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Last Thursday began the way many nights have since my world slipped off its axis. The house was quiet, the kind of quiet that settles in deep. I stayed busy wiping down an already spotless counter, trying to steady my thoughts. That was when I heard three gentle knocks on the front door, followed by a small voice I had convinced myself I would never hear again.
It was late. The hour when the neighborhood settles and even the wind feels tired. I paused mid-stride, cloth in hand, listening. At first I thought my imagination had finally pushed too hard against the silence. But then came the softest whisper, shaking at the edges.
Everything in me froze.
I stood there, heart pounding, trying to make sense of something that made no sense at all. My son had vanished two years earlier after a tragic accident. The days that followed had unfolded in a fog of emergency rooms, official explanations, and a grief too heavy for words. Nothing in my life had prepared me for the idea that I might hear his voice again.
But the knock came once more.
“Mom? Can you open?”
I steadied myself on the hallway wall as I moved toward the door, each step a battle between hope and fear. I had lived through countless moments where familiar sounds brought back memories. A laugh in a grocery aisle. A glimpse of blonde hair. A shadow that looked too much like a child running past. But this voice did not feel like a memory. It felt real and present and impossibly near.
“Mommy?”
The word slipped through the door and landed directly in the center of my chest.
With trembling hands, I unlocked the door and pulled it open.
He looked up at me with brown eyes I had memorized. Freckles across his cheeks. The same stubborn cowlick that never stayed down no matter how much water I smoothed over it.
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