– The truck driver.
I called 112.
Police quickly arrived on the scene and found him near the maintenance shop.
He didn’t run away.
He was cooperative.
They were ushered into a small courtroom.
He looked smaller without his hat.
Thinner.
His eyes were red.
“Ms. Elana,” he said hoarsely when I entered.
My stomach turned when I heard him say my name.
Noah snuggled up to me.
“Ethan’s friend,” she whispered.
I sent Noah out and turned to the man.
“Why were you talking to my son?” I asked.
I agreed.
“I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“He said he had to keep secrets.”
“He used the name of my dead child.”
His shoulders slumped.
“I saw him on my way home.”
“He looks like Ethan.”
His voice trembled.
“I took on this repair job intentionally.”
The words hit me like a slap in the face.
“I can’t sleep,” the woman continued.
“Every time I close my eyes, I get back in the truck.”
“I have fainting spells.”
“I should have been in shape.”
“I wasn’t.”
“But I couldn’t lose my job.”
“So you were still driving,” I said, bored.
He nodded, tears welling up in his eyes.
“I told myself this wouldn’t happen again.”
“And my son died.”
“Again.”
He wiped his face.
“I thought… if I could do some good.”
“If only I could tell Noah to stop crying.”
“Maybe I can breathe again.”
Anger held me back like a barrier.
“So he used my living child to relieve his guilt.”
He nodded.
“You have no right to interfere in my family,” I said quietly.
“You have no right to put secrets in my child’s hands and call it comfort.”
The police promised to apply for a restraining order, a no-contact order.
I demanded that they ban him from the school grounds and change the security regulations.
When Noah came back into the room with a small plastic dinosaur that the man had given him, I crouched down in front of him.
“That man is not Ethan,” I said quietly.
Noah’s lips trembled.
“But he said…”
“He said something that wasn’t true.”
“Adults don’t take out their sorrows on children.”
“And they don’t ask children to keep secrets.”
Noah started to cry.
I hugged her until she calmed down.
That evening at home, Mark was shaken by anger and guilt.
“I should have,” he whispered.
“Not Ethan.”
“No,” I said.
“Noah is still here.”
“We cannot afford to drown.”
Two days later I went out to the cemetery alone.
I placed daisies by Ethan’s headstone and pressed my palm to the cold granite.
“There are no more strangers who can speak on your behalf,” I whispered.
“There are no more secrets.”
“No more borrowed words.”
The sadness was still there.
He would always be there.
But now it was pure – no confusion, no manipulation, no borrowed spirit.
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