I just didn’t know where.
Until one cold November afternoon, seven years after he disappeared.
I was walking home from the grocery store when I noticed a man sitting outside a bakery.
He looked exhausted.
His clothes were old and dirty. His hair was long and unkempt, and he had a small backpack beside him. A cardboard sign rested against the wall.
I would normally have kept walking.
But then I saw his jacket.
I stopped so suddenly that the grocery bag slipped from my hand.
Oranges rolled across the sidewalk.
The jacket was dark green.
Faded.
With a small tear near the left sleeve.
And on the chest was a tiny stitched mountain emblem.
My heart stopped.
I knew that jacket.
I had bought it for Daniel on his nineteenth birthday.
He had loved it.
He wore it everywhere.
I remembered the exact afternoon I gave it to him. He had opened the box, smiled, and said, “Mom, this is actually perfect.”
I had laughed and told him he should wear something other than the same old hoodie every day.
He promised he would.
And now, seven years later, that jacket was sitting on the shoulders of a homeless stranger.
I stared at him.
The man noticed.
Our eyes met.
For a moment, something about his face felt strangely familiar.
Then he looked away.
I bent down and picked up my oranges with trembling hands.
I told myself there had to be another explanation.
Thousands of jackets like it existed.
Maybe I was imagining the details.
Maybe Daniel’s jacket had been donated.
Maybe someone had found it somewhere.
Maybe—
Then I saw the sleeve.
The tear.
Exactly where Daniel had torn it years earlier while climbing a fence behind our house.
I had sewn it myself.
The stitches were uneven because I’d repaired them in a hurry.
There was no way I could mistake them.
I walked toward the man.
