not a stranger at all.
She didn’t rush him.
She sat down and slid a small photograph across the table.
“I used to know a boy who looked like this,” she said quietly.
Miles looked down.
His expression shifted — not recognition exactly, but something close.
When asked, he pulled back his collar slightly.
The birthmark was there.
Exactly where it had always been.
Dawn felt her composure break.
She started explaining. The bus. The day he disappeared. The years that followed.
When she said the name “Jay,” he flinched.
Not dramatically.
Just enough.
Enough to mean something.
What came next wasn’t immediate clarity.
It was fragments.
Miles spoke about a childhood that never quite settled. Moving constantly. A man he called his uncle — George Randall — who avoided attention, changed names often, and kept him out of school systems whenever possible.
He remembered being called “Jay” sometimes.
Mostly when the man had been drinking.
He remembered a song, too.
A lullaby that didn’t belong to that life.
“Row, Row, Row Your Boat.”
Dawn used to sing it every night.
The confirmation came later.
