My son had only been back at kindergarten for a week when he climbed into the car, half-buckled, speaking as if it were ordinary.
“Mom, Ethan came to see me.”
Ethan. My older son. Dead for six months.
The parking lot noise dulled to a hum. I kept my voice steady. “You missed him today?”
“No. He was here. At school.”
My chest tightened. Ethan had been eight. He died in a car crash while Mark drove him to soccer practice—a truck drifted across the line. I never saw him. A doctor said I was “too fragile.”
Now Noah—five, round-faced, bright-eyed—was saying his brother had come to visit.
“What did he say?” I asked carefully.
“He said you should stop crying.”
My lungs caught sharp. I buckled him in and drove home, every road flickering into that other road, that day, that truck.
That Saturday, I took Noah to the cemetery, white daisies in hand. Ethan’s headstone still looked too new, too clean.
“Come say hi to your brother,” I said.
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