CHAPTER 16: 16. The First Meeting
A month after the competition, the twins agreed to a supervised meeting with Grant at a public café. Priya helped establish boundaries: no photographs, no surprise relatives, no demands for forgiveness, and the boys could leave whenever they wished. I sat at a nearby table with a book I barely read. Grant arrived early. He looked older than I remembered, and less certain of how to occupy a room. Miles began with practical questions: where Grant had lived, what work he did, whether there were medical conditions they should know about. Jonah asked why he had stayed away. Grant gave the same answer three different ways before finally admitting that he had chosen convenience and then become ashamed of the years that passed. “I thought contacting you would make everything worse,” he said. “It made things worse that you didn’t,” Jonah replied. Grant nodded. The meeting lasted forty minutes. No one hugged. No one cried in public. When we left, Miles said he felt relieved. Jonah said he felt sad. I told them both feelings could exist together. We stopped for ice cream on the way home, because life had a way of insisting on ordinary pleasures even after extraordinary conversations.
