Three floors of the Marina Bay Sands convention center were occupied for the Asia-Pacific Technology Summit, which had turned it into a hyper-locale for corporate power and innovation. Aria came in early, her approach honed over five years of avoiding exactly this: having to really commit personal contact; keeping distance; telescope remote; harvesting intelligence.
She donned her armor with care
a midnight blue power suit, that conveyed authority, schooling at a high level as she peered down from the upper level into the registration area. Her hair was tightly fashioned into a chignon, accentuating her authority. Her make up was applied exactly right to ensure she had the image of being in control, competent and focused. She was taking valuable time - standing - observing in this crowded feeling, which honestly felt very good and different from the vulnerable woman who had slipped out of a hotel room five years prior.
"Strong registration number," James Patterson, the CTO of Meridian Global, said to her. "Knight Enterprises has half the sponsors lists."
Aria withheld rolling her eyes as she took an inventory of the corporate sponsors' logos that were bannered everywhere she looked in the convention space, noting how clever of Xavier to locate them right in the forefront of a sponsored exhibit. Knight Enterprises was not neutral in the sponsoring, but was the summit itself, defined by its strategic initiative scheme going full bore, an objective brand that pretty much implemented from every angle.
"When is his keynote?" she asked. He looked at his program guide.
"Two PM, main auditorium. 'Disrupting Traditional Market Paradigms Through Strategic Innovation'" James read from his program guide. "It will be interesting to see what he's going to share."
Aria nodded, thinking through her calendar to find a way out of that session. Instead she was going to most of the competing workshops for regional market analysis - gather the intelligence without actually having to be exposed to it.
The morning sessions continued smoothly. Aria networked efficiently, collecting business cards and information from the markets while keeping her surroundings in clear awareness. She spotted members of Knight Enterprises a few times in her periphery, but avoided them as she had successfully walked by.
At 11:30am, Aria was reviewing her notes in a quiet hallway when her phone rang.
"Ms. Chen?" The voice on the line was unfamiliar and sounded urgent. "This is Sarah Kim from Singapore International Academy. We need you to come to the school immediately."
Her motherly concern outweighed any of her professional priorities in the moment. "What's wrong? Is Luna hurt?"
"Luna is not hurt physically, but she's... well, she's refusing to speak to anyone and won't come out from under her desk. The school counselor thinks she might be having some sort of anxiety episode."
Aria was already walking towards the exit of the convention center. "I will be there in twenty minutes."
When Aria stepped into the school, the situation was one of controlled chaos. Principal Morrison was waiting outside Luna's classroom, and her expression was one of concern but still professionally neutral.
"What happened?" Aria asked, without preamble.
"They were doing a family tree project," Principal Morrison explained. "Luna started to break down because she couldn't fill in the paternal side of the family tree. When the teacher offered help, Luna crawled under the desk and hasn't come out or spoken to any of us since."
Through the classroom's window, Aria could see Luna, a small pink note of a girl, curled up under her teacher's desk. Her black hair covered her face but her body language screamed discomfort.
"Can I go to her?"
"Absolutely."
Aria entered the classroom carefully and noticed all the other children were taken back to the activity area. She approached Luna's hiding place slowly and squatted down to see under the desk.
"Hey baby," she said softly. "Tough morning?"
Luna looked up at her with bright eyes, ready to cry. Without a word she crawled out from under the desk and jumped straight into Aria's arms.
"I don't want to do the family tree," she whispered against Aria's shoulder. "Everyone else has two sides, and I only had one."
Aria clutched her daughter as she felt the pressure of five years of strategic deception. Luna was done with just hearing some vague notion of family. She needed specifics, she needed details, she needed a narrative to make sense of her place in the world.
"Can we go home?" Luna asked softly, almost as if she'd lost a battle.
"Yes." Before she could second guess herself, Aria replied. "We'll go home."
The two walked out of the school, Luna's tiny hand tightly holding the fingers of her mother's, and at that moment, Aria knew with a sudden and distinct clarity, that Luna deserved better than half-truths and deflections that had kept them propped together for five years. Not the full truth, the full truth would remain too dangerous to share, but she could give her daughter something more than the void they'd constructed together.
Later that evening, after Luna had eaten dinner and slipped on her pajamas, Image 7 they sat on the living room sofa together, the half-finished family tree project still sitting on the coffee table in front of them.
"Mama," Luna said, her finger tracing the empty branches. "Can you tell me about my daddy?"
Aria examined her daughter more closely than she ever had before. As she sat at four years old, Luna carried a presence not typical for a child her age and an intensity of focus that was painfully familiar. She deserved truthful information whether it had to be constructed carefully.
"Your daddy is a very smart man," Aria began calmly, despite the emotional quagmire she was navigating. "He lives very far away and he does not know about you."
Luna's eyes widened. "Why doesn't he know?"
"Because I decided that before you were born," Aria articulated. "Sometimes grownups make choices they think are good at the time even if they lead to complicated issues later on."
"Is he mean?" Luna asked, the worry now evident in her voice.
"No," Aria said, her response prompt. "He's not mean. He's... intense. Focused. He definitely works very hard and expects a lot of himself and other people."
"Like you?"
The observation landed closely. "Yes. In some ways, like me."
Luna was quiet for a moment as she pondered using the same systematic process as anything else. "Does he have gray eyes like me?"
Aria caught her breath. "Yes. He has gray eyes like you have."
"What's his name?"
This was the boundary that Aria could not cross. Names led to specifics, those specifics led to research, the research would lead to contact, and it was very probable that Luna would not know how to interpret that contact, let alone her dad's name.
Luna, to Aria, felt too little to know the scope of the implications, but she would not be little forever.
"That is something we will talk about when you get older," Aria confirmed. "But for now, do you think it'll be enough to know that if your daddy knew you existed, he would love you very much?"
Luna nodded slowly, and it seemed that she accepted part of the idea. She grabbed her crayon and carefully wrote "DADDY" along one of the blank branches of her family tree, then added, "Smart, Gray Eyes, Lives Far Away."
It was not complete, but it was no longer empty.
"Mama?" Luna asked that evening when Aria was tucking her into bed.
"Yes, baby?" Aria answered.
"Do you think I'll meet him one day?"
Aria kissed her daughter's forehead and inhaled the familiar scents of strawberry shampoo and childhood innocence.
"I don't know," Aria replied honestly. "But you and I will always be a family, and no matter what happens. That's a promise."
As Luna finally fell asleep, Aria returned to the living room and faced the family tree project.
Luna's careful addition was staring her in the face— "Smart, Gray Eyes, Lives Far Away." Except Xavier Knight did not live far away anymore. Less than ten kilometers separated her from Xavier Knight, and he was probably busy with his keynote presentation tomorrow, completely oblivious that his daughter had spent the day crying under a school desk because she couldn't complete a family tree.
Aria folded up the project and pushed it into Luna's backpack. Tomorrow, she would present it in the class as her family tree, it would still be incomplete and missing many parts, but it would no longer be empty shamefully.
Then Aria could return to the technology summit, and continue the careful dance of avoiding the man whose genetic contribution posed ever increasingly challenging questions.
The balance they had duped for the past five years was shifting. Luna had entered a phase where her needs would move her beyond the careful omissions that danced about the truth. Aria would have to choose between the safe distance and lies, or the truth and honesty her daughter deserved.
But not today. Today, she would stick to the strategy that had worked so far; stay in control, keep the distance, and protect Luna from all the problems she was too young to understand.
As she resolved the issue, Aria felt the whole world she had built was dragging to an edge where foresight could no longer hold the consequences of that night five years ago.