The Resemblance

Part I: Before

Sarah knew every aisle of the Safeway on Morrison Street. Aisle 3: cereals and breakfast foods. Aisle 7: pasta and sauces. Aisle 11: frozen vegetables, where the cold made Tommy's breath turn to visible clouds that he'd blow at her, pretending to be a dragon.

He was six years old. He had her ex-husband's dark curls and her own gray-green eyes.

She turned her back for thirty seconds to compare prices on orange juice. When she looked down, the space beside her cart was empty.

She called his name. Then louder. Then she was running through the store, her voice climbing into registers she didn't recognize as her own.

They found his jacket near the loading dock. Just the jacket.

Six months later, hikers discovered remains in a ravine thirty miles outside the city. Small bones, a skull. The age was right. The dental records were inconclusive—Tommy had only been to the dentist twice. The DNA testing came back as a likely match, but with a margin of uncertainty that would live in Sarah's chest like a second heart for the rest of her life.

92% probability.

They held a funeral for the 92%.

Part II: Resemblance

Fourteen years later, Sarah was fifty-one years old and worked as an accountant for a mid-sized firm. She had learned to live around the absence the way a tree grows around a wound, incorporating the damage into its very structure.

She was having coffee at the campus café near her office—she sometimes went there for lunch, preferring the energy of young people to the silence of her apartment—when she saw him.

He was sitting two tables away with textbooks spread before him, one hand in his dark curls as he frowned at his laptop. Twenty years old, maybe twenty-one. When he glanced up, his eyes were gray-green.

Sarah's coffee cup hit the table harder than she intended.

The resemblance was impossible. Not just similar—identical. She had memorized every photograph of Tommy, had traced her fingers over his features until the prints wore thin. She had commissioned an age-progression rendering when he would have turned twelve, then sixteen, then eighteen. She'd studied the artist's best guesses at what time and adolescence would have done to his face.

This boy looked exactly like those renderings.

She realized she was staring. She forced herself to look away, to breathe, to remember that the world was full of coincidences, that grief could conjure resemblances from nothing.

But when she glanced back, he was laughing at something on his screen, and the laugh—God, the laugh—was Tommy's giggle grown deeper, the same rhythm, the same way his shoulders shook.

She left without finishing her coffee.

Part III: Confluence

She couldn't stay away from the café. She told herself she was being irrational, possibly unwell. She should probably talk to her therapist. Instead, she went back the next day.

He was there again. Studying, this time with a friend. She sat far enough away to observe without being obvious, close enough to hear fragments of conversation.

His name was David. He was a junior, studying psychology. His voice had the same slight rasp Tommy's had been developing before—before. He gestured when he talked the same way, hands painting pictures in the air.

Over weeks, she learned more. He came to the café three times a week, usually Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, Saturday mornings. He drank black coffee and ate turkey sandwiches. He bit his lower lip when he was concentrating. He was left-handed.

Tommy had been left-handed.

She knew she should stop. This was surveillance, obsession, unhealthy at best. But she couldn't make herself care about healthy anymore.

One Thursday, his laptop died mid-session. She watched him deflate, checking outlets that were all occupied.

Sarah had been wearing the same perfume for twenty years. Gardenia and jasmine, with notes of vanilla—a fragrance she'd discovered in her twenties and never abandoned. It was her signature, the scent that clung to her clothes, her hair, her skin. She'd worn it the day Tommy disappeared. She was wearing it now.

Before she could talk herself out of it, Sarah stood and walked over.

"I'm leaving," she said. "You can have my outlet."

David looked up, and the moment his eyes met hers, something happened to his face. The polite smile of a stranger froze halfway to formation. His expression went blank, then confused, then almost frightened. He stared at her like she was a ghost.

"I—" he started, then stopped. Blinked. "Sorry, I—thank you. That's really kind."

But his voice shook. His hand trembled slightly as he reached for his charger cord.

"It's nothing," Sarah said, though her own voice wasn't steady. She could see him trying not to stare, see the questions forming behind his eyes. "I was done anyway."

"I'm David," he said after a pause that lasted a beat too long. He stood to shake her hand, and she noticed he was taller than her by several inches—exactly how tall Tommy would have been, according to the pediatrician's growth charts she'd kept.

