The Missing Mark
That night I barely slept.
Patrick didn’t sleep at all.
Around two in the morning I found him at the kitchen table, the photograph under the yellow light.
“I keep trying to remember,” he said quietly, “if her left eyebrow always lifted like that when she was thinking.”
“Patrick…”
“What if she’s been waiting for us?”
The way he said it broke something in me.
Because I realized then that if this turned out to be a lie, it wouldn’t just disappoint him.
It would make him lose Lily all over again.
The next morning, we looked at the photograph in the cold daylight.
This time my mother noticed it first.
“Where’s Lily’s birthmark?”
The room went silent.
I took the picture from Patrick and looked closer.
Lily had a small crescent-shaped birthmark near her collarbone.
The girl in the photo didn’t.
Patrick saw my face change.
“What?” he asked.
I didn’t answer fast enough.
“What, Mom?”
I turned the photograph toward him and pointed.
For a second he just stared.
Then he shook his head.
“No. Maybe it’s the angle.”
“It isn’t.”
“Maybe makeup covered it.”
“Patrick…”
“Maybe the picture was edited.”
His voice rose with every excuse. I knew he wasn’t arguing with me. He was fighting the truth before it could reach him.
Then his eyes moved from my face to my mother’s, then my father’s.
And he understood.
He folded inward, both hands covering his mouth.
I had watched my son grieve Lily once.
I didn’t know if he could survive grieving her a second time.
