đ´ SHE CALLED ME âMOMMYâ â BUT I DONâT EVEN KNOW HER
I froze mid-sentence when I heard the little girl call out from behind me in the grocery store.
Her tiny voice, so sweet and innocent, bounced off the shelves of sugary cereals, and a lump formed in my throat â I havenât felt that kind of longing since⌠well, it doesnât matter. She latched onto my leg, and I could feel her hot breath on my jeans. “Mommy, can we get those cookies?”
Everything went silent, except for the buzzing of the fluorescent lights overhead. My hands started sweating, and the metallic tang of old blood filled my nose â a phantom smell from years ago. I squatted down, trying to place the girl’s face, but her eyes were too big, too pleading. âSweetheart, I think you have the wrong person,â I stammered.
The girl pointed past me, towards the dairy aisle, and then a man stepped out from behind the yogurt, his face pale and drawn, his eyes wide with something I couldnât quite decipher. âClaire, honey, come here. Now.” His voice was strained, but familiar. I know him⌠but from where?
Then the girl turned back to me, and I noticed the locket around her neck â the one that disappeared from my bedside table ten years ago.
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My breath hitched. Mark. It was Mark. Older, lines etched deep around his eyes, but unmistakably him. My ex-husband. And the locket⌠the small silver heart engraved with our initials that held the only photo we had of… of our baby girl. The one I believed had died in the accident ten years ago. The accident that had ripped my life apart, leaving me with scars and phantom smells and a grief so deep it had become a part of me.
I looked from the locket around the little girl’s neck to Mark’s terrified face. “Chloe?” The name was a whisper, barely audible, but it tore through the manufactured air of the grocery store like a scream. Ten years. Ten years I had lived in a world without her, believing she was gone. Believing *he* had also been a casualty of the life I’d lost.
Mark flinched as if struck. The girl, Chloe, looked up at me, then back at her father, her brow furrowed in confusion. “Daddy?” she asked, her voice uncertain now.
“Get behind me, Claire,” Mark said, his voice low and harsh, stepping partially in front of Chloe. His protectiveness stung more than any accusation could have. “What are you doing here?”
“What am *I* doing here?” My voice rose despite myself, the years of buried grief and shock boiling to the surface. “What am *you* doing here, Mark? With *her*? With Chloe? I thought she was dead!”
Tears welling in my eyes, blurring the rows of colorful cereal boxes. The metallic tang in my nose was stronger now, no longer a phantom but tied to this raw, reopened wound.
“It’s complicated,” Mark said, his face hardening. “This isn’t the place.”
“No, it’s not complicated,” I retorted, stepping around him to face Chloe fully. She was the spitting image of the baby in the locket, older, vibrant, *alive*. She reached a tiny hand out towards me, hesitating. My heart ached with an intensity I hadn’t allowed myself to feel for a decade. “This is *our* daughter, Mark. How could you?”
He grabbed my arm, his grip tight. “Not here. People are watching.” He glanced nervously around, and I realised the silence wasn’t total anymore; hushed whispers and curious stares were starting to reach us. “We need to talk. Outside. Please.”
His desperation mirrored my own turmoil. For Chloe’s sake, we couldn’t have this shattering confrontation between the canned goods and frozen foods. I nodded, pulling my arm free.
“Okay,” I said, my voice trembling. “Okay. But you owe me an explanation. Ten years’ worth.” I looked down at Chloe one last time, offering a watery smile she tentatively returned. Ten years ago, my world ended. Today, in aisle five of a suburban grocery store, it had just begun again. The pain was still there, sharp and immediate, but beneath it, a fragile, terrifying hope had been reborn. I didn’t know how we would navigate this impossible situation, how we would mend the irreparable damage of a decade of lies and loss, but looking at Chloe’s face, I knew I had to try.