The delivery room still smelled like antiseptic and warm cotton when the nurse laid my newborn son against my chest. He was red-faced and angry at the world, his tiny fist clenched like he already had something to prove.
“Congratulations, Emma,” my husband, Jason, whispered, brushing my sweaty hair back. His eyes were wet, and for a moment, I thought this was the happiest day of my life.
Then the door swung open.
My nine-year-old daughter, Lily, rushed in so fast her sneakers squeaked on the tile. Her cheeks were flushed like she’d been running the whole way from the waiting room. She didn’t smile. She didn’t even look at me.
She stared at the baby.
And suddenly her face crumpled.
She burst into tears and screamed, “Mom, get rid of it! Right now!”
The room froze.
The nurse blinked like she hadn’t heard correctly. Jason stood up so quickly his chair scraped the floor.
“Lily!” I snapped, voice hoarse from labor. “What is wrong with you?!”
Lily didn’t stop crying. She backed away, almost tripping over the foot of the bed, her hands shaking like she was freezing.
“Sweetheart,” Jason said softly, reaching for her, “it’s your brother. It’s—”
“NO!” Lily shrieked, and then her voice dropped into something small and trembling. She grabbed my arm, clutching hard like she needed to anchor herself to me. Her fingers were cold and clammy.
She leaned close and whispered, “Because… that isn’t your baby.”
My heart thudded.
“What do you mean?” I demanded, trying to keep my voice steady. “Lily, look at me. I just… I just gave birth to him.”
Her eyes flicked up. They were wide and terrified.
“That’s not your baby,” she whispered. “That’s not ours.”
I stared at her, stunned. “Lily, stop this.”
Lily shook her head violently. “Mom, please, please listen. That baby…” She swallowed, like the words hurt. “That baby has a mark.”
I looked down at my son’s tiny shoulder. There, right near his collarbone, was a dark oval birthmark. A mole-shaped, bruise-looking thing the doctor had already said was harmless.
My mouth went dry.
Lily’s voice broke again. “Mom… my real dad had the same mark.”
Jason’s hand dropped from Lily’s shoulder like he’d been burned.
The nurse shifted uncomfortably. “Ma’am, should I take the baby to the nursery?”
Jason stared at me, face pale. “Lily,” he said tightly, “what did you just say?”
Lily sobbed harder, gripping my arm so tight it hurt.
“My real dad,” she repeated, trembling. “Not you.”
And I started to shake all over, because Lily’s real father—my first husband, Mark—had been dead for five years.
Chapter 2: The Impossible Echo
The car ride home from the hospital three days later was suffocating.
Usually, bringing a baby home is a time of joy. You take pictures. You drive ten miles under the speed limit. You coo at every gurgle.
We did none of that.
Jason gripped the steering wheel so hard his knuckles were white. He hadn’t said a word to me since the hospital room incident. He had held the baby, changed the diapers, and signed the birth certificate, but he hadn’t looked at me. Not really.
In the backseat, Lily sat next to the car seat, staring out the window. She refused to look at her brother, Leo.
I sat in the passenger seat, my stitches aching, my mind racing.
Mark.
Mark had died in a car accident five years ago. He was the love of my youth, Lily’s father. We had been happy until that rainy Tuesday night when a truck crossed the centerline.
I had mourned him. I had healed. I had met Jason three years later. Jason was different—calm, steady, safe. He loved Lily like his own. We had built a good life.
And now, one sentence from a nine-year-old had cracked the foundation.
“My real dad had the same mark.”
I closed my eyes and tried to remember. Mark’s body. I remembered his smile, his hands… did I remember a mark?
Yes.
On his right shoulder. Near the collarbone. A dark, oval birthmark.
But birthmarks are genetic. Leo was Jason’s son. Mark had been dead for five years. There was no biological way Leo could inherit Mark’s birthmark. It was a coincidence. Just a cruel, freak coincidence.
