I moved closer to the window.
At first, I couldn’t understand what I was seeing.
The living room looked ordinary.
A lamp was on.
A television played quietly.
There were family photographs on the wall.
Then I noticed the woman sitting on the sofa.
She was old.
Maybe seventy.
She was holding a photograph in her hands.
And beside her sat a little boy.
I couldn’t see his face clearly.
But then the woman turned.
I froze.
She wasn’t my mother-in-law.
I stepped back from the window.
What was she doing inside my husband’s childhood home?
I looked toward my husband.
He was standing beside the car, staring at the ground.
“Who is that woman?” I asked.
He didn’t answer.
“Why did you recognize her?”
Still nothing.
I walked back toward him.
“Ethan.”
He finally looked at me.
His eyes were wet.
“I told you we should leave.”
“No.”
My voice was suddenly firm.
“You brought me here.”
“I made a mistake.”
“What did you see?”
He rubbed his face.
“I haven’t been inside that house in twenty-three years.”
I stared at him.
“Why?”
He took a long breath.
“Because my parents never lived there.”
I felt a chill.
“What?”
“That wasn’t our house.”
I looked back at the building.
“Then whose house is it?”
“My brother’s.”
I blinked.
“You have a brother?”
He looked away.
“No.”
The answer made no sense.
Then he whispered:
“I had a brother.”
I didn’t know what to say.
He finally told me the story.
When he was nine years old, his parents had supposedly moved away after his younger brother, Michael, died.
At least, that’s what he had always been told.
There had been an accident.
A fire.
Michael hadn’t survived.
The family never talked about it again.
But there was something Ethan had never understood.
Every few months, his parents would disappear for an entire weekend.
They wouldn’t tell him where they were going.
And whenever he asked about the old house, his father became furious.
Ethan eventually stopped asking.
Until today.
“Then why did you recognize it?” I asked.
“Because that was the last place I saw Michael.”
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