"Sarah."

When their hands touched, David's grip faltered. He was looking at her with an intensity that was almost painful, searching her face like he was trying to solve an equation. Then she saw his nostrils flare slightly—just barely—as he caught her perfume.

The color drained from his face.

"Are you alright?" Sarah asked, though she was barely alright herself.

"Yeah, I just—" He released her hand quickly, took a small step back. "Sorry. You just—you remind me of someone."

"Oh?"

"My mother." The words came out quiet, almost against his will. "She died when I was six. You—" He stopped himself, shook his head. "Sorry, that's weird to say. You probably get that a lot."

"No," Sarah whispered. "I don't."

They stood there for a moment, the café noise washing around them like a river around stones.

"When did she die?" Sarah asked, and didn't know why she was asking, except that she had to know.

"March 2011," David said. "March 17th."

Two weeks before Tommy disappeared.

Sarah's legs felt weak. "I'm so sorry."

"Thank you." David was still looking at her with that searching expression, like he was trying to place her in a context that made sense. "It was a long time ago. I don't—I don't remember her as clearly as I'd like. Just impressions mostly. Her voice, sometimes. And—" He stopped, looking embarrassed.

"And?" Sarah prompted gently.

"Her perfume," he said quietly. "There was this scent she wore. I can never find it, but sometimes in summer, something blooms that smells close, and I—" He stopped again, looking at her with an expression that was becoming increasingly disturbed. "You're wearing it. Aren't you? That's—that's the smell."

Sarah couldn't speak.

"I'm sorry," David said quickly. "This is so inappropriate. I should—I should let you go. Thank you for the outlet."

"Wait," Sarah said, and didn't know what she was going to say next. "I come here sometimes. For lunch. If you—if you ever want to talk. About your mother, or—"

"Why?" David asked, and there was something raw in his voice. "Why would you—who are you?"

"I don't know," Sarah said honestly. "But I think—I think maybe we should talk."

Part IV: The Box

David didn't go back to studying. He sat at Sarah's former table with his dead laptop and shaking hands, and tried to understand what had just happened.

The woman looked exactly like his mother. Not similar—exactly. The same cheekbones, the same slight overbite, the same way of tilting her head when she listened. The same voice, with that particular warm rasp. And the perfume—Jesus, the perfume. The scent he'd been chasing for fourteen years every summer, the fragrance that existed in his memory as the very essence of mother, of safety, of home.

He packed his things with clumsy hands and went back to his apartment.

The box was in his closet, where it had been since his father died. David had only opened it twice—once right after the funeral, once on what would have been his mother's fiftieth birthday. It hurt too much to look through it more often. His father had kept everything: photos, cards, his mother's jewelry, a few items of her clothing that still, faintly, held her scent.

David sat on his bedroom floor and lifted the lid.

The photos were organized chronologically. His parents' wedding. His mother pregnant. Him as a baby, a toddler, a young child. The last photos were from the week before she died—his sixth birthday party. His mother smiling behind a cake with six candles, her arm around him.

He pulled out his phone and looked up Sarah on social media. She'd told him her last name—Morgan. He found her easily. She had a sparse profile, not many photos, but there were a few.

David laid his phone next to the photograph of his mother.

They could have been the same person.

Not just similar. Not just "strong resemblance." They could have been the same woman photographed twenty years apart. Every feature matched. The shape of the eyes, the curve of the mouth, the way they both smiled slightly more on the left side. Even the small scar on the right eyebrow—he could see it in Sarah's profile picture, the same pale line his mother had from a childhood accident.

His hands were shaking so badly he could barely hold the phone.

He dug deeper into the box and found his mother's death certificate. March 17, 2011. Metastatic breast cancer. She'd been sick for three months—he barely remembered it, just an impression of hospital rooms and his father crying in the kitchen late at night and then she was gone.

David pulled up his laptop—still dead—cursed, plugged it into the wall. When it finally powered on, he started searching.

Sarah Morgan accountant brought up her firm's website. Her bio was minimal, professional. He found a LinkedIn profile. Born in 1974, same year as his mother. Worked in the area. No mention of children, no photos that revealed anything personal.