But looking at Jason’s rigid jaw, I knew he wasn’t thinking about coincidences. He was thinking about betrayal.
Chapter 3: The DNA Test
The explosion happened that night in the kitchen.
I was sterilizing bottles. Jason walked in, holding a glass of scotch. He never drank scotch.
“We need to talk,” he said. His voice was flat.
“Jason, please,” I said, turning off the tap. “She’s a child. She’s grieving. She misses her dad, and the baby brought up memories. It’s just a birthmark. Lots of people have them.”
“It’s the exact same spot, Emma,” Jason said, slamming the glass down on the counter. “I saw the picture.”
My stomach dropped. “What picture?”
“I went through the old albums in the attic while you were napping,” Jason said. He pulled a photo out of his pocket and threw it on the table.
It was a picture of Mark at the beach, holding a two-year-old Lily. He was shirtless. And there, plain as day, was the dark oval on his shoulder.
Jason pulled out his phone. He swiped to a picture he had taken of Leo in the hospital.
He put the phone next to the photo.
They were identical. Same shape. Same location. Same jagged edge on the left side.
“Tell me how this happens, Emma,” Jason hissed. “Tell me how our son has your dead husband’s birthmark.”
“I don’t know!” I cried. “I haven’t been with anyone but you! Mark is dead, Jason! Do you think I… what? Slept with a ghost?”
“I don’t know what to think!” Jason shouted. “But I look at that baby, and I don’t see me. I see him.”
He paced the kitchen, running a hand through his hair.
“I want a paternity test,” he said.
I gasped. “Jason, you can’t be serious.”
“I am deadly serious. I ordered a kit. It arrives tomorrow. If that baby is mine, then fine. It’s a freak of nature. But if it’s not…”
He didn’t finish the sentence. He didn’t have to.
Chapter 4: The Whisper in the Night
That night, I couldn’t sleep. Leo was in the bassinet next to the bed, sleeping soundly. Jason was on the couch downstairs.
I lay there, staring at the ceiling.
How?
I knew I hadn’t cheated. I knew Mark was dead.
I got up and walked to Lily’s room. Her door was cracked open.
I peeked inside. Lily was awake. She was sitting up in bed, holding a flashlight under the covers.
“Lily?” I whispered.
She jumped. “Mom?”
I walked in and sat on the edge of her bed. “Honey, we need to talk. You really upset Jason today.”
Lily put the flashlight down. In the dim light, she looked older than nine. She looked haunted.
“I didn’t mean to,” she whispered. “But Mom… it’s not just the mark.”
“What do you mean?”
Lily hesitated. She picked at her quilt. “When you were at the hospital… before you came home… I had a dream.”
“A dream?”
“Yeah. Daddy came to me.”
My breath hitched. “Mark?”
“Yeah. He was standing in the nursery. He was looking at the crib. And he smiled at me. He said, ‘I’m coming back, Lil-bit.’”
Lil-bit.
I froze.
Mark used to call her that. Nobody else knew that nickname. I hadn’t used it in five years because it hurt too much. Jason never used it.
“He said he was coming back?” I asked, my voice trembling.
“He said he found a way,” Lily whispered. “He said he missed us too much. And then… when I saw the baby… and the mark… Mom, it’s him. It’s Daddy. He came back in the baby.”
I stared at my daughter. Reincarnation? It was impossible. It was the stuff of movies.
But the nickname. The birthmark.
And then, a sound from the master bedroom.
The baby monitor.
Leo was crying. But it wasn’t a normal newborn cry. It wasn’t the high-pitched wail of hunger.
It was a low, guttural sound. Almost like a moan.
And then, silence.
And then, a voice.
Clear as a bell, coming through the static of the baby monitor.
“Lil-bit.”
I screamed.
Chapter 5: The Impossible Recording
I ran to the bedroom. I burst through the door.
Leo was asleep. Silent.
Jason was running up the stairs behind me. “Emma! What happened? I heard you scream!”
