The next Saturday, we drove to Patricia's farmhouse. All three of us.
Ava was excited. "Are we going to see Grandma? And my brother?"
"No, baby," I said gently. "We're just going to talk to Grandma."
Her face fell. "But my brother will be sad. He's always sad."
I caught Daniel's eye in the rearview mirror. He looked like a man heading to his own funeral.
The farmhouse looked exactly as I remembered—white clapboard, blue shutters, a wraparound porch. Beautiful. Peaceful. Normal.
Patricia met us at the door, smiling. "What a wonderful surprise! I didn't know you were coming."
"We need to talk, Mom," Daniel said.
Her smile flickered. Just for a second. Then it was back, bright and warm. "Of course. Come in. I'll make tea."
The house was spotless. Familiar. But something felt different. Wrong.
I noticed it first in the living room. A child's toy on the shelf. An old one—a wooden train, hand-painted, from decades ago.
Then the hallway. Photographs lined the walls. Daniel as a baby, Daniel as a child... and next to them, photographs I'd never seen. A boy I didn't recognize. Blonde, like Ava. Smiling. Always smiling.
Michael.
"Mom," Daniel said, his voice strained. "Where did you get these?"
"Those have always been there, sweetheart." She kept walking toward the kitchen. "Tea?"
"No, Mom. Stop."
She stopped. Turned slowly. And for the first time, I saw her clearly—the darkness behind her eyes, the tightness around her smile, the way she held herself like a woman waiting for the ground to swallow her.
"Michael died, Mom," Daniel said. "Forty years ago. He's gone."
"Gone?" She laughed—a high, brittle sound. "He's not gone. He's upstairs. He was lonely for so long, but now he has Ava. They play together every time she visits. Didn't she tell you?"
Ava tugged my hand. "See, Mama? I told you. He's real."
