The cleft chin. The lopsided smile.
Younger, yes. Smaller.
But the identical individual.
I flip to the caption beneath the image:
Summer ’66 — West pasture fence rebuild.
Nineteen sixty-six.
The math detonates in my head.
If he were thirteen in nineteen sixty-six… He would be…
No.
Not possible.
My stomach churns violently. I grip the edge of the album. The room tilts.
This isn’t resemblance. This is identity. The same face I saw this afternoon.
Mid thirties max. Not seventy. Or even fifty.
Thirty-something.
The air thins. My heart pounds too fast.
I try to stand, but my knees buckle.
Photographs scatter across the rug as the album slips from my hands.
Time doesn’t stall. Men don’t stay the same age for endless decades.
Unless…
I shut the thought down instantly.
No.
That’s myth. That’s folklore. That’s everything I can’t believe in.
Black spots gather at the edge of my vision. The last thing I see before the floor rushes up is Ash at thirteen, smiling out of nineteen sixty-six.
Too young for now.
Too old to be what he is today.
Chapter
Eleven
ASH
It hits like a dropped wire. Not gradual. Not building. Severed.
I’m halfway through stacking feed bags in the barn when the hum… stops.