He kept searching. Public records. Old news articles.

And then he found it.

Local Boy Missing, Presumed Abducted

The article was from April 2011. A six-year-old named Thomas "Tommy" Wheeler had disappeared from a grocery store. His mother Sarah Morgan-Wheeler had been shopping with him. Surveillance footage showed nothing useful. The boy had vanished.

David's vision blurred. April 2011. Weeks after his mother died.

He found the follow-up article from October that year. Remains Found, Believed to be Missing Boy. The details were sparse, carefully worded. The identification wasn't certain. The mother declined to comment.

David sat on his floor surrounded by photographs of his dead mother and news articles about Sarah's dead son, and tried to breathe.

The son who would have been six. Who would now be twenty. Who would be exactly David's age.

He looked at the photos again. His mother. Sarah. The same person.

He thought about the perfume, about how he'd been searching for that specific scent for fourteen years, how he'd never found it in any store, how it only came to him in glimpses during summer months when certain flowers bloomed.

He thought about how Sarah had looked at him—not like a stranger, but like someone seeing a ghost.

David closed the box carefully, put it back in his closet, and sat on his bed for a long time.

Then he pulled out his phone and texted the number Sarah had given him.

Can we meet tomorrow? I need to show you something.

Part V: Photographs

They met at a park, not the café. Neutral ground. David had the box in his car, but he carried only one photograph—his mother at his sixth birthday party.

Sarah was already there, sitting on a bench, and when she saw him approaching she stood quickly. She looked nervous, hopeful, terrified.

"Thank you for meeting me," David said.

"Of course." Sarah's eyes dropped to the photograph in his hand. "Is that—?"

"My mother," David said. He held it out to her. "I thought you should see."

Sarah took the photo with trembling hands. She stared at it for a long time, her face going through a series of expressions David couldn't fully interpret. Shock. Recognition. Something that might have been grief or might have been awe.

"This is me," she whispered.

"I know," David said.

"I mean—" Sarah looked up at him, eyes shining. "This isn't just—David, this is exactly me. This could be my photograph. I have pictures from the same year, the same age, wearing similar clothes, and—" Her voice broke. "This is impossible."

"I know."

They stood there in the park, holding between them the photograph of a dead woman who wore Sarah's face.

"I need to show you something too," Sarah said finally. She pulled out her phone, opened her photos, handed it to him.

It was a photograph of a little boy, maybe six years old, with dark curls and gray-green eyes. He was blowing at the camera, his cheeks puffed out, his expression delighted.

"This is Tommy," Sarah said. "This is my son. He disappeared in April 2011. We found—they found remains. Probably his. But they were never certain. 92% probability."

David looked at the photo, at the little boy's face, and felt dizzy.

"When's your birthday?" Sarah asked.

"March 29th, 2005."

"Tommy's was April 3rd, 2005."

They were four days apart.

"My mother died March 17th," David said quietly. "You lost Tommy in April. Early April."

"April 1st," Sarah whispered. "I lost him on April 1st."

Two weeks. His mother had been dead for two weeks when Tommy disappeared.

"I've been watching you," Sarah admitted suddenly, the words tumbling out. "At the café. For weeks before I talked to you. I saw you and I thought—I thought you looked like him. Like what he would have looked like. I thought I was going crazy. I thought grief was making me see things that weren't there."

"You're not crazy," David said. "I am exactly what he would have looked like." He gestured to himself, then to the photo of the child. "Same hair, same eyes, same—everything. You know it. I know it."

"What does this mean?" Sarah asked, and her voice was breaking now. "David, what is this?"

"I don't know." He took a shaky breath. "But when I saw you yesterday, when I heard your voice, when I smelled that perfume—Sarah, I've been looking for that scent for fourteen years. It's my clearest memory of my mother. And you're wearing it."

"Gardenia and jasmine," Sarah said. "I've worn it for twenty years. I wore it the day I lost Tommy."

David nodded slowly. "My mother wore it too. I don't know what brand, I don't remember the name, but that's the smell. That exact smell."

"This isn't a coincidence," Sarah said, but it came out like a question.

