The rich man was seated in one of the restaurants, which was rather busy with the clinking of glasses and the low music being played, when his eyes happened to come across a familiar face.
Across the room, his former wife stood smiling warmly with her hands directing two little kids, twins, who resembled his likeness to an alarming degree, with his dark eyes and curly hair.
His heart stood still; his fork was left hanging in the air. “His kids,” he thought, as he said, with a husky voice, “my kids.”
She had not seen him in years, and their marriage had been destroyed by his mistakes, by his roving heart, and by his sinfulness.
She stared at him with a cold, bitter look and then went off with the twins, taking him shaken with her.
He was unable to forget it, and he was in a whirl of questions. How should she, he thought, with a heavy heart, ever have my children?
He engaged a sympathetic snooper, whose voice was deep: “Trust me to find out about those twins.” The investigator came back a few days later with a softened face. They belong to you, and they are conceived from a frozen embryo.
Your ex-wife did an IVF after you divorced. This deepened the heart of the rich man, and he remembered how he had loved her, and that love was lost.
It was she who never said it, he mused, and his eyes were dim.
She kept them at a distance, and her decision is quite obvious, as his past life and unsavory business interests were but a shade she did not want around her kids.
He attempted to get in touch with her, writing letters and calling, but she shut him out, and her silence was deafening.
Of which he begged to know, in a message by which he had implored, in broken speech, to know them.
He remembered his life, a large house, the wealth he had due to shady deals, and the loneliness that was sticking.
And suppose I had been a better one, he thought, no longer able to control his feeling of grief over the loss of the smiles that were exactly like his.
Their mother was glaring at them, fiercely protecting them, and he witnessed them again, in a park, laughing.
He stood behind, his heart broken, with knowledge that he had passed that had broken a wall between him and her.
Years went by. His life remained the same, full of regrets in his heart. One rainy evening, he drove in the city. His car was warm, and the streets were cold.
Two little figures he had seen at one corner, grasping a ragged sign, and their features were thin, and their eyes were his. His heart beat for the twins.
They crouched, imploring, and their filthy garments were fluttering, and their hands were cold.
He hesitated, his throat convulsed, and said, “Where is your mother?” The girl had looked up, her voice was small, “She is gone because she fell sick.”
He knelt, and tears came, and he said to them, “Come with me.”
His voice was low, and his heart was breaking, and he was so sore about the years that must be lost.
He carried them to their house, and their little feet in their great rooms seemed to be warm.
“You are safe now,” he said, and his voice was steady, and their eyes were very wide with wonder.
He got to know that their mother was dead, and her sickness was fast, and they were left alone. Why could she not tell me? Had her heart been breaking? He whispered, and his heart ached.
So he nursed them on warm soup and provided them with soft beds till their faces began to brighten.
Is he our father? Said the boy shyly. He nodded as the tears came down. “I will, and I never will.” His little hands grasping his felt second chance at a light in his black past.
And he changed, and he had it in his heart to be better. He ceased his villainous doctrine and sold businesses concerned with dirty business, and his hands were clean, at long last, after several years.
And to the twins, he said, with their smiles his arbiter, “I want to be one you are proud of.”
He put them in school, the backpacks springing, the laughs throwing up his house. He began to read them stories, in a low voice, their eyes shining.
Wouldn’t it have been terrible had I never found them? He mused in fullness of heart.
The decision of their mother not to let them see them was painful at that time, but now he realized that it was her love that did not want to get exposed to his world.
The twins were growing, and their faces were a result of their mother, who was grace and a combination of the aspects of their features, and their laughter was therapy to him.
One day, the girl was able to find a photo of their mother smiling warmly. “She loved you; she had you in safety,” he said, his voice thick.
The lad embraced him. “You are protecting us now.” He nodded, and the tears came. “Always.” He remembered the restaurant, the first meeting, and the cold eyes of his ex-wife.
They had been formed by her love, and by his love, they will be formed, a pledge to be the father such as they had the right to, to renounce his past in the name of theirs.
Several months passed, and he was looking at the twins in a sunny park, and he could hear their laughter. He had a new life, and now it was his money, his good fortune, and their ambitions.
Once he had been lost, and he heard his own heart go light, he thought, but they found me. He had a photo of their mother, in memory of her love and her sacrifice.
The twins raced up to him and threw their arms around his neck and trusted him fully. What had happened, he asked himself?
How different would I have been had I remained unchanged by these smiles of theirs? His love had remade him, and his redemption was through the anguish with a family formed out of an accidental encounter in an overfilled restaurant.