nursery has a daddy who picks her up. And James has a daddy. And Cora has two daddies." She held up two fingers to make the point. "We don't have even one."
Lucas looked up from his toast. He didn't say anything. He just looked at Iris in that quiet, watching way he had, the way that made her chest hurt because she knew exactly where he got it from.
"You have me," Iris said. "And Grandma. And Emma."
"I know," Lottie said patiently, like she was explaining something to someone who had missed the point. "But where is our daddy."
Iris poured herself coffee she didn't taste and said what she always said.
"Your daddy lives far away. He's a good man. He loves you very much."
She had been saying that for a year. Since Lottie first started asking. It was the kindest version of a complicated truth and Iris had worked hard to believe she was doing the right thing by telling it.
Some mornings were harder to believe that than others.
Lucas put his toast down and looked at her for another long moment. Then he picked it back up and kept eating. But his eyes were still thinking. They were always still thinking. At nearly three years old, her son already had the look of a person filing information away for later.
He was so much like his father it frightened her sometimes.
Three years.
Iris had packed up a London flat with a newborn strapped to her chest and moved across Europe to a city where nobody knew her face. She had changed her professional name slightly, used her middle name as her last, built her portfolio under Iris Lane instead of Iris Mercer. She had a new phone number, a new city, new everything.
She had also built the most beautiful home she had ever designed.
Warm wood floors. Large windows facing east so the morning light came in long and gold. A garden with enough space for two small people to run without running into each other. Two bedrooms decorated with care, Lottie's with small painted stars on the ceiling, Lucas's with a built-in bookshelf already half full at age three because he sat still for stories in a way that made Iris's heart ache.
She had won two architectural awards in the last eighteen months. Her firm's name was known now. Clients came to her specifically. She had turned down three times more work than she accepted because she had twins to collect from nursery at three and she refused to be the kind of mother who was always running late.
From the outside, her life looked like proof that a person could rebuild completely.
From the inside she knew better.
She knew because of Lottie's question every few weeks. Because of Lucas's nightmares that came in clusters and responded to a low calm voice she could not provide because she was not and had never been a man. Because of the way she searched Gabriel's face in every photo that surfaced in a news feed she should have stopped reading but hadn't. She told herself it was strategic monitoring. Knowing where he was. Knowing where not to be.
She had deleted his number three years ago. She had not stopped knowing it by heart.
She was wiping down the kitchen counter after breakfast when Emma arrived, letting herself in with the spare key she had held for two years.
"Ready?" Emma said, dropping her bag on the chair.
"For what."
"The screening event." Emma looked at her. "The children's health thing. I registered the twins three weeks ago. DNA samples for the research initiative. I sent you the form, you signed it."
Iris had a vague memory of signing something Emma put in front of her during a particularly hectic work week. She had not read it as carefully as she should have.
"Tell me about this event," she said.
Emma pulled out her phone. "Local hospital charity. They're doing a health screening for children under five. Full checkup, hearing, vision, and a voluntary DNA sample for a genetics research database. It's completely safe and I thought it would be good for them to have a full health record." She looked up. "It's across the city. It's fine. Gabriel lives nowhere near here."
Iris looked at her.
"I checked," Emma said simply.
This was the thing about Emma. She never stopped being three steps ahead on Gabriel-related logistics. She monitored his public appearances, his business travel, his city. She had appointed herself the early warning system and she took the role seriously.
"He's in New York," Emma said. "Board meeting week. He has a charity thing in the city next week but it's a different event entirely on the other side of town." She put the phone away. "We go, the twins get checked over, we're home by lunch. Nothing happens."
Iris looked at her children.
Lucas had gone to the living room and was building something with blocks with quiet determination. Lottie was standing at the garden door pressing her nose against the glass watching a bird on the fence outside with total focus.
Both of them healthy. Both of them fine. Both of them so completely loved that Iris sometimes felt the weight of it in her sternum like a physical thing.
"Okay," she said. "We go."
The event was busy when they arrived. A converted community hall near the hospital, full of parents and strollers and children running in different directions. Volunteers in blue shirts. Doctors with clipboards. A cheerful banner across the entrance about children's health for a better future.
Iris registered them at the front desk and found seats near the back while they waited. She kept her sunglasses on. Old habit in public spaces where cameras sometimes appeared. She was not particularly famous but she was not completely anonymous either, not anymore, and she had learned to be careful.
The twins were seen in under forty minutes. The doctor was warm and gentle and both children were perfectly healthy, which Iris already knew but hearing it from someone with a medical degree still unclenched something in her shoulders every time.
They gave the DNA samples. A simple cheek swab each, barely a second. The doctor told Iris the samples would be registered in the research database and she would receive a summary report by post.
Iris carried Lottie on her hip while Lucas walked beside her holding her hand and she thought nothing of it.
They were almost at the exit when Emma grabbed her arm.
Iris looked at her.
Emma's face was completely wrong. The color had gone out of it.
"Don't react," Emma said in a voice that was very carefully not panicking. "Just keep walking. Look at me, not at the door."
Iris looked at the door.
Gabriel Stone was walking in.
He was in a dark suit with his collar open and his jaw set and his grey eyes moving across the room the way they always did, cataloguing everything. He looked exactly like himself. Three years and he looked exactly like the man whose car she had listened for every evening from a kitchen fifty-two floors in the sky.
She stopped breathing.
He hadn't seen her. He was talking to someone beside him, a man with a camera, gesturing at the space like he was here for photos and nothing else.
Lucas tugged her hand.
She looked down at her son.
He was looking at Gabriel across the room with his head tilted at a small angle.
The same angle Gabriel used when he was looking at something he was trying to understand.
"Mama," Lucas said quietly. "That man looks like me."
Iris picked him up in one motion. She turned away from the door. She walked toward Emma and said one word.
"Now."