“She has the same features. The same laugh. I heard her laugh, John, and it was… Ava.”
“You were barely conscious for three days after we lost her. You don’t remember those days clearly. Ava’s gone. You know that.”
“I know what I saw.”
“You saw a child who looked like her. It happens.”
I stared at him. “Do you know you never let me talk about this? Any of it?”
Silence.
I lay back, remembering the blank wall in my memory—the IV, the ceiling, Debbie handling arrangements, papers, John’s hollow face, the funeral I moved through underwater. I never saw Ava’s casket lowered. That absence had always felt wrong.
“I’m not unraveling,” I said. “I just need you to come see her. Please.”
After a long pause, John nodded.
The next morning, we dropped Lily off and went straight to the other classroom.
The teacher told us the girl’s name was Bella. She sat at the window table, pencil twirling absentmindedly between her fingers—the same way Lily had done since she was four.
John stopped walking. His certainty faltered.
