His expression changed. Not to confusion but to something worse.
“Grace.”
“She has the same features,” I said. “The same laugh. I heard her laugh, John, and it was… Ava.”
“You were barely conscious for three days after we lost her,” he replied. “You don’t remember those days clearly. Ava’s gone. You know that.”
“I know what I saw, John.”
“You saw a child who looked like her, Grace. It happens.”
“You don’t remember those days clearly. You know that.”
I stared at him. “Do you know you never let me talk about this? Any of it?”
That landed. But John didn’t answer.
I lay back against the pillow and let the silence settle. Because he was right about one thing: there were pieces I couldn’t retrieve. The IV. The ceiling. His mother handling the arrangements. Papers. John’s hollow face. The funeral I moved through like something underwater.
I never saw Ava’s casket lowered. And that blank wall in my memory had never once stopped feeling wrong.
I never saw Ava’s casket lowered.
“I’m not unraveling,” I broke the silence. “I just need you to come see her. Please.”
After a long moment, John nodded.
***
We dropped Lily off the next morning and walked directly to the other classroom.
The class teacher told us that the girl’s name was Bella. The little one was sitting at the window table, already working on something, her pencil moving in the same absentminded twirl between her fingers that Lily had done since she was four.
John stopped walking.
The girl’s name was Bella.
I watched him take it in. The curls. The posture. The way Bella pressed her lips together in concentration. I watched the certainty leave his face and something much less comfortable take its place.
“That’s…” he started, and then didn’t finish.
The class teacher explained that Bella had transferred in two weeks ago. She was a bright girl and adjusting well. Her parents, Daniel and Susan, dropped her off every morning at 7:45 without fail.
We waited, and John kept reminding me it could all be a coincidence.
At 7:45 the next morning, a man and a woman came through the school gate hand in hand, with Bella between them. Daniel and Susan. They were warm, ordinary, and clearly bewildered when John quietly asked if they had a moment.
It could all be a coincidence.
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