“…For what God has joined, let no man put asunder…”
“…The lost lamb will always be called home…”
Another twisted sermon? His words as hollow as his faith.
My fingers tighten around the edges of the iPad as he continues, his voice grating. I find my worry shifting to anger. Anger at this forsaken soul spitting bile.
“Today… I welcome two new members into our family.”
Why should I care about this?
A woman steps forward, dressed in white, her posture still, her head slightly bowed.
She looks utterly broken, defeated, head held low.
Who is she?Gideon turns, pushing the hair back from her face. She winces, and her features become clearer. I feel like I am falling. It isn’t just recognition.
It is something more instinctive.
A pull I don’t have a name for.
My throat tightens as I lean closer to the screen, drawn in despite myself, fragments of something distant flickering at the edges of my awareness.
I gasp as flickers of long-dead memories rush in.
They come in pieces, blurred and faded.
Then, just as quickly, the memories shift again inside my mind, replaced by something harsher.
Smoke.
The sharp, choking scent of it fills my lungs as though I am there again, watching flames curl through photographs, my father’s hands feeding them into the fire one by one, erasing everything that came before him with a methodical, deliberate cruelty that I had been too young to fully understand at the time.
My past.
My identity.
Her.I swallow hard, my gaze locked to the screen.
Before I can process it further, a girl steps forward.
Everything inside me fractures.
She looks like me in a way that goes beyond resemblance, beyond similarity, beyond coincidence, as though I am staring at a version of myself reflected back through time.
The same eyes.
The same hair.
The same lines of a face that feels both mine and not mine at all.
It is disorienting in a way that makes the room tilt slightly around me, my hand lifting instinctively toward the screen as if I might somehow bridge the distance between us.I try to process Gideon’s words.
Fear for my own situation has evaporated like water boiling in a pan.
“She-she looks just like me.”
My thoughts spiral ahead, racing through possibilities I don’t want to consider but can’t stop.
