After losing my oldest daughter, I thought moving might help my family survive grief. Instead, my youngest began insisting she had seen her sister across the street. I wanted to believe it was confusion but one unsettling discovery made me question why my husband had chosen our neighborhood.
The apple pie hit the porch before I understood why I’d dropped it.
The dish cracked near my shoes.
A girl stood halfway down the stairs inside the house across from mine, staring at me with dark hair falling over one shoulder.
For one impossible moment, grief rearranged her face.
“Oh my God, Ava? What the hell is going on here?”
The woman who’d opened the door stepped in front of her.
The girl looked frightened.
“I’m Maisie. Not Ava.”
I stared at her again.
She wasn’t Ava, but she had Ava’s smile and my husband’s eyes.
Then the woman said something that made the broken pie at my feet seem like the least important thing on that porch.
“You must be Aurora.”
***
Four months earlier, my 11-year-old daughter, Ava, died in a car accident.
My husband, Ryan, had picked her up and was driving home when another car hit them.
Ryan survived.
Ava didn’t.
Gabriella was five. She adored her older sister more than anything.
Ava used to brush her hair and read to her. Gabriella copied everything Ava did, including pushing her hair behind her left ear when she was concentrating.
After the accident, Gabriella kept asking when Ava was coming home.
Eventually, the questions stopped.
Ryan was the one who suggested moving.
“I can’t keep walking past her room,” he told me one night. “Please, Aurora.”
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
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