A Few Hours Before the Wedding, I Saw Four Children, Each of Whom Saw My Face, and My Father Stopped Smiling for the First Time

Four boys entered the restaurant restroom, and all four had my face.

It happened at a quarter past seven in the evening, in an expensive restaurant in Boston’s Back Bay, where only a few hours remained until my wedding. The collar of my white shirt was choking me, while the diamond ring in the inner pocket of my jacket lay so heavily, as if I had hidden there not a small stone, but all the sins of my family.

I was standing by the mirror and trying to straighten my tie when the door opened. The first boy entered, then the second, the third, and finally the fourth. They were wearing identical dark green vests. Raindrops glittered on their shoes.

The first boy rubbed the left side of his neck with his hand.

My breath caught.

I had made this movement since childhood when I was nervous. My mother said that I was checking myself with my fingers, as if I needed reassurance that I was still there.

The boy turned around.

He had my eyes. My mouth. The same small wrinkle between the eyebrows.

“How old are you?” I asked, and I barely recognized my own voice.

He tilted his head slightly.

“Six.”

The second boy immediately added:

“We are all six.”

Four small faces were looking at me in the mirror. My face. Four times.

I gripped the edge of the ceramic sink. I felt coldness in my fingers, but my body seemed no longer to belong to me. Exactly six years ago, in the same week, a woman disappeared from my life without the police finding anything.

Elena Vargas.

She worked with me at one of my family’s hotels. We secretly loved each other because my father, Vittorio Moretti, would never have considered her worthy of our surname. That night Elena told me that she had something important to say to me. The next morning, her apartment was empty.

Only one thing remained: a small copper travel clock, with her initials engraved on the back. She always wore that clock, but I found it on my desk. I had kept it to this day.

“Where is your mother?” I asked the boys.

Such silence fell in the room that I heard the rumble of the water pipes behind the wall.

The shortest boy leaned toward me.

“Mother said that if we ever saw you, we had to ask whether you still wore that clock.”

I took the copper clock out of my pocket.

All four children looked at it at the same time.

“Are you our father?” the first one asked.

The question pierced my chest.

A woman’s voice sounded from outside the door.

“Boys, it is time to go.”

That voice came out of six years of silence.

Elena.

The door opened and she stopped on the threshold. Her face was thinner, several strands of her hair had turned gray, but her eyes were still the same. She held a folded brown folder in her hand.

“Dominic,” she said.

I took a step.

“You are alive.”

“Still.”

“These children…”

“I know who they are.”

Behind her, a waiter’s tray fell in the restaurant hall. The sound of glass rang out.

Elena looked at the clock.

“Your family will soon come to take you away. And when they come, it will already be too late if you do not open this folder.”

“What is inside?”

She gripped the folder more tightly.

“The truth because of which I hid for six years.”

A stern male voice sounded from the corridor.

“Mr. Moretti, your father asks you to return immediately.”

Elena put the folder on the sink. I reached toward it, but at that very moment the door locked from outside and a black-gloved hand seized the handle…

The black glove did not release the handle. I reached for the folder and stood in front of Elena.

“No one will get us out of here,” I told her.

“You still speak the way you did then,” she replied. “As if running away from your father’s house were enough.”

The head of security shouted from behind the door:

“Mr. Moretti, the children must not be with you!”

The first boy took my hand. His fingers were cold and small.

“Mother said that you would protect us.”

My heart contracted.

Elena opened the folder. Inside lay several sheets, a small memory card, and a folded letter.

“Six years ago your father came to me,” she said. “He told me that if I revealed the pregnancy, I would never see the children. I was expecting four children, and that night you already knew everything… You just do not remember.”

“What does it mean, I do not remember?”

Elena took one photograph out of the folder. In it, a young me was standing in a hospital room, holding four newborns in my arms.

On the back of the photograph was written: “Do not let Father take us away from you again.”

A knock sounded on the door. The children flinched.

A small red light lit up on the memory card, as if someone had turned on the recording at that very moment.

Elena said quietly to me:

“Listen and you will understand why you forgot everything…”

Elena inserted the memory card into the restaurant’s small computer. Only the white light of the screen remained in the room. Outside, security pounded their fists on the door, but not one of the children cried. All four stood beside me, as if they had been waiting for this moment for six years.

First, the beeping of a hospital monitor sounded in the recording. Then my voice.

“If anything happens to me, do not let Elena or the children come near.”

I gripped the chair.

Young me appeared on the screen. My face was pale, and I was rubbing the left side of my neck with the same movement. Elena stood by the bed and watched the four infants.

“Dominic, your father says he will use the children as heirs,” she told him.

“I know,” I answered in the recording. “That is why I left documents with a lawyer. If I do not come tomorrow morning, the children must be registered in my name.”

Elena’s voice trembled.

“You will come with me, won’t you?”

“Certainly. First I only have to confront Father.”

In the next shot, the door of the room opened and Vittorio Moretti entered. He was holding my travel bag.

“Son, the family is not against you,” he said. “The family is protecting you.”

“No. You are stealing my children from me.”

Vittorio looked at the camera. As if he knew they were recording.

“If you leave this house, I will convince everyone that you are sick because of drugs. Elena will go to prison. And the children will be handed over to the state.”

The recording stopped there. Then only my heavy breathing could be heard.

Elena handed me a new sheet.

“This is the laboratory result. All four are your biological children.”

I lowered my eyes. The numbers and stamps blurred into one another.

“Why did you not tell me?”

“The next day they found your car near the bridge. They found you there unconscious. The doctors said that you had taken a strong sedative. When you came to, you no longer remembered six months of memories.”

The first boy asked me:

“Do you remember now?”

I saw in his eyes such hope that I could no longer shatter it.

“Not everything,” I told him, “but I remember enough.”

The door opened. Vittorio entered with two guards and my fiancée, Sloane Barrett. Sloane was still holding the cover for her wedding dress.

“Dominic,” Father said, “put the folder down.”

“You already know what is here.”

His face changed for the first time.

“These children will destroy your life.”

“No, Father. You destroyed my life.”

Elena placed a second document on the table.

“You have not read this yet, Vittorio. It has your signature and another name.”

My father looked at the sheet. His fingers could not hide their trembling.

At that moment, a call came to my phone from an unknown number. On the other end, a woman said only one sentence:

“If you want to find out who helped hide what happened that night, come to the old harbor before midnight today…”