"No," David agreed. "It's not."

"But what is it? Reincarnation? Some kind of—I don't even know what to call it. Cosmic joke?"

David looked at the photo in her hands—his mother's face, Sarah's face, the same face. "I think," he said slowly, "that somehow we've found each other again. I think you're my mother. And I think I'm your son. Just—"

"In different bodies," Sarah finished. "In a different configuration."

"Yes."

They sat down on the bench together, the photographs between them like evidence in a trial whose verdict could never be reached.

"I loved him so much," Sarah said quietly, tears streaming down her face now. "I've loved him every day for fourteen years. Every single day. And I look at you and I see him, David. I see my son. But you're not—you're a stranger. You're a whole person who had a whole life I wasn't part of. You're not Tommy."

"I know," David said. His own eyes were wet. "And I loved her. My mother. I barely remember her, but I've loved her absence my whole life. I look at you and I feel—" He stopped, trying to find the words. "I feel like I'm home. Like the part of me that's been missing is sitting right here. But you're not her. You're Sarah. You're someone I just met."

"Are we crazy?" Sarah asked.

"Probably," David said, and it surprised them both when Sarah laughed—a small, broken sound, but a laugh.

"What do we do?" she asked.

David looked at her—at this woman who wore his mother's face and his mother's perfume, who had lost a son the same age as him at the same time his mother died, whose son would have grown into someone who looked exactly like David looked now.

"I think," he said carefully, "that we spend time together. We talk. We—we see what this is. Because I don't think I can walk away from you. I don't think I can pretend I didn't find you."

"Neither can I," Sarah admitted. "From the moment I saw you in that café, I haven't been able to think about anything else. It's like—"

"Gravity," David finished.

"Yes. Exactly like gravity."

They sat there as the sun moved across the sky, two people caught in an impossible situation, both mourning the dead and marveling at the living, both terrified and unable to let go.

"I need to know something," David said finally. "When you look at me, who do you see? Tommy? Or me?"

Sarah considered this for a long time. "Both," she admitted. "I see my son's face, his mannerisms, his laugh. But I also see you—David, who studies psychology, who wants to help people, who has his own thoughts and opinions and life. It's like—a double exposure photograph. Two images overlapping."

"That's how I see you too," David said quietly. "My mother and Sarah. The same person and completely different people, all at once."

"Is that okay?" Sarah asked. "Can we—can we exist like that?"

"I don't know," David said honestly. "But I think we have to try."

Part VI: The Territory Between

Over the following months, they built something that had no name.

David came to Sarah's apartment for dinner once a week. She taught him to cook the meals she'd made for Tommy—pasta primavera, chicken pot pie, chocolate chip cookies with extra chips. He'd eat them and close his eyes and say, "This tastes like childhood," even though he'd never eaten them before.

Sarah went to David's presentations at school. She helped him study for his clinical psychology exams. She listened to his fears about the future, about whether he was smart enough, good enough, whether he could really help people heal when he was still so broken himself.

They talked about their lost ones. David showed her every photo he had of his mother, told her every story his father had passed down. Sarah did the same with Tommy, pulling out albums she hadn't opened in years, speaking his name aloud for the first time in a long time without feeling like she was drowning.

And slowly, carefully, they started telling each other the things you can't tell the dead. David talked about resenting his mother sometimes for dying, for leaving him alone. Sarah talked about the guilt she still carried, about those thirty seconds she looked away, about how part of her would always believe she'd failed Tommy.

"You didn't fail him," David said. "You couldn't have known."

"But I should have been watching," Sarah said, her voice breaking.

"You were human," David replied gently. "You were just human. And I think—I think he forgave you. I think he would want you to forgive yourself."

Sarah looked at him, at this young man who spoke with authority about what her dead son would have wanted, and didn't know if she was hearing wisdom or wishful thinking or something stranger—a message from beyond, delivered through the face of the lost.

But there were also moments that confused them, that made the boundaries blur in ways neither could fully articulate.

The way Sarah's hand would linger on David's shoulder a moment too long.

The way David found himself noticing how Sarah looked in certain light, how her laugh made him feel warm in a way that wasn't entirely maternal.

