My Lovely Headmaster

Chapter 12

Three days pass in a surreal dance of pretense. I teach my classes—Wordsworth's relationship with nature, Coleridge's opium dreams, Byron's beautiful self-destruction—while my own life fractures like ice under spring sun. Every metaphor feels personal. Every poem about secrets and revelation cuts too close.

Vlad is everywhere now. Not obviously, not in ways others would notice, but I feel him like atmospheric pressure before a storm. He attends Devon's morning music practice, sitting in the back row of the small auditorium. He appears at lunch, choosing a table with perfect sightlines to where Devon sits with his friends. He haunts the library during Devon's study hours, pretending to read while his eyes track every movement our son makes.

"Why is Mr. David always around now?" Devon asks Thursday evening, looking up from his Latin homework. "It's weird. Thomas says he never used to come to student stuff before."

"He's the director," I say carefully, helping him conjugate verbs I can barely focus on. "He's probably just being thorough."

"He watches me." Devon's too perceptive, always has been. "During music, he stares. And he asked Mrs. Robbins for copies of all my performance recordings. Why would he want those?"

"I don't know, baby. Maybe he sees potential in you."

"He looks at me like he's sad sometimes. Like I remind him of someone."

My heart stops. "You're imagining things. Focus on your Latin."

But Devon's right. Vlad does look sad—devastated, actually, in those moments when he thinks no one's watching. I catch him sometimes, his mask slipping, staring at Devon with six years of lost time written across his face.

Friday afternoon, he corners me in my empty classroom.

"We need to talk." He closes the door, turns the lock. "Properly this time."

"There's nothing to discuss."

"Nothing?" He pulls papers from his jacket—photocopies, official documents. "Your son was born May twenty-seventh. Exactly thirty-eight weeks after September fifteenth."

"Pregnancies vary—"

"The blood type." He spreads another paper on my desk. "Devon is AB negative. You're A positive. It's genetically impossible unless his father is AB negative." He taps his own medical record. "Like me."

"That doesn't prove—"

"The musical gifts. The Dickenson hands. The eyes, Jasmine." His voice breaks on my name. "He has my mother's eyes. I have photos—look."

He shows me a faded photograph of a beautiful woman with Devon's exact eyes, that same amber fleck in the left one. The resemblance is undeniable.

"Six years," he says quietly. "Six years of first words, first steps, first everything, and I missed it all."

"You didn't miss it. You didn't know."

"Because you ran." The anger returns, sharp and cutting. "You left that morning without a word, without even—did you know you were pregnant when you left?"

"No. I found out three weeks later."

"And you never thought to find me? Never thought I had a right to know?"

"Find you how?" I'm crying now, desperate. "I didn't know your name. The cameras were broken. I was twenty and terrified and alone. What was I supposed to do, put out an ad? 'Looking for the man I drunkenly seduced at a party'?"

"You weren't alone. You had that boyfriend—Nathan."

"Nathan left me the moment he found out I was pregnant. Said it couldn't be his because we'd never—" I stop, realizing what I'm revealing.

Vlad goes very still. "You were a virgin. That night, you were—"

"Don't." I can't bear the gentleness that's suddenly replaced his anger. "Please don't."

"Christ, Jasmine. You were crying, I should have stopped—"

"You asked. Multiple times. I begged you not to stop." The memory burns between us. "I needed to feel something other than pain, and you gave me that. But then morning came and I realized what I'd done and I couldn't face it. Or you."

He moves closer, and I hate how my body still responds to his proximity, how that cologne still makes me feel twenty and reckless.

"What do we do now?" he asks. "About Devon?"

"Nothing. We do nothing. He's happy. He has a life, friends, stability for the first time ever. We can't destroy that."

"You expect me to pretend I don't know my own son?"

"I expect you to put him first. What do you think happens when he finds out? When he realizes his whole life is built on lies? That his mother is the kind of woman who—"

"Stop." His hand cups my face, forcing me to meet his eyes. "You're not 'that kind of woman.' You were young and hurt and human."

"He thinks his father abandoned us. It's easier than the truth."

"The truth that his father never got the chance to choose?" His thumb brushes away my tears. "That's not easier, Jasmine. That's just a different kind of cruel."

"Then what do you suggest?"

He's quiet for a long moment, his hand still on my face. "Give me time with him. Let me know him, properly, before... before we decide anything. Let me be in his life, even if he doesn't know who I am."

"You already are."

"Not like this. Not sneaking glimpses during lunch. I want to help with his music. Attend his performances. Be there when he needs guidance." His voice drops. "Be what I should have been all along."

"And if he figures it out?"

"Then we tell him the truth. Together." His forehead touches mine, and for a moment we're just two people who created something beautiful from something broken. "We're his parents, Jasmine. Whatever else we are or aren't, we're that."

"Okay," I whisper. "But slowly. Carefully."

"Carefully," he agrees.

The door handle rattles. "Vlad? Are you in there?" Leo's voice, suspicious and amused.

Vlad steps back, straightening his jacket. "We'll continue this later."

He unlocks the door, and Leo's eyes dart between us, taking in my tears, Vlad's intensity, the charged air between us.

"Brother," Leo drawls, his smile sharp as winter. "How interesting to find you here. Again."

Vlad pushes past him without answering, but Leo doesn't follow. Instead, he leans against my doorframe, studying me like I'm a puzzle he's just solved.

"You know," he says conversationally, "Devon really does look remarkably like our mother. Especially around the eyes."

My blood turns to ice.

"Same musical gifts too. Funny how genetics work, isn't it?" His smile widens at my expression. "Don't worry, Ms. Johnson. Your secret's safe with me. For now."

He leaves, whistling the Dickenson Sonata, and I sink into my chair, shaking. The storm hasn't passed. It's only just beginning.