“He’s hungry too,” she would say to them, tearing the crust into tiny, bird-like pieces and placing one gently into the stroller. But she never begged. She never asked for a thing. That wasn’t what mothers did. Mothers waited. They watched. They protected.
And she sang. That was how she kept the memory of him alive. Her real Leo. The image in her mind was blurry, like looking through fogged glass or rain-slicked windows. A small boy, warm against her chest. His tiny fingers curled into the wool of her sweater, his breathing slowing as she hummed.
“You are my sunshine,” she would sing, the melody fragile in the cold air.
One night, after a heavy rain began to fall, Donna found shelter beneath a metal staircase behind a closed pharmacy. The space was narrow and smelled of damp cardboard, but it was dry. She bundled Leo—the bear—in her arms, covering him with the patchy blanket she guarded with her life. Then, she began to sing.
“You make me happy when skies are gray…”
Her voice trembled, notes cracking as the cold settled deep in her chest. But she finished the verse. She always did. Afterward, she leaned down, pressing her chapped lips gently to the bear’s worn fabric forehead.
“Mommy’s here,” she whispered into the dark. “Don’t be scared.”
She closed her eyes, rocking slightly. For a fleeting moment, she wasn’t cold, she wasn’t broken, and she wasn’t invisible. She was just a mother, waiting for the dawn.
That same night, Brian couldn’t sleep. He lay in the master bed beside his wife, Lisa. She had turned off her lamp hours ago and slipped into her usual quiet slumber. They rarely spoke at night anymore; in fact, they barely spoke at all. It was a polite marriage, functional but hollow.
His mind wasn’t on Lisa. It was on the voice. That woman’s voice.
It clung to him, soft and trembling, hauntingly familiar. He didn’t want to believe it. It made no logical sense. But it sounded exactly like her—the same pitch, the same lingering note at the end of the word “sunshine.”
Restless, he got up, padding barefoot across the cold hardwood floor to his study. He opened his laptop, the screen’s blue light illuminating his tired face. He opened a folder he hadn’t touched in years. “Old Videos.” He clicked a file.
The screen filled with the chaotic, joyful noise of a first birthday party. Balloons bobbed in the background, cake-smeared fingers reached for the camera, and laughter bubbled up. In the center of the frame, she sat on the beige couch—blonde hair falling loosely around her face, holding baby Leo against her chest.
“You are my sunshine,” she sang.
It was the same key. The same phrasing. The same soft vibrato on the line, “please don’t take my sunshine away.”
Brian’s breath hitched in his throat. He paused the video, staring at the frozen image of his first wife.
“No,” he whispered, dragging a hand down his face.
But something inside him had shifted, a tectonic plate of denial sliding away to reveal a terrifying possibility. He opened the old accident report, a file he had kept but never fully read.
The night Donna’s car had crashed on the icy bridge, the police had never found her body. There was only twisted metal and shattered glass on the passenger side. There had been blood, a burnt coat, and a presumption of death. But never a confirmation.
She had been driving alone. He hadn’t been there to save her.
His stomach turned over. A detail blinked at him from the corner of the PDF report: “Burn pattern consistent with passenger side glass rupture.”
A scar. The woman on the street had a scar on her face, in the exact same spot.
Brian shut the laptop slowly, his hands trembling. He couldn’t say it out loud yet. The hope was too dangerous. But the thought screamed inside him. What if she’s not gone? What if Donna is alive? And what if I walked right past her?
Down the hall, Leo lay in his bed, his small fingers wrapped tightly around the faded stuffed animal pressed to his chest. The ceiling above him was painted in soft shadows from the hallway nightlight, but his mind was somewhere far away.
He wasn’t sleepy. His eyes blinked slowly as his memory played a familiar melody in his head, like a dream he couldn’t fully wake up from.
“You’ll never know, dear, how much I love you…”
The voice in his memory wasn’t loud. It was warm. Close. He remembered the sound, and the feeling that always accompanied it: his mother’s arms pulling him close, the gentle rhythm of her hand patting his back when he had a cough, the soft scent of her hair when she bent down to kiss his forehead.
He could almost feel her lips brushing his skin, the way her voice dipped just slightly on “please don’t take my sunshine away.”
He remembered the feeling clearly. But her face? It was like trying to hold water in his hands. The harder he tried to picture it, the more it slipped through his fingers. Blurry. Gentle. Safe. But not clear.
Leo sat up slowly. He grabbed his box of crayons from the shelf beside his bed and pulled a piece of paper from his desk. He began to draw with quiet, intense concentration.
He drew a woman sitting cross-legged on a rug, holding a small boy. He gave her a green sweater. He wasn’t sure why, but green felt right. He added soft yellow hair that fell across her shoulders and wrapped her arms around the little boy.
Then he added a teddy bear. Not the one he held now, but the one in the stroller that day—the ripped one. The one she had sung to. He pressed the crayon harder, outlining her smile. It wasn’t a big smile; it was a gentle one.
Later that evening, Lisa walked past Leo’s room. The door was ajar just enough for her to peek in. He wasn’t sleeping; he was sitting on the floor, putting the finishing touches on his drawing.
“Hey, buddy,” she said, stepping inside softly and crouching down. “What are you working on?”
Leo looked up briefly, then held up the picture. His face was calm, serious beyond his years.
Lisa smiled faintly. “Is that me?”
Leo paused. He shook his head once. “That’s Mom,” he said quietly. “My first mom.”
Lisa blinked, surprised.
“Oh, she’s not dead,” Leo added after a pause, his voice matter-of-fact. “She’s just lost.”
The words settled into the air like falling snow, silencing the room. Lisa stood still, her hands relaxed at her sides, but her mouth didn’t form a reply. She looked at the picture again—the green sweater, the two bears—and then stepped back gently.
“I see,” she said softly, masking her confusion with kindness. “That’s… beautiful, Leo.”
She left the room without another word, sensing that this was a moment she couldn’t fully participate in.
The next day, Brian sat behind the wheel of his car, the engine idling, his hands gripping the leather steering wheel tighter than necessary. The street ahead was dim, a cold wind whistling between rusted fences and the metal bones of old train tracks.
He had told himself this drive was just curiosity, just due diligence. But his heart was pounding against his ribs like a trapped bird.
He saw her.
Across the street, near a wall covered in graffiti, the woman was sitting on a crate beside the torn stroller. She was alone, her head bowed, her blonde hair dull under the orange streetlights.
She reached into the stroller, brushing her hand slowly over the fur of the stuffed bear. And then, she did something that made Brian’s throat tighten painfully. She smoothed the bear’s hair with her fingers, using the exact same soothing motion Donna used to use on Leo’s hair when he fell asleep in her lap.
Brian’s breath caught. His grip loosened on the wheel. He stepped out of the car, hesitating for a moment, before walking forward slowly.