One evening, after too much wine with dinner, David said, "Can I ask you something that might be inappropriate?"

"Yes," Sarah said, though her heart was racing.

"Do you ever think about—" He stopped, started again. "When you look at me, do you ever feel things that aren't—that aren't how you'd feel about Tommy?"

Sarah was very quiet. "Yes," she whispered finally. "And it makes me feel sick. Like I'm betraying him. Like I'm betraying you. Like I'm—I don't know. Broken in some fundamental way."

"You're not broken," David said quickly. "I feel it too. Sometimes when you hug me goodbye, or when you laugh at something I said, I feel—" He stopped, clearly struggling. "I feel things I shouldn't. Things that don't make sense."

"Because I'm your mother," Sarah said, "but I'm not your mother."

"Because you're my mother's soul in a stranger's life," David said. "Or you're a stranger who happens to look like my mother. Or you're something else entirely. And I'm your son, but I'm not your son, and—"

"We don't know what we are," Sarah finished.

"No," David agreed. "We don't."

They sat there in Sarah's living room, the wine glasses empty, the candles burning low, both of them terrified of what they were feeling and more terrified of losing each other.

"What if," Sarah said slowly, "we're not bound by the normal rules? What if—because of what we are, whatever we are—the usual categories don't apply?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean—" Sarah struggled to articulate it. "If you really are Tommy, if our souls really did find each other again, then anything we feel is just a continuation of that bond. It's not incest because we're not actually related. We just—remember each other. Recognize each other."

"But if I'm not Tommy," David countered, "if I'm just a stranger, then what we're feeling is—"

"New," Sarah finished. "Something new. Two people who met and connected. Nothing wrong with that."

"Except that you look exactly like my dead mother and I look exactly like your dead son."

"Yes," Sarah said quietly. "Except for that."

David leaned forward, elbows on his knees, head in his hands. "I don't know how to do this. I don't know what's right."

"Neither do I," Sarah admitted. "But David—" She waited until he looked up at her. "I can't lose you again. I can't. I know that's selfish, I know it's not fair to put that on you, but I can't watch you walk away."

"I'm not going anywhere," David said. "I can't. Even if I wanted to—and I don't want to—I couldn't. You're—" He laughed, helpless. "You're gravity, remember? I'm caught in your orbit."

"We're caught in each other's," Sarah corrected.

Part VII: The Superposition

Two years passed.

David graduated with honors in psychology and started a master's program in clinical counseling. Sarah got promoted to senior accountant. They spent holidays together—Thanksgiving, Christmas, the fourth of July. They went to movies, took walks, cooked dinners, lived in each other's pockets in a way that was domestic and intimate and undefined.

They never became lovers.

They never quite became parent and child.

They existed in between, in a superposition of states: family and not-family, romantic and not-romantic, reincarnated souls and strangers who met by chance. They were all of these things and none of them, quantum particles refusing to collapse into a single observable state.

People asked, sometimes. Friends, colleagues. "Who is that?" they'd ask David when he mentioned Sarah. "Who is that?" they'd ask Sarah when David showed up at her office.

Neither of them had a good answer.

"She's—important to me," David would say.

"He's—someone I love," Sarah would offer.

Sometimes David still pulled out the box of photos and looked at his mother's face, at Sarah's face, at the impossibility of their sameness. Sometimes Sarah still woke from dreams of the grocery store, of Tommy's small hand slipping from hers, only to remember that in a few hours David was coming over for breakfast and the grief would transform into something more complicated.

One evening, on what would have been Tommy's twenty-second birthday, Sarah and David sat in her apartment with a cake Sarah had baked—chocolate with vanilla frosting, Tommy's favorite.

"Do you think about it?" Sarah asked quietly. "About whether you're him?"

David was quiet for a long moment. "Every day," he admitted. "I think about the timing, about the resemblances, about how I feel when I'm with you. And I think—maybe. Or maybe not. Or maybe it doesn't matter."

"How can it not matter?"

"Because whatever I am—whoever I am—I love you, Sarah. I love you in a way that I can't categorize or explain or justify. And you love me. That's real, regardless of where it comes from."