I grabbed the baby monitor receiver from the nightstand. My hands were shaking so hard I almost dropped it.
“Did you hear it?” I gasped. “Jason, did you hear it?”
“Hear what? The baby crying?”
“No! A voice! A man’s voice! It said ‘Lil-bit’!”
Jason looked at me like I had lost my mind. “Emma… you’re exhausted. You’re sleep-deprived. Nobody is in there.”
“I heard it!” I insisted. “It sounded like Mark!”
Jason’s face hardened. “Stop it. Stop bringing him into this house. Stop making this about him.”
He walked over to the bassinet and looked down at Leo. Leo was sleeping peacefully, his chest rising and falling.
“He’s asleep, Emma. He didn’t make a sound.”
“But—”
“Go to sleep,” Jason said coldly. “The DNA kit comes tomorrow. We’ll settle this with science, not ghost stories.”
He turned and walked out, slamming the door.
I sank onto the bed, clutching the monitor. I rewound the digital recording on the device. Some newer monitors recorded the last few minutes of audio.
I pressed play.
Static. Baby fussing. Static. “Lil-bit.”
It was there. Faint. But unmistakable.
It was Mark’s voice.
Chapter 6: The Clinic
The next day, the swab was done. We sent it to an expedited lab. Jason paid extra for 24-hour results.
The wait was agonizing.
Jason refused to hold Leo. He sat in his study, working, or pretending to. Lily stayed in her room, refusing to come out.
I was left alone with the baby.
I looked at Leo. Really looked at him.
He didn’t look like Jason. Jason had blond hair and green eyes. Mark had had dark hair and brown eyes.
Leo had dark fuzz on his head. His eyes were turning a deep, dark brown.
I held him close, smelling his milky scent.
“Who are you?” I whispered.
Leo looked up at me. And for a second—just a split second—he didn’t look like a newborn. He looked… aware.
He smiled.
Newborns don’t smile socially until six weeks. It’s just gas, the doctors say.
But this smile was lopsided. The left corner of his mouth went up higher than the right.
Just like Mark’s crooked grin.
A chill went down my spine so deep it felt like ice water.
Chapter 7: The Results
The email arrived at 6:00 PM on Friday.
Jason called me into the study. Lily followed, hovering in the doorway.
Jason sat at his desk, his laptop open. The glow of the screen illuminated his tired, angry face.
“Sit down,” he said.
I sat. My hands were clasped in my lap.
“I opened it,” Jason said.
He turned the laptop around.
PATERNITY TEST RESULTS Alleged Father: Jason Miller Child: Leo Miller Probability of Paternity: 0.00%
The room spun.
“No,” I whispered. “That’s wrong. The lab made a mistake.”
“Zero percent,” Jason said, his voice deadly quiet. “Not 1%. Not a low match. Zero.”
He stood up. “Who is he, Emma? Who is the father?”
“There is no one else!” I screamed, standing up. “I swear to you, Jason! I have been faithful to you every single day!”
“The science doesn’t lie!” Jason roared. “You cheated on me! And you tried to pass off some other guy’s kid as mine!”
“I didn’t!”
“Then explain this!” He pointed at the screen.
“I can’t!” I sobbed. “I don’t know!”
“I do.”
We both turned.
Lily walked into the room. She was holding a piece of paper.
“It’s Mark,” Lily said calmly.
Jason let out a bitter, hysterical laugh. “Oh, stop it, Lily! Your dad is dead! He didn’t impregnate your mother from the grave!”
“He didn’t need to,” Lily said.
She placed the paper on the desk.
It was a drawing. A crude, crayon drawing she must have made years ago. It showed a man and a woman holding hands near a strange machine.
“What is this?” Jason asked.
“Mom,” Lily said, looking at me. “Do you remember the clinic? Before I was born? When you and Daddy… when you had trouble?”
I froze.
Memories, buried deep under grief and time, surfaced.
Mark and I had struggled to conceive Lily. We had done IVF. We had gone to a fertility clinic. We had created embryos.
