He stopped and tilted his head, wearing the same doubtful expression I had seen in dozens of my childhood photographs. But his eyes were what made my chest tighten.
Blue-gray.
Exactly like mine.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“I’m Ivan,” I said. “I used to know your mother.”
That was technically true, though painfully incomplete.
There had been a time when I knew how Jessi liked her coffee, which song she hummed while cooking dinner, and why she always left one lamp glowing whenever I was deployed.
The boy noticed the Army patch stitched onto my coat.
“Were you a soldier?”
“Yes.”
His face brightened with obvious curiosity, but Jessi quickly asked him to check the cookies in the kitchen. He obeyed, although he looked back at me twice before disappearing.
The moment we were alone, I asked, “How old is he?”
Jessi folded her arms against the cold.
