“We’re here for Leo Lowell’s conference.”

The voice at your classroom door is familiar in a way that stops time. You look up from the 11th-grade AP Literature essay you were grading.

Jude Lowell fills the doorway. Your high school sweetheart. Your first love. The one who left without a word right after graduation. He’s older, dressed in a suit that costs more than your monthly rent, his face a mask of polite inquiry that cracks the second he sees you.

The woman beside him smiles warmly. “I’m Evelyn, Leo’s mom. This is my husband, Jude.”

The air in the room vanishes. Your brightest, most sarcastic student… is his son.