We had implanted one, which became Lily.
But there were others.
Frozen.
When Mark died, I… I had stopped paying the storage fees. Or so I thought. I had signed the papers to have them destroyed. I was sure of it.
But…
“The clinic called,” Lily said. “A long time ago. You were at work. I answered the phone. They said there was a billing error. They said the ‘samples’ were still there.”
I stared at her. “Lily… what?”
“I didn’t tell you,” Lily whispered. “Because I knew you were sad. I just hung up.”
“What does this have to do with Leo?” Jason demanded.
I looked at Jason. “Jason… five years ago… before I met you… I went back to the clinic.”
Jason’s eyes widened. “What?”
“I… I was grieving. I was lonely. I missed him so much. I went to the clinic just to… to see if they were really gone. The embryos.”
I tried to recall that haze of grief. I remembered sitting in the doctor’s office. I remembered crying. I remembered the doctor saying something about “options.”
But I hadn’t done it. Had I?
I had met Jason a year later.
“Wait,” Jason said, looking at the dates. “Leo was born nine months ago. You and I have been married for two years. Unless you went to a fertility clinic while we were married and implanted your dead husband’s embryo… this makes no sense.”
“I didn’t!” I said.
“Mom,” Lily said softly. “You went to the doctor last year. For the checkup. Remember? You got the shot.”
I blinked.
Last year. I had gone to my OB-GYN for a routine pap smear. And… a flu shot? No, a vitamin injection? I had been feeling tired.
My doctor. Dr. Aris.
Dr. Aris had been Mark’s friend. He had been the one who did our IVF years ago.
A terrible, impossible thought took root in my brain.
“I need to call Dr. Aris,” I whispered.
Chapter 8: The Confession
Dr. Aris picked up on the second ring.
“Emma? Is everything okay with the baby?”
“Who is the father, Dr. Aris?” I asked, my voice shaking.
Silence on the other end.
“Emma, you’re married to Jason. Jason is the father.”
“The DNA test says 0%,” I said. “Who is the father?”
A long sigh.
“Emma… you have to understand. I did it for you.”
My knees gave out. I sank to the floor. Jason was watching me, his face a mask of horror.
“What did you do?” I whispered.
“You came to me last year,” Dr. Aris said. “You were crying. You talked about Mark. You said… you said sometimes you wished you had a piece of him left. You said Jason was great, but… the love wasn’t the same.”
“I was venting!” I cried. “I was having a bad day!”
“I saw an opportunity to give you what you really wanted,” Dr. Aris said calmly. “The embryo was still in storage. It was the last male embryo. High quality. I knew you wanted a son. When you came in for your IUD check… I didn’t check it. I removed it. And I performed the transfer. It was quick. You thought it was just the exam.”
I gagged. I felt physically sick.
“You… you implanted my dead husband’s child into me without my consent?”
“I thought you would be happy,” he said. “I thought… once the baby was here, you’d see. You’d have Mark back.”
I dropped the phone.
Jason stood there. He had heard enough.
He didn’t yell. He didn’t throw anything.
He just looked at me.
“It’s Mark’s,” he said.
“I didn’t know,” I sobbed. “Jason, please, I didn’t know!”
“But you wanted it,” he said softly. “You told the doctor you missed him. You told him I wasn’t enough.”
“No! That’s not what I meant!”
Jason walked to the door.
“Where are you going?” I screamed.
“I can’t be here,” he said. “I can’t look at that baby. And I can’t look at you.”
He walked out.
I heard the front door close. Then the car engine start.
I was alone.
Just me. Lily.
And the baby with the ghost’s eyes.
Chapter 9: The Nursery
I walked upstairs. The house was silent.
I went into the nursery.
Lily was standing over the crib.
She wasn’t crying anymore. She looked calm.
“He’s gone, isn’t he?” Lily asked, not looking up. “Jason.”
“Yes,” I whispered.
