The way she giggled, all pure joy and sunshine, was my favorite sound in the whole world. She was three, all wild curls and boundless energy, a tiny force of nature who made my life feel complete. Or so I thought. We’d sit at the kitchen table, me with my coffee, her with her toast, and she’d count her imaginary friends, her toys, even the crumbs on the floor.
“One, two, three…” she’d begin, pointing around the room, “…four.”I’d laugh. “Who’s four, sweetie?”She’d just shrug, her eyes bright. “The other one.” She’d point to the empty chair beside her, or the space on the couch. “He’s quiet.”
At first, it was cute. All kids have imaginary friends, right? My partner thought so too. “Just her imagination,” they’d say, ruffling her hair. “It’s sweet.” We’d even indulge her sometimes, asking if “the quiet one” wanted juice, or if “the other one” wanted to hear a story. It was a game. A harmless, innocent game.But it didn’t stop. It grew.
Mature woman smiling gently | Source: Midjourney
She started including “the quiet one” in everything. When we’d bake cookies, she’d meticulously place four on the cooling rack, even though there were only three of us. If we were playing hide-and-seek, she’d count to four, then search for three, and then solemnly declare, “Found you, quiet one!” to an empty closet. My stomach would clench a little each time. It felt less like a game and more like… a ritual.
It’s just a phase, I told myself. She’ll grow out of it. But the phase stretched, growing longer and more unnerving with each passing week. Her descriptions of “the quiet one” became strangely consistent. “He likes my blue blanket.” “He doesn’t like loud noises.” “He watches me sleep.” The last one sent a shiver down my spine.
My partner grew impatient. “Seriously, you’re encouraging this,” they’d say after our daughter insisted on an extra plate at dinner. “Tell her to stop. It’s getting weird.”
Getting weird? It was weird. It had been weird for months. But how do you tell a three-year-old that her friend doesn’t exist? And what if… what if he did? The thought was absurd. I pushed it away. Ghosts weren’t real. My daughter wasn’t seeing things. She just had a vivid imagination. A really, really vivid imagination.
The turning point came on her fourth birthday. We were looking through old photo albums, pictures of my partner and I before she was born, pictures of her first steps, her first Christmas. She pointed to a picture of me, very pregnant with her. “Mama, who’s that?” she asked, pointing not at my belly, but at the empty space beside me. “That’s the quiet one. He was with you too, wasn’t he?”
My blood ran cold. I actually dropped the album. She’d never seen a picture of me pregnant before. How could she have known “the quiet one” was with me? And how did she know about that specific moment in time? It didn’t make any sense. My partner just rolled their eyes. “Honey, that’s just a picture. There’s no one else there.”
Mature man smiling in the living room | Source: Midjourney
But I couldn’t dismiss it anymore. The unease morphed into a cold, hard dread. I started looking at my daughter differently, seeing not just her playful innocence, but a strange, unsettling clarity in her eyes. It was like she was privy to a secret I wasn’t.
I couldn’t sleep. I started looking through my own old things. Boxes from my pre-partner life, tucked away in the attic. Letters, journals, photos. Things I hadn’t touched in years. Things I’d deliberately avoided. My heart pounded as I sifted through them, each item a whisper from a past I’d worked so hard to bury.
And then I found it. Tucked beneath a stack of university textbooks, in a plain, unmarked envelope. A small, crumpled photo. A receipt from a private clinic. And a faded, official-looking document.
The air left my lungs in a rush. I felt faint, like the room was spinning. MY ENTIRE WORLD SHATTERED.
It wasn’t a ghost. It wasn’t an imaginary friend. It was so much worse, so much more real.
The crumpled photo showed me, much younger, holding a tiny, swaddled bundle. The receipt was for a private adoption agency. And the document… the document was an acknowledgement of relinquishment, signed by me, dated years before I met my partner.
I stared at the image of that tiny, perfect face, the one I had held for mere hours before giving him up, convinced it was the only choice, the best choice, for everyone involved. I’d told myself I’d moved on. I’d built a new life, a happy life, a life free of the shame and fear of my youth. I’d erased that chapter, sealed it away so completely that sometimes, I almost believed it had never happened.
But it had. And my daughter, my beautiful, intuitive, innocent daughter, had seen through every layer of my carefully constructed lie. She hadn’t been counting an imaginary friend. She hadn’t been seeing a ghost.
She had been counting her older brother.
Woman smiling with arms crossed | Source: Midjourney
She had been counting the child I gave away.
He was the “quiet one” because he was never here to make noise. He was “the other one” because he belonged to a life I never told anyone about. My daughter, with her pure, untainted spirit, had somehow felt the lingering presence of a sibling I had abandoned, a secret I had carried alone for so long.
Now, when she counts, “One, two, three… four,” and points to that empty space, I no longer laugh. I no longer try to rationalize it. I just feel a profound, agonizing ache in my chest. Because I know exactly who she’s counting. And for the first time in my life, I’m counting him too. And the guilt… THE GUILT IS CRUSHING. How do I live with this? How do I ever tell her? How do I tell anyone? I don’t know if I can. But I also don’t know how much longer I can keep counting alone.
