Three Hungry Girls Were Eating Grass on My Lawn, But When One Looked Me in the Eyes, My Fiancée’s Smile Disappeared

That day, when three little girls were eating grass in front of my house, the photographer dropped the camera from his hands, and the broken lens fell noisily beside the pool.

I stood at the edge of the lawn, in an expensive, carefully tailored dark-blue suit, and could not believe what I was seeing. Three identical girls were kneeling. Their hair was braided into thin braids, their clothes were worn but clean. They were not playing.

They were eating grass.

“Who let them in?” I asked.

Victoria stood behind me and calmly drank champagne. Her white dress glittered in the sun, as if this scene were ordinary entertainment for her.

“A few beggars,” she told me. “I told them that if they were hungry, the grass was free.”

Her coldness frightened me more than the dirt on the children’s knees.

“Victoria, be quiet.”

“Why? I told them the truth, didn’t I? Your guards did not notice them because they are probably as invisible as their parents.”

I did not answer anymore. I knelt down, and a green stain appeared on the trousers of my suit. One of the girls was holding a small yellow hair clip. The edge of the clip was broken, and it had been wrapped with red thread so that it would not fall apart. It was a strange little thing, but at that moment I could not take my eyes off it.

“Hello,” I said softly. “Are you hungry?”

All three nodded.

The first girl looked up at me.

And my breath caught.

Her eyes were exactly as green as mine. Not merely similar. Exactly the same color that my grandmother compared to the stone in a piece of jewelry in family photographs.

“What is your name?” I asked.

“Zoe.”

The second quietly added:

“Zoi.”

The third lowered her head.

“Zara.”

All three had the same eyes. The same shape of nose. The same sharp chin. As if my face had been divided among three small bodies.

“Where do you live?”

Zoe pointed to an old building behind my house, beyond the high fence.

“There, in the apartments.”

“Where is your mother?”

“She works,” Zoe said. “She cleans houses.”

“We were supposed to stay with Mrs. Jenkins,” Zara said quietly. “But she became ill.”

Something caught in my throat.

“Now come with me. Have you eaten real food?”

The girls nodded, but Zoe suddenly grabbed me by the arm.

“Mother said not to go with strange men.”

“I am not a strange man,” I answered instinctively.

I immediately realized that I should not have said those words. I did not yet know who they were. I only knew that when I saw them, I remembered a name from six years earlier.

Anna Moreno.

A woman who cleaned offices on the night shift at my company. A woman who told me one evening that she was pregnant. A woman whom I dismissed the next morning because Victoria convinced me that Anna was asking me for money.

“Richard,” Victoria’s voice interrupted my thoughts, “do not touch them. I have already called the head of security.”

“Bring them food first.”

“In my house?”

“In my house, Victoria.”

Her smile froze for the first time.

I extended my hand to the girls. Zoe did not take it. She only looked at the little yellow clip, and then at the door of my house.

At that moment, the sound of quick footsteps came from behind. The head of security, two employees, and an unfamiliar woman entered the yard. The woman was having difficulty breathing and held a folded paper in her hand. The moment Zoe saw her, she stood up.

“Mother!”

Anna Moreno first looked at her children, then at me. Her face turned pale as ash.

I took one step toward her.

“Anna, are these children yours?”

Her lips tightened, as if a word hidden for six years had risen to her throat at that very moment. She unfolded the crumpled sheet in her hand and held it out toward me…

Anna Moreno’s hand stopped in the air. The wind stirred the corner of the paper, and I noticed that her fingers were trembling as if her whole life hung on that sheet.

“Let me bring the children inside first,” she said.

“Of course,” I answered.

“No,” Victoria immediately intervened. “This woman entered my property without permission. Take the children out too.”

Anna turned toward her.

“Your property? Six years ago you called everything that belonged to someone else that too.”

The glass froze in Victoria’s hand.

I looked at both of them.

“Do you know each other?”

Anna fell silent. Victoria again put on the calm face she used during business meetings.

“I knew her. She is your former employee. She had problems at the time, and you did the right thing when you fired her.”

“What problems?”

“She needed money. She was going to have a child and was making you responsible.”

“A child?” I repeated.

Anna smiled bitterly.

“Children, Richard.”

The word fell into the yard like a heavy stone.

The photographer lowered his head. The head of security turned his eyes toward the pool. Victoria looked at me as if I were the person who had revealed an embarrassing secret.

“Let’s go inside,” I said.

Anna did not move.

“Six years ago I came to your office. I told you that I was pregnant. You did not let me finish then.”

I heard my old voice, although the room was still the yard.

“If you are asking for money, say so directly.”

I really said those words then. I remembered her tears, but believed they were manipulation.

“Why didn’t you tell me that you had three children?” I asked.

“Because your security stood at the door, and Victoria told me that if I came again, she would call the police.”

The color changed in Victoria’s face.

“That is a lie.”

Anna took an old, folded phone from her bag.

“Then is this a lie too?”

Its screen was cracked. She started a recording. At first there was only the sound of wind and footsteps. Then Victoria’s voice was heard, young but completely recognizable.