“Good,” Lily said.
She reached down and touched Leo’s cheek.
Leo cooed. He reached up and grabbed her finger.
“Hi, Daddy,” Lily whispered.
I stood in the doorway, paralyzed.
My husband was gone. My doctor was a criminal. My life was in ruins.
But as I looked at my children—my daughter speaking to her dead father, my son who was a medical miracle and a violation all in one—I realized something terrifying.
The fear was gone.
Because when Leo looked at me, with those dark, knowing eyes… I didn’t feel anger.
I felt Mark.
And God help me… I smiled.
Chapter 10: The Crime Scene
The police arrived at 2:00 AM. I hadn’t called them. Jason had.
He hadn’t called them on me, thankfully. He had called them on Dr. Aris.
When the red and blue lights flashed through the living room curtains, I was sitting in the rocking chair, holding Leo. Lily was asleep at my feet, curled up on the rug like a guard dog.
Detective Miller was a kind woman with tired eyes. She sat on the sofa opposite me, her notebook open. She looked at the baby in my arms, then at the DNA test results lying on the coffee table.
“Mrs. Miller,” she said softly. “Your husband… estranged husband… alleges that Dr. Gregory Aris performed a medical procedure on you without consent. Is that correct?”
I looked down at Leo. He was sleeping, his tiny chest rising and falling. The child who shouldn’t exist. The child who was a crime.
“He confessed,” I whispered. “On the phone. He said… he said he did it for me.”
Detective Miller’s pen stopped moving. She looked up, her expression shifting from professional curiosity to horror. “He admitted to implanting an embryo without your knowledge?”
“He said he removed my IUD during a checkup. He said he thought I wanted a piece of my dead husband back.”
The detective closed her notebook. She stood up.
“We need to get you to a hospital for an exam to confirm the removal of the IUD,” she said. “And then we are going to arrest Dr. Aris.”
Chapter 11: The God Complex
The arrest was all over the news by morning.
“Prominent Fertility Doctor Arrested for ‘Medical Rape’.” “The Ghost Baby Scandal.”
They dragged Dr. Aris out of his clinic in handcuffs. I watched it on the TV in the hospital waiting room. He wasn’t hiding his face. He wasn’t crying. He looked calm. Serene, even.
When reporters shoved microphones in his face, asking why, he looked directly into the camera.
“Love,” he said. “I gave a grieving family a second chance. Science is the vessel of God’s will.”
I turned the TV off.
Jason was sitting three chairs away from me. He had come to the hospital because the police needed his statement too, as the legal father on the birth certificate.
He looked ten years older than he had yesterday.
“Jason,” I said, reaching out a hand.
He pulled away.
“Don’t,” he said. His voice was gravel. “I’m filing for divorce, Emma. My lawyer will send the papers tomorrow.”
“Jason, please. I am a victim here. He violated me!”
“I know,” Jason said. He looked at me, and his eyes were full of a pain so deep it looked like hatred. “I know you’re a victim, Emma. But I also know what you told him. You told him I wasn’t enough. You told him you missed Mark.”
“I was grieving! Everyone says things when they’re grieving!”
“And now you have him,” Jason pointed at the carrier where Leo was sleeping. “You have Mark back. And I won’t raise a ghost. I won’t raise the man you actually love.”
He stood up and walked out of the hospital, leaving me alone with the scandal and the son who looked exactly like my first husband.
Chapter 12: The House of Whispers
The months that followed were a blur of lawyers, depositions, and isolation.
I lost my job. The scrutiny was too much for the school where I taught. Parents didn’t want the “Ghost Baby Mom” teaching their kids math.
I became a recluse in my own home.
But inside the house, a different kind of reality was taking shape.
Lily didn’t go back to school either. I homeschooled her. She spent every waking moment with Leo.
And it was… wrong.
It wasn’t just a big sister helping out. It was devotion.
She didn’t talk to him like a baby. She talked to him like an equal.
