Last Thursday started like every other quiet, lonely night I’d had since my family fell apart. By midnight, I was scrubbing the counter again, trying to drown out my thoughts—until three soft knocks at the door upended everything.
It was late. Too late for anything good to happen. I was wiping the same spot for the third time when I heard it.
A small, trembling voice I hadn’t heard in two years:
“Mom… it’s me.”
The dishtowel slipped from my hands.
For a moment, the words didn’t register. Then my whole body froze.
“Mom? Can you open the door?”
The voice—it belonged to only one person. My son. Euan. My little boy who had died at five, whose coffin I had kissed as they lowered it into the earth, whose absence had haunted every night since.
Another knock.
“Mom? Can you open?”
I forced myself down the hallway, clinging to the wall. Grief had already played tricks on me—phantom footsteps, glimpses of him in crowds—but this voice wasn’t an illusion. It was alive. Too alive.
“Mommy?”
That single word slipped under the door and shattered me.
I unlocked it with trembling hands.
“Mommy?” he whispered. “I came home.”
On the porch, barefoot and shivering, stood my little boy. Same faded blue rocket-ship T-shirt. Same freckles, same stubborn cowlick, same dimple on his cheek.
“Who… who are you?” I managed.
He frowned, as if I’d said something absurd.
“It’s me,” he said. “I’m Euan. Mom, why are you crying?”
Hearing his name felt like a punch to my chest.
“My… my son… he’s gone,” I whispered.
“But I’m right here,” he said softly. “Why are you saying that?”
He stepped inside as if he’d done it a thousand times before. Every part of me screamed that this couldn’t be real, but a small voice whispered: Hold him. Don’t question it.
“Where have you been, Euan?” I asked.
He looked up, eyes wide. “With the man. He said he was my dad now. But he’s not you.”
I felt my stomach drop.
I grabbed my phone. His tiny fingers clutched my sleeve.
“Don’t call him,” he begged. “Please. He’ll be mad I ran away.”
“I’m not calling him,” I said. “I’m calling for help.”
When the officers arrived, Euan clung to me as if letting go would undo reality.
“Ma’am?” said Officer Daley gently. “You called about a child?”
“He says he’s my son,” I choked out. “My son… who died two years ago.”
Euan peeked from behind me. His little hand trembled in mine.
At the hospital, the tests confirmed the impossible: he was Euan. My Euan. Roger’s son.
Detective Morag explained the unthinkable: a break-in at the morgue around the time of his accident. Some remains went missing. Euan had been taken before he ever reached the coffin—by a man named Malcolm.
“He said not to tell anyone,” Euan whispered. “He said they’d take me away again.”
“No one is taking you away,” I promised. “I’m right here.”
Eventually, Malcolm was caught, and the man who returned Euan, Mr. Murray, admitted to helping him escape. Part of me hated him. Part of me was grateful he finally did the right thing.
Euan still wakes from nightmares. He asks if I’m coming back when I leave the room. Every time, I hold him tight and whisper, “You’re safe. I’m right here.”
We’re in therapy now, learning to live again in a world where the dead can come knocking wearing the same rocket-ship T-shirt. Lego bricks scatter the floor. Sticky hands press against my cheeks. Life is chaos—but it’s our chaos.
The other night, he colored at the kitchen table while I cooked.
“Mom?” he said.
“Yes, love?”
“I like home better,” he said seriously.
“If this were the angels’ place,” he asked, “would you be here too?”
I knelt beside him. “If this were the angels’ place, Daddy would be here. But he’s not. This is just home.”
He nodded. “I like home better.”
“Me too,” I whispered.
Two years ago, I kissed a tiny coffin goodbye, thinking my world had ended.
Last Thursday, three soft knocks shook my door, and a little voice said, “Mom… it’s me.”
And somehow, against every rule of the universe, I opened the door—and my son came home.