“You will never speak to Richard. If you return to his life, they will take the children away from you too. For a woman like you, that is easy.”

The recording stopped.

I looked at Victoria.

“Is that your voice?”

“It may sound like mine. A recording like that proves nothing.”

“Why do you have this phone?” I asked Anna.

“Because that night it was the only evidence I had left. I lost my job. I lost my apartment. The children were sick. In the end I moved to the outskirts of the city and worked in four houses a day.”

Zoe stood beside me and touched her yellow clip with her fingers.

“Mother says we have Father’s eyes,” she whispered.

My heart was beating so hard that it seemed to be trying to come out of my chest.

“Anna, why did you come here today?”

“Because a neighbor told me that the children had entered your yard. I came to take them away. But it is already too late, Richard. They know you before you have come to know them.”

“What does that mean?”

Anna took another sheet of paper from her pocket, but this time she did not hold it out.

“I should have revealed this to you when they were born. I did not dare. But now the doctor said that Zara’s heart is weakening and she urgently needs treatment.”

I looked at the girls. Zara clasped her hands over her stomach. Her lips were bluish.

“Let’s go to the hospital,” I said.

Victoria blocked my way.

“Not yet. You are getting married tomorrow. This woman is using your name.”

“The wedding is canceled.”

She narrowed her eyes.

“If you walk through this door, you will lose everything.”

“Perhaps for the first time I will find something.”

That same evening, blood samples were taken at the clinic. In the doctor’s office Anna stood by the window, while I stared at the small yellow clip lying on the table. Zoe had left it there when the nurse tied up her hair.

In the morning the laboratory called me.

“Mr. Blackwood, the results are ready,” said a woman’s voice. “But before I tell you, you should know that the samples from all three children show the same result.”

I closed my eyes.

“Tell me.”

The voice was silent for several seconds and then added:

“A second genetic record connected to them already existed in your own company. Someone changed it six years ago. And this change bears the signature of the person you trust most…”

“The signature of the person you trust most,” the laboratory doctor repeated, “Victoria Pierce.”

The air disappeared from the small room at the clinic. Anna stood by the window, still holding that folded sheet of paper. Zoe and Zara were sitting on a chair, while the third girl, Zoe, was squeezing my fingers tightly.

“This is a mistake,” Victoria said.

She stood at the door. I did not know when she had entered. Behind her, a lawyer, Mr. Haley, looked on with a worried expression.

“How did you get here?” I asked.

“I came to protect you.”

“From the children?”

“From this woman.”

The laboratory doctor placed three sealed folders on the table.

“The genetic match is ninety-nine point nine percent,” he said. “All three girls are your biological children, Mr. Blackwood. They are identical triplets. The mother is Anna Moreno.”

Anna lowered her eyes. Her face showed no triumph. Only exhaustion.

I sat down in the chair because my legs lost their strength.

I was a father.

For six years I had been a father, and I had not known for a single day.

“Why did you change the record?” I asked Victoria.

“I did not change anything.”

Mr. Haley slowly took out a second folder.

“Ms. Pierce, the time of entry into the company archive, your password, and the camera recording coincide. You changed the employee’s medical application and deleted her complaint.”

“That is impossible.”

“There is one more recording,” he said.

He turned on a small device. My office from six years earlier appeared. I was standing at the desk, and Anna was at the door. Victoria was there too, in the corner of the camera’s view.

I heard my own voice in the recording.

“If you are asking for money, say so directly.”

Anna told me:

“Richard, I am going to have three children. The doctor said that…”

Victoria’s voice was heard:

“Stop this theater. People like you deceive Richard every day.”

Then I said the cruelest words a person who considers himself a good man has ever uttered.

“Have security escort you out. Do not come tomorrow.”

The recording ended.

I heard my own voice and for the first time understood what I had looked like that day. Not a strong man. A coward who did not want to hear the truth.

Victoria stepped back.

“You yourself told me that you did not want anything to do with this woman.”

“I did not want to?” I asked. “I did not even know that my children existed.”

“Because I was arranging your life.”

“No. You were stealing my life.”

Anna turned around for the first time.

“Richard, I did not bring this so that I could return to you. The children need a father who can see them. Nothing more.”

Zara suddenly put her hand over her heart. The doctor immediately ran toward her. The machine made a fast, sharp sound.

“We must take her to the operating room immediately,” the doctor said.

I took Zara’s hand.

“I am here.”

“Really?” she barely said.

“Really.”

Victoria’s phone rang. She looked at the screen and her face changed.

“It is my lawyer,” she whispered.

Then the call ended, and she looked at me with fear for the first time.

“Richard, do not do what you are thinking now.”

“I have not decided anything yet.”

At that moment, a message arrived on my phone from an unknown number: “If you seek custody of the children, we will take you to court. But before you get there, see who paid their rent during the last six years.”

The message included an address and one photograph.

In the photograph, the financial director of my company stood in front of Anna’s old apartment. Victoria was visible beside him.

I was staring at the screen when the operating-room door closed.

And then I realized that the danger of losing the children had not remained in the past. Someone was still trying to take them away…