Chapter 6 - The Locket That Would Not Open
The apartment smelled like toast and laundry when we got home. Ethan dropped his backpack by the door and went straight for his cars, lining them up on the rug like nothing had happened. I stood in the kitchen with my hands on the counter and listened to the plastic click while he parked them in a row.
I couldn't stop seeing the other boy's face next to his.
Ethan looked up at me. "Is he at the police place now?"
"He's somewhere safe," I said. "They gave me a paper with a number on it. That means people are checking."
He nodded and pushed a blue car forward. "He didn't have any cars."
"No," I said. My throat felt tight. "He didn't."
I heated soup I knew he wouldn't eat and sat with him until the bowls went cold. After I got him settled with his show, I went into my bedroom and pulled the photo box from the top of the closet. It was the same box I'd carried through two moves, full of hospital bracelets and folded blankets and envelopes of prints I never got around to putting in an album.
I sat cross-legged on the bed and spread Ethan's baby pictures out. Newborn in the white hospital blanket. One month on my chest. Six months with mashed banana on his chin. One year with a smashed cake.
In every one, the same round cheeks, the same messy brown hair sticking up in back, the same serious eyes staring at the camera.
It was too close. I told myself all little boys looked alike at that age, tired and small and dirty versus clean and fed. But the shape of the mouth, the little dip in the chin — I kept moving the six-month photo next to the memory of the sidewalk, and my hands started shaking.
I went to the dresser and opened the small wooden jewelry box my mother gave me. Under the tangled chains and the watch with the dead battery was a silver oval locket on a thin chain. Mine.
I hadn't worn it in years. I'd gotten it a week after Ethan was born. That was what the card had said. Congratulations on your delivery. No sender name, just a hospital gift shop logo stamped on the back. I'd thought it was strange at the time, then I'd been too sleep-deprived to think much at all. I'd put Ethan's newborn photo inside and then stopped opening it because the clasp stuck.
I held it in my palm now. Same size. Same oval. Same thin chain as the one on the boy's chest. My locket was clean and his was dull with grime, but the shape of the hinge, the little etched line around the edge — it was the same make.
I tried to open it. The little nail catch wouldn't give. I pressed harder with my thumb until it hurt, then tried with the edge of a coin. It still wouldn't open.
Ethan appeared in the doorway. "What's that?"
I closed my fist around it before I thought. "Just something I had when you were a baby."
"Can I see?"
"Later," I said. "It’s stuck."
He came and sat beside me and looked at the baby pictures. He pointed at the one-year photo. "I was messy."
"You were," I said, and bumped his shoulder with mine. He leaned against me, warm and solid, and for a second I could breathe again.
At the county family office the next morning, the air was cold and smelled like copy paper. The caseworker was a woman about my age with a short ponytail and a stack of folders. She slid my witness form back across the desk with a case number stamped on top.
"You did the right thing calling," she said. "He's on a temporary hold at the shelter. Medical checked him. He's underweight but stable."
"Can I see him?" I asked. "Just for a minute. He asked me—" I stopped. "He was scared."
She shook her head. "I understand. But until we have identification, we have to limit contact. No visits, no calls, no drop-offs. If you run into him, you call us. That's to protect you and him."
I stared at the case number. "So I'm just supposed to do nothing?"
"You're supposed to stay available," she said, kinder now. "If the aunt comes forward, if a parent comes forward, we need your statement clean. Any outside contact makes it harder to place him."
I thought about the box on the sidewalk, the storefront glass behind him, my own locket burning in my pocket. I wanted to lay the photos on her desk and ask her if she saw it too.
Instead I said, "Did he still have his necklace? The silver one?"
She glanced at her notes. "Personal property was logged with him. Why?"
"Because I have one like it," I said. My voice came out smaller than I meant. "From when my son was born."
She looked at me a long moment, then capped her pen. "Keep that information for the investigator," she said. "Don't share it with the child. Don't try to test it yourself. Likeness isn't proof, and these cases get messy fast."
On the drive home I kept the case number paper folded in my jacket pocket and checked my phone at every light. No missed calls. No updates.
Ethan was at the neighbor's for an hour. I used the quiet to take more pictures of his baby photos with my phone, front and back, the dates stamped in blue. Then I sat at the kitchen table with my locket and a needle and tried again to work the clasp open. It wouldn't move. The metal was smooth and shut tight, like it had sealed itself.
I held it up to the light. My reflection bent in the silver.
Two boys with the same face. Two lockets with the same chain. A woman in a white coat watching from a black sedan.
I wasn't ready to say the word twin, even in my head. There was no proof. The caseworker was right — likeness wasn't proof.
May you like
But I slipped my locket back into the box and locked the box in the drawer, and I kept Ethan's six-month photo out on the counter where I could see it. I wasn't going to break the no-contact rule.
I wasn't going to let the question go, either.
