Not really.
He looked like what my son might have become, older, stronger, but still carrying something familiar I couldn’t ignore.
I wanted to reach for him.
But I didn’t.
Before I could speak, a voice came from behind him.
A woman stepped forward.
And in that moment, everything shattered.
It was my sister.
Layla.
The truth didn’t come all at once.
It unfolded slowly, painfully, as she admitted what she had done.
She had taken him.
From school.
Using trust, using information only she had access to, she walked him out of our lives and into hers, building a story that erased me completely.
She told him I was gone.
That he had no one.
I listened, but the words felt distant.
Because the reality was too much to hold.
Fifteen years.
Gone.
