“Ivan, don’t do this out here.”
“How old, Jessi?”
She held my gaze.
“Seven.”
The number hit harder than the icy wind.
Our divorce had become final seven years earlier, only three weeks before I left on an overseas military assignment that kept me away almost fourteen months.
I glanced past Jessi into the warm living room. Handmade Christmas decorations covered the walls. A school photograph rested beside a model rocket on a shelf. The boy’s smile looked so much like my late father’s that my stomach tightened.
“Is he mine?” I asked.
Jessi did not deny it.
Instead, she stepped onto the porch and nearly closed the door behind her.
“His name is Leo,” she said. “And he doesn’t know who you are.”
My mind filled with questions, but seven years earlier, anger and pride had already cost me nearly everything. I did not want to repeat the same mistake.
