The morning was too bright for how heavy Maya felt. Sunshine poured through the windshield like a lie, and she wore it like armor. Her green dress—the one that made her feel like Tinker Bell, confident and light—clung tighter than usual. Every turn of the wheel reminded her that she wasn't driving toward just any woman.
She was driving toward the mother of the girl whose heart was beating inside her chest.
Every breath felt like an echo that didn't belong to her.
As she neared the small church, Maya's fingers clenched the steering wheel. She wasn't religious, but something about churches always made her feel like she needed to apologize for existing. Her heels clicked against stone steps as she stepped inside, and the sudden hush swallowed her whole.
It was dim and golden inside. Shadows stretched across old wood and flickering candles. The smell of wax and incense drifted through the silence like memory.
She spotted her right away.
The woman sat in the front pew, hands clasped, head bowed. Her back was impossibly still, like she was carved from grief itself. Lips moved in a whisper Maya couldn't hear.
She took a step forward. Her heels echoed. Then stopped.
She stood there, watching her.
The woman's voice broke through the quiet.
"Please," she was whispering, "just one more time. Let me see her face. Please, God. Please."
Maya froze.
The air felt thick. She was intruding. A fraud. A trespasser wearing the face of a dead girl.
She took another step. Then another. She didn't want to. She needed to.
She reached out.
Her fingers hovered over the woman's shoulder.
And then, lightly—she tapped.
The woman turned.
And everything collapsed.
Her eyes landed on Maya, and they widened. Her breath caught—shaky and sudden. Her lips parted like she was about to scream. She stood slowly, like her body wasn't sure if it could trust what she was seeing.
Tears spilled before a word left her mouth.
She stepped forward.
"S—Sammy?"
Maya flinched.
Her throat closed. Her hands curled into fists. Her heartbeat—Sammy's heartbeat—drummed against her ribs like it knew the truth was coming.
The woman touched her face with trembling hands. "Oh, my God… it's you. It's really—" Her voice cracked. "I prayed. I asked Him. And you came."
Then she broke.
She fell into Maya like a wave, wrapping her arms around her, sobbing so violently it made Maya stagger backward. She held her instinctively, but stiffly. Like a coat too heavy, like grief too old to wear.
She didn't know what to say.
She wasn't Sammy.
She didn't know Sammy.
But right now… she was Sammy. To this woman. To this moment. And maybe that counted for something.
She slowly wrapped her arms tighter around her. Just for now.
The woman sobbed against her shoulder, repeating her name in pieces. "Sammy. Sammy. Sammy." Until even the name sounded broken.
Maya's vision blurred. But she didn't cry.
She didn't deserve to cry.
When the woman finally pulled away, her hands stayed on Maya's cheeks like she was afraid she'd disappear. She was smiling through tears, like someone who just saw a ghost and wasn't scared—just grateful.
"Can I ask you something?" the woman whispered. Her voice was hoarse. Hopeful. "Just once… would you call me Mom?"
Maya's heart—Sammy's heart—twitched.
She couldn't breathe.
She had a mom. A real one. But this woman… she gave Maya life. She signed
Of course—let's keep going exactly where we left off. Emotional pacing intact. Maya on the edge of unraveling. Here's the continuation:
But this woman… she gave Maya life. She signed a line on a paper that let a surgeon crack open her daughter's chest and pull out a heart—and put it in Maya.
If that isn't a kind of motherhood, what is?
Maya nodded slowly. Her lips parted, but the word caught. She felt it in her mouth before it came out—dry, foreign.
"…Mom?"
The woman burst into tears again, but this time it was quieter. She just held Maya's hands and closed her eyes like she was grounding herself in the moment. Like that single word was a resurrection.
"I knew it," she whispered. "I knew you'd come back to me somehow."
Maya didn't correct her. Couldn't.
Something was shaking loose inside her, and she didn't know if it was grief or guilt or something worse. Maybe all of it.
She wiped at the woman's tears with trembling fingers. "Today," she said, "we can do whatever you want."
The rest of the day blurred.
They went shopping—mostly the woman guiding her to things she used to pick out for Sammy. Pastel skirts. A hair clip shaped like a crescent moon. A sweater the color of old roses. Maya tried on everything, feeling like she was slipping into someone else's skin. The woman kept smiling. Kept saying things like, "That's so her," and "She loved green."
When they stopped for coffee, the silence settled differently.
More comfortable.
Until the woman asked, "So… tell me about your life."
Maya launched into it. School. Her friends. Luna and Sally. Her mom's obsession with meal prepping. The way her dad always played 80s rock in the garage. She made the woman laugh—really laugh, not just politely.
Then Maya mentioned Eddie.
The woman's head tilted. "Eddie? Eddie Eddie?"
"Yeah." Maya chuckled. "I mean, he's not how people usually picture him. He's calm. Bookish. Kind of a nerd, really. Always has something philosophical to say, even when he's microwaving popcorn."
The woman frowned gently.
"That's… not the Eddie I knew."
Maya blinked. "Huh?"
"He wasn't calm. He was fire." The woman leaned back, searching the ceiling like the memories were playing on the beams. "He was reckless. Wild. Always dragging Sammy on adventures. Always breaking curfew. They were loud together. Passionate. She used to sneak out just to lie under the stars with him on the roof of our house."
"That doesn't sound like my Eddie at all," Maya muttered, and then immediately regretted the my.
The woman looked at her, softer this time.
"Maybe he had to change. After she died… I heard he didn't speak for weeks. His parents said they barely recognized him. He shut down. Wouldn't go to school. Wouldn't eat. Maybe the only way he could survive was to… bury that part of himself."
Maya's heart dropped to her stomach.
She stared at the table, trying to process the pieces being handed to her. The Eddie she knew. The one who touched her hair like it was memory. Who always stared a second too long when she laughed a certain way. Who got distant when she wore that specific green dress.
He wasn't loving her.
He was grieving someone else through her.
And she… she was the placeholder. The aftershock.
The puzzle piece he forced into a space where someone else used to be.
The woman reached across the table and gently touched Maya's wrist.
"You remind me of her. But you're not her. And that's okay."
Maya tried to smile. It didn't work.
"I don't know if it is."
They sat in silence.
Outside, the café's window showed a world that hadn't stopped. People were laughing, walking, living.
And Maya had never felt less alive.
When they left, the sky was turning blue-gray, like a bruise. Dinner was quiet—soft exchanges about the food, about how the store still stocked Sammy's favorite cereal, how Maya's laugh was different.
The woman never said it, but Maya could feel it. That impossible wish hanging between them.
If only you were her.
But worse—what if you are?
What if she wasn't Maya anymore? What if pieces of Sammy were waking up inside her one by one, pulling her under?
She excused herself before dessert and stepped outside.
The night air hit her like a slap.
She leaned against the brick wall, shaking. She could still hear the woman's voice—"Is he still wild?"—and see Eddie's face when she wore Sammy's perfume. Remembered how he cried once when she touched his cheek the exact same way Sammy used to.
She thought she was in love.
Now she didn't know what she was in.
Tears finally came—hot, ugly, furious tears. She wiped them away fast, like if she got rid of them quickly enough, none of this would be real.
But it was.
This wasn't a fairytale. It was a ghost story. And she wasn't the haunted—she was the ghost.