The August sun felt like a warm hand pressed against the shoulders of everyone at Sequoia Park Plaza in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Vendors called out about lemonade and kettle corn, a guitar player strummed near a bench, and tourists lifted their phones to photograph the bubbling fountain surrounded by climbing roses. It was the kind of place where ordinary afternoons stretched in golden laziness and nothing unexpected ever happened.

Or so Breanna Sloane had always believed. Breanna stood near a shaded bench, her five year old son Mason perched against her leg. They had come for snow cones and fresh air, a tiny escape from the pressure of bills and the late shifts she worked at the diner. Mason held his cherry snow cone like it was a priceless jewel, red syrup dripping down his wrist.

He stared toward the fountain and said, with a quiet intensity, “Mom. He is right there. The boy from my dreams.”

Breanna thought he meant one of the performers. She smiled gently and followed his gaze. “What boy, sweetheart. Someone you know from preschool.”

Mason shook his head. “No. He was in your tummy with me. I saw him before I was born.”

The words knocked something loose inside her, like a picture frame falling from a wall. She felt her breath catch. “Honey, what are you talking about. That is not how things work.”

Mason released her hand and pointed. Breanna’s eyes drifted toward the base of the fountain, where a boy about the same age crouched over a cardboard box of trinkets. His clothes were threadbare and his sneakers were nearly worn through the toes. His hair curled around his ears and glinted auburn under the sunlight. And his face.

Breanna’s heart lurched. The resemblance to Mason was immediate and staggering. Same soft jawline, same eyebrows, same curious tilt of the head. Even the way he bit his lower lip while counting change matched something she had seen in Mason every morning while he concentrated on tying his shoes.

A memory flickered in Breanna’s mind. A hospital room. Harsh fluorescent lights. Voices blurred around her as anesthesia dragged her under. A sensation of emptiness beside her ribs when she woke that she had never been able to explain. She had told herself it was postpartum confusion. That memory was a ghost she had refused to chase.

Mason tugged on her sleeve. “Mom, his eyes look like mine. We match.”