It started so innocently, like all things do with children. A game of hide-and-seek in the living room, my little girl squealing with delight behind the sofa. I found her, as I always did, and then it was her turn to count.
“One…” she chirped, pressing her face against her hands, fingers splayed just enough to peek through.”Two…””Three…”And then, a pause. A longer pause than usual. I was already halfway to the kitchen, pretending to hide.”And him!” she exclaimed, her voice bright, full of discovery. “Four!”
I chuckled, poking my head back around the doorframe. “Four? Who’s four, sweetie? It’s just you and me.”She looked at me, then back at the empty space beside her, a space that was undeniably, absolutely empty. She pointed. “Him! He’s right there. You didn’t see him?”Of course I didn’t see him. There was nothing there.
Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex react during game four of the 2025 World Series between the Toronto Blue Jays and the Los Angeles Dodgers at Dodger Stadium on October 28 in Los Angeles, California | Source: Getty Images
I brushed it off. A vivid imagination, a burgeoning creative mind. She was three, after all. Imaginary friends were normal, even encouraged. I smiled, played along. “Oh, I see! Well, tell him to hide properly this time, okay?”
Days turned into weeks, and “him” became a permanent fixture in our home. He was always there. At the dinner table, she’d ask me to pass “his” peas. In the car, she’d adjust “his” seatbelt, giggling as if he’d tickled her. During bath time, she’d splash playfully at an empty space next to her, sharing “his” rubber duck.
I tried to embrace it, to find it charming. Friends, family, they all cooed about her imagination. “Oh, isn’t that sweet?” they’d say. “Who’s your little friend, darling?”
She would always answer with a simple, consistent reply: “He’s my brother.”
That stopped me cold, every single time. My breath would catch. Brother? But she doesn’t have a brother. She was an only child. We were an only child family. My husband and I had discussed it, decided we were content with just her.
It was just a phase. It had to be just a phase.
But the details started to become unnerving. He was always a boy. Always a little younger than her. He loved cars, just like she did, but his favorite color was green. He got scared of thunder. He sometimes cried when she wouldn’t share her toys. He had “soft hair,” she’d tell me, running her fingers through the air beside her.
One evening, I watched her playing in her room. She was lining up a row of stuffed animals. “One, two, three,” she counted, placing a teddy bear. “And then him,” she said, gently setting a small, tattered blanket on the floor. “He likes to sleep with this. Because he’s a baby.”
Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex react during game four of the 2025 World Series between the Toronto Blue Jays and the Los Angeles Dodgers at Dodger Stadium on October 28 in Los Angeles, California | Source: Getty Images
My heart hammered. A baby. She had never referred to him as a baby before, always just “my brother.” My stomach clenched, a cold dread washing over me. This wasn’t just imaginary play anymore. This felt… different. Too real, too specific.
I started to get scared. Really scared. I’d Google “imaginary friends alarming signs.” I’d try to trick her. “What color are his shoes?” I’d ask, knowing she’d never mentioned shoes. She’d just look at me, confused. “He doesn’t wear shoes, silly. He’s a baby.”
One night, the fear escalated into full-blown terror. I was putting her to bed. She lay with her eyes closed, snuggled under her duvet.
“Mommy,” she whispered.
“Yes, sweetie?”
“He says goodnight.”
“Who, darling?” My voice was barely a whisper.
“My brother,” she said, her eyes still closed. “He says he misses his green blanket.”
I froze. My entire body went rigid. The green blanket. That specific, peculiar detail.
My mind raced, scrambling for an explanation, for anything to make sense of it. A green blanket. Where would she have heard that? We didn’t own a green blanket. Not one she’d ever seen. Not one for a baby, anyway.
No. It’s just a coincidence. Kids say random things. It has to be.
Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex during game four of the 2025 World Series between the Toronto Blue Jays and the Los Angeles Dodgers | Source: Getty Images
But the image flashed in my mind, unbidden, unwanted. A tiny, soft, moss-green blanket. The one I had bought, years ago, before she was even a