The phone call came in the middle of my workday. “Dr. Reynolds, there’s a call for you,” my nurse said, holding the phone.
“It’s urgent. From Westridge Academy.”
“I’m in surgery,” I answered, still focused on the microscope in front of me. “They said it’s about your grandson.
He’s been expelled.”
For a second, the room around me stopped existing. The monitors still beeped, the instruments still clicked—but my hands froze. “That’s impossible,” I said.
“I don’t have a grandson.”
“They were very clear,” she replied. “They asked for you by name.”
I finished the operation, stitched the final line, and left the operating room still trying to make sense of it. The name “Parker” was left on the message.
That name hit me in a place I hadn’t touched for years. Rachel Parker. My son William’s first love—the one who disappeared after he died at seventeen.
Seventeen years without her, without him, without answers. By the time I reached Westridge Academy, my heart felt like it had run a marathon. The school looked perfect from the outside—red brick, clean windows, flags fluttering in the cold Seattle wind.
The receptionist led me to the principal’s office, her eyes flicking up at my hospital badge. Principal Norwood greeted me politely. “Dr.
Reynolds, thank you for coming. I know this must be confusing.”
“There’s been some mistake,” I said. “I don’t have a grandson.”
She nodded softly, as though she already expected me to say that.
“Please, just come inside.”
The door opened, and my world shifted. A boy sat there, backpack at his feet, hair messy from nervous hands. He couldn’t have been more than thirteen.
But when he looked up, I saw my son’s eyes—deep blue, calm and bright—the same eyes that used to light up my kitchen when William laughed. “You look exactly like your picture,” he said quietly. My voice trembled.
“Who are you?”
“My name is James William Parker,” he said. “My mom is Rachel Parker. My dad was William Reynolds.”
For a moment, the room tilted.
I gripped the chair beside me just to stay standing. “My son died before you were born,” I whispered. “He was seventeen when I was born,” the boy said softly.
“Mom was sixteen.”
The math worked. Painfully. Perfectly.
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