“Remember the beach house, Daddy?” she would whisper while changing his diaper. “Remember how the sand got in the sandwiches?”
Leo would gurgle and smile that crooked, familiar smile.
One afternoon, I found them in the living room. Lily had pulled out Mark’s old vinyl records. She put on Dark Side of the Moon—Mark’s favorite album.
Leo was sitting in his bouncy chair, kicking his legs in perfect rhythm to the bass line.
“See?” Lily said, looking at me with shining eyes. “He remembers.”
“He likes the beat, Lily,” I said, my voice tight. “He’s a baby.”
“He’s Daddy,” Lily corrected instantly. Her face went dark. “Don’t say he’s a baby. It insults him.”
I shivered. “Lily, Dr. Aris did something bad. He put an embryo inside me. That’s biology. It’s Mark’s DNA. But it’s not him. It’s not his soul.”
Lily walked over to the bouncy chair. She leaned down and whispered something in Leo’s ear. Leo laughed—a deep, belly laugh that sounded too old for a six-month-old.
“You believe what you want, Mom,” Lily said. “We know the truth.”
Chapter 13: The Trial
Dr. Aris didn’t plead insanity. He pleaded guilty.
He wanted to make a statement.
I had to be there. I sat in the front row, wearing black, feeling like a widow all over again.
Dr. Aris stood up. He looked at me.
“Emma,” he said gentle. “Look at him. Is he not perfect?”
“You are a monster,” I said, my voice trembling.
“I am a gardener,” he replied. “I saw a field that lay fallow, mourning the harvest it lost. I simply replanted the seed. And now? You are not alone. You have your husband back. You have your family.”
The judge slammed the gavel. “Dr. Aris, silence!”
He was sentenced to twenty-five years. Medical license revoked. Assets seized.
But as they led him away, he winked at me.
And the terrifying thing was… part of me, the dark, lonely, grief-stricken part of me, wasn’t looking at him with hatred.
I was thinking about Leo.
I was thinking about how, last night, I had woken up crying from a nightmare about the car accident. I had gone to the nursery.
Leo was standing in his crib (he was standing early, just like Mark had). He looked at me. He reached out a hand and patted my cheek.
It was the exact same way Mark used to comfort me.
“Hush, Em,” I had imagined him thinking.
Dr. Aris was a monster. But he had given me a miracle.
Chapter 14: The Visitor
A year passed.
Leo was walking. He was talking.
His first word wasn’t “Mama.” It wasn’t “Dada.”
We were in the kitchen. Lily was making a sandwich. Leo pointed at the knife on the counter.
“Sharp,” he said.
Clear as a bell.
I dropped my coffee mug. It shattered.
“What did you say?” I gasped.
Leo looked at me. His eyes were dark pools of intelligence.
“Sharp,” he repeated. Then he pointed to the broken ceramic. “Mess.”
He was one year old.
That afternoon, the doorbell rang.
It was Jason.
I hadn’t seen him since the divorce was finalized. He looked good. Healthy. He had a new girlfriend, I had heard.
“Hi, Emma,” he said, standing on the porch. “I… I came to get the rest of my tools from the garage. I’m selling the house downtown. Moving to Chicago.”
“Oh,” I said. “Okay. Go ahead.”
He walked past me. The house was quiet.
He went to the garage, gathered his box, and came back through the kitchen.
He stopped.
Leo was sitting on the floor, building a tower with blocks. Not just stacking them. He was building a structure with a base, supports, and a cantilevered top.
Mark had been an architect.
Jason stared at the blocks. He stared at the toddler.
Leo looked up.
He didn’t smile. He stared at Jason with a cold, unnerving intensity.
“Hello, Jason,” Leo didn’t say it. He couldn’t. He was a toddler.
But he looked it.
Jason took a step back. The color drained from his face.
“He looks just like him,” Jason whispered.
“He is his son,” I said softly.
“No,” Jason shook his head, looking terrified. “It’s more than that. Look at his eyes, Emma. That’s not a baby.”
