The words knocked something loose inside her, like a picture frame falling from a wall. She felt her breath catch. “Honey, what are you talking about. That is not how things work.”
Mason released her hand and pointed. Breanna’s eyes drifted toward the base of the fountain, where a boy about the same age crouched over a cardboard box of trinkets. His clothes were threadbare and his sneakers were nearly worn through the toes. His hair curled around his ears and glinted auburn under the sunlight. And his face.
Breanna’s heart lurched. The resemblance to Mason was immediate and staggering. Same soft jawline, same eyebrows, same curious tilt of the head. Even the way he bit his lower lip while counting change matched something she had seen in Mason every morning while he concentrated on tying his shoes.
A memory flickered in Breanna’s mind. A hospital room. Harsh fluorescent lights. Voices blurred around her as anesthesia dragged her under. A sensation of emptiness beside her ribs when she woke that she had never been able to explain. She had told herself it was postpartum confusion. That memory was a ghost she had refused to chase.