I Was About to Propose to Another Woman When Four Six-Year-Old Boys With My Face Led Me Back to the Family I Never Knew I Had.

Mason saw me.

He looked away.

Afterward he declined the flowers.

“You said you’d be there when it started,” he told me.

I tried to explain the time difference, the delayed documents, the pressure from the meeting.

He held my gaze.

“You said.”

The truth was that I had chosen the call because I was afraid of disappointing the people on it.