My twin sister, Ella, and I were inseparable. While our parents worked, we stayed with our grandmother. That day, I became suddenly sick—feverish, weak, unable to keep my eyes open. Grandma stayed beside my bed, cooling my forehead until I drifted off.
While I slept, Ella slipped outside with her ball.
When I woke up, the house felt wrong. Too quiet. Grandma stepped onto the porch and called Ella’s name again and again. No answer. We lived near the woods, and when people went looking, all they found was her small, rubber ball lying near the trees.
The police searched for weeks. Then months.
Eventually, they told my parents she had been found. That she was gone.
Even at five, I knew what that meant. Ella was my whole world. We shared everything—our toys, our secrets, our mother’s dresses pulled clumsily over our heads. We never fought. I don’t remember a life where she wasn’t beside me.
I kept asking questions. Where did they find her? What happened? When?
My mother would turn away, her voice tight, telling me I didn’t need to know. That my questions were reopening wounds she couldn’t survive. So I stopped asking.
There was no funeral—or if there was, it never stayed in my memory.
Life moved forward without her.
Sixty-eight years passed. I married. I raised children. I built what looked like a good life from the outside. But Ella never truly left me. She lived in every quiet moment, every reflection, every unanswered thought.
Recently, my granddaughter was accepted into a college far from home. I flew out to visit her, proud and grateful for the chance to see her new world. One morning, while she was in class, I decided to take a walk.
I stepped into a small café—warm, quiet, comforting. I stood in line, waiting for my coffee.
Then I heard a voice.
It sounded exactly like mine.
A woman at the counter picked up her cup and turned around.
My heart stopped.
She had my face. My voice. My posture. My age. It was like staring into a mirror that shouldn’t exist. My vision blurred, my knees weakened, and for a moment I thought I might collapse right there on the café floor.
This wasn’t possible.
But I couldn’t stay frozen. My hand moved on its own, tapping her shoulder.
She turned—and stared at me with the same shock mirrored in her eyes.
My voice broke as the word tore itself out of my chest.
“OH MY GOD… ELLA?!”