Leo picked up a block and threw it. It hit Jason’s shoe.
Jason flinched.
“I’m leaving,” Jason said, backing toward the door. “Emma… you need help. You need to get out of this house. There is something wrong here.”
“We’re fine,” I said defensively. “We’re happy.”
Jason looked at me with pity. “You’re haunted.”
He ran out the door. I watched him drive away, knowing I would never see him again.
Chapter 15: The Locked Room
Leo’s second birthday.
There was no party. No friends. Just me, Lily, and Leo.
Lily had baked a cake. She wrote Happy Birthday Daddy on it in icing.
I watched her do it. I didn’t stop her.
“Lily,” I said gently. “His name is Leo.”
“That’s his outside name,” Lily said. “Inside, he’s Daddy.”
She lit the candles.
“Make a wish, Leo!” she cheered.
Leo sat in his high chair. He looked at the candles. He blew them out in one breath.
Then he looked at me.
“I wish Mom would stop crying,” he said.
It was a full sentence. At age two.
I froze. “I’m not crying, baby.”
“You cry at night,” Leo said. His voice was changing. It was getting deeper, raspier. “You cry for me.”
I stood up, knocking my chair over. “Stop it. Both of you, stop it! This isn’t funny!”
“We aren’t joking,” Lily said calmly. She cut a slice of cake. “He’s back, Mom. Just like he promised.”
I ran out of the kitchen. I ran to my bedroom and locked the door.
I sat on the floor, shaking.
Is it possible?
Dr. Aris had put the embryo in. Biology explained the face, the eyes, the intelligence.
But the memories? The mannerisms?
Was it nature versus nurture? Was Lily coaching him?
Or was it something else?
I looked at the nightstand. There was a framed photo of Mark.
I picked it up.
“Are you in there?” I whispered to the glass. “Mark, if you’re in there… please. Tell me.”
Knock. Knock.
A small fist on the bedroom door.
“Emma,” a voice said.
Not Mom.
Emma.
It was a child’s high-pitched voice, but the cadence… the inflection… was undeniably Mark’s.
“Emma, open the door. We need to discuss the finances.”
I clapped my hands over my ears. Mark used to say that every Tuesday night.
“Go away!” I screamed.
“I can’t,” the voice through the door said. “I live here. I’m your son.”
Chapter 16: Acceptance
Three years later.
The park was sunny. Other mothers sat on the benches, watching their children play on the slide.
I sat alone.
Leo was five now. He was in the sandbox. He wasn’t playing with trucks. He was using a stick to draw complex geometric diagrams in the sand.
A mother next to me smiled. “He’s so focused. Is he drawing a castle?”
“A bridge,” I said, not looking up from my book. “He likes suspension bridges.”
Mark had died on a suspension bridge.
Leo stood up. He brushed the sand off his pants—obsessively, perfectly clean, just like Mark.
He walked over to me.
“Time to go, Emma,” he said.
The other mother blinked. “He calls you by your first name?”
“It’s a game,” I lied.
I stood up and took his hand. His hand was small, warm, and sticky.
But when he squeezed my hand, he did it in a pattern. Squeeze-squeeze-release.
The code Mark and I had used to say I love you without speaking.
I squeezed back.
I had lost my husband. I had lost my second husband. I had lost my reputation.
But as we walked home, Lily on one side and Leo on the other, I realized Dr. Aris was right.
I wasn’t alone.
I looked down at the boy with the ghost’s eyes and the bruise-like birthmark on his shoulder.
“What do you want for dinner?” I asked.
Leo looked up. He smiled that crooked, charming, terrifying smile.
“Steak,” he said. “Rare. And put on the Pink Floyd record.”
“Okay,” I said. “Okay.”
I walked my dead husband home, and I didn’t even care that the neighbors crossed the street to avoid us.
We were a family again. And this time, death wouldn’t dare try to separate us.
THE END