"But if you're Tommy—"

"Then I'm your son, and this love is eternal, and maybe it changes shape but it's still the same love it always was," David said. "Or I'm not Tommy, and this is new, and that's okay too. Or I'm something in between—a soul that remembers being Tommy but has lived a whole separate life as David. Does it change what we are to each other?"

Sarah looked at the cake, at the candles she'd placed there—twenty-two of them. She'd been doing this for fourteen years before David. Baking cakes for a dead child, marking time passing, refusing to let go.

"I used to think," she said slowly, "that if I ever moved on, if I ever loved anyone or anything as much as I loved Tommy, it would be a betrayal. That I had to preserve my grief perfectly or I'd lose him completely."

"And now?"

"Now I think—" Sarah stopped, considering. "I think maybe grief doesn't have to be preserved in amber. Maybe it can change, can grow into something else. Maybe loving you doesn't betray Tommy. Maybe it honors him. Because if you are him, I'm still loving my son. And if you're not, I'm allowing myself to love again, which is what any mother would want for her child—for him to want her to be happy."

David reached across the table and took her hand. His hand was large, warm, familiar in a way that defied the fact they'd only known each other two years.

"I think my mother would want me to be happy too," he said quietly. "And I think—whether you're her or not—being with you makes me happier than I've been since she died."

They sat there in the candlelight, holding hands across a birthday cake for a dead child who might or might not have become the living man who sat at the table.

"We're never going to know for sure," Sarah said. "Are we?"

"No," David agreed. "We're not."

"Can you live with that? The not knowing?"

David squeezed her hand gently. "I think the not knowing is all we get. About anything. We don't know where souls come from or where they go. We don't know why we love who we love. We don't know if anything means anything or if it's all just beautiful chaos. All we know is what we feel, moment to moment."

"And what do you feel?" Sarah asked.

David looked at her—at this woman who wore his mother's face but wasn't quite his mother, who had lost a son but might have found him again, who loved him in a way that was both profound and impossible to define.

"I feel found," he said simply. "For the first time since I was six years old, I feel found."

Sarah's eyes filled with tears. "Me too."

They blew out the candles together, making no wishes, asking no questions, accepting the mystery.

Epilogue

Five years later, David was a licensed therapist specializing in grief and loss. Sarah had retired early and volunteered at a children's advocacy center. They still had dinner every Sunday. They still called each other when something important happened. They still loved each other in that way that had no name, that shifted and changed like light through water, that refused categorization.

Sometimes people assumed they were mother and son. Sometimes people assumed they were lovers. Sometimes people asked directly, and David and Sarah would look at each other and smile—a private smile, a knowing smile—and say, "It's complicated."

Because it was.

David eventually dated other people, though none of the relationships lasted. He told Sarah about them, and she gave advice, and sometimes she felt jealous in a way that was maternal and sometimes in a way that wasn't, and she learned to accept both.

Sarah went on a few dates herself. David met one of the men and was polite and charming and subtly territorial in a way that was filial and also wasn't, and Sarah understood.

They learned to live in the question, to make a home in uncertainty.

Sometimes, on Tommy's birthday, David would get quiet, and Sarah would know he was wondering. Sometimes, on the anniversary of his mother's death, Sarah would hold David a little tighter, and he'd know she was remembering.

But mostly, they were just David and Sarah, two people who had found each other against impossible odds, who loved each other in a way that transcended categories, who had learned that perhaps the deepest mystery wasn't whether souls could return, but whether love could exist outside the definitions we tried to impose upon it.

The universe kept its secrets.

They kept each other.

And in the space between what was and what might be, they found something that was entirely their own—a love that was mother and son, friend and friend, soul and soul, nothing and everything, a bond that existed in superposition, undefined and undefinable, real precisely because it could not be reduced to any single truth.

On quiet evenings, sitting together in comfortable silence, sometimes the smell of gardenia and jasmine would drift through the room, and neither of them would question where it came from.

They would simply breathe it in, grateful.

Some questions, they learned, are not meant to be answered but to be lived within. Some loves are not meant to be understood but simply experienced. Some mysteries are not meant to be solved but honored.

And in the end, perhaps that was enough.