“It’s him,” Stefan whispered, his voice carrying absolute certainty. “The boy from my dreams.”
“Stefan, that’s nonsense,” I replied, trying to steady my voice despite the way my hands had begun to shake. “We’re leaving right now.”
“No, Mom. I know him! I know him!”
Before I could react or stop him, he let go of my hand and ran across the playground toward the other boy. My instinct was to shout for him to come back, but the words got stuck in my throat, tangled up with shock and disbelief and the slow dawning of something I wasn’t ready to comprehend.
The other boy looked up when Stefan stopped directly in front of him. For a moment, they just stared at each other, two children separated by years but connected by something neither of them should have been able to understand. Then the boy reached out his hand. Stefan took it without hesitation.They smiled at the same time and in the same way, their mouths curving identically, as though they were mirror images of a single person.
I felt dizzy, the world tilting at an angle that my body couldn’t quite process. But I forced my legs to move and crossed the playground quickly, my heart pounding so hard I thought it might come through my chest.
A woman stood near the swing set, watching the boys with an expression that was difficult to read. She looked to be in her early forties, with tired eyes and a guarded posture that suggested someone who’d learned not to open herself up too readily to the world.
“Excuse me, ma’am, this must be some kind of misunderstanding,” I began, trying to sound composed even as every nerve in my body screamed that something was fundamentally wrong. “I’m sorry, but our kids look incredibly similar. It’s quite remarkable, actually. Do you… do you know his family or where he’s from?”
I didn’t finish my sentence because the woman turned toward me, and something in her face struck me with sudden recognition.
I couldn’t quite place her at first—it was more of a feeling than a concrete memory. But as I studied her features, the years seemed to fall away, and I understood where I’d seen her before.
