Mom. Hearing him say that word to someone else was the strangest feeling.
He started picking up the broken pieces of the plate. A woman appeared in the doorway behind him.
The initial shock was fading now. I forced a smile.
“I’m so sorry about the mess,” I said. “My son. He… if he’d gotten a chance to grow up, he would’ve looked very much like your boy.”
Hearing him say that word to someone else was the strangest feeling.
Tyler (he was Tyler, not Daniel, unless by some miracle he was Daniel) frowned and straightened up. “Oh, I’m so sorry for your loss. Don’t worry about the mess. It’s no problem.”
But the woman went completely still, like a mouse that’s just realized the cat is watching it. She looked from me to her son… and then to his eyes.
“Sorry for your loss, but you need to leave. We have a lot to do!”
Then she stepped forward, pulled Tyler back into the house, and shut the front door right in front of me.
She looked from me to her son… and then to his eyes.
I stood on that porch for a moment I couldn’t measure, trying to understand what had just happened to me.
I heard them processing it, too — muted voices that didn’t carry through the door well enough for me to make out what they were saying to each other.
Then I turned and ran back home.
Carl was in the living room when I got back, reading. He looked up when I came in.
“You’re back already?” he asked.
I turned and ran back home.
I sat down beside him on the couch.
“Carl. The boy next door.”
“What about him?”
“He looks like Daniel.”
Carl shut his book but didn’t say anything.
“The same hair,” I said. “The same face. Carl, he has the same eyes. One blue, one brown. He’s nineteen years old, the same age Danny would’ve been now, and he looks just like him.”