Chapter 10 - The Last Reflection
The autumn air had returned to New York by the time we celebrated the boys' sixth birthday.
We didn't rent out a grand ballroom or invite high-society executives who only cared about stock tickers and social standing. Instead, we rented out a sunlit loft space in Brooklyn, filled with two hundred colorful balloons, three giant dinosaur-themed birthday cakes, and twenty of their kindergarten classmates who treated the quadruplets like minor celebrities.
Mara stood near the craft table, helping Milo glue googly eyes onto a paper dinosaur, her laughter ringing out clear and bright over the noise of screaming six-year-olds.
I stood a few feet away, holding a paper plate loaded with leftover cupcakes, watching them with a quiet, profound sense of peace that I had spent the first thirty years of my life searching for in all the wrong places.
As I turned to grab a napkin from the supply station, I caught my reflection in the massive wall-length studio mirror mounted beside the art supplies.
I stopped.
For a second, I wasn't looking at myself. Standing right beside me in the mirror were four miniature carbon copies of my face—Mason, Max, Micah, and Milo—all lined up at the sink washing sticky blue frosting off their hands.
Without thinking, Mason leaned over the basin, wet his palms, and with a sharp, unconscious flick of his wrist, brushed his damp dark hair back from his forehead, simultaneously hitching his left shoulder up.
Instantly, Max copied him. Then Micah. Then Milo.
And right beside them, without even realizing I was doing it, I mirrored the exact same motion.
Milo looked up through the glass reflection, catching my eye in the mirror. He didn't look confused or intimidated; instead, he flashed me that cheeky, lopsided Whitaker grin that had started this entire miracle inside a restaurant restroom a year ago.
"Hey, Dad!" Milo shouted over the din of the party, pointing a frosting-covered finger at me. "Why are you copying us?"
May you like
I grinned back, feeling the dimple deepen in my left cheek.
"I'm not copying you, buddy," I called out, walking over to join my sons at the sink, handing out napkins one by one. "I'm just following family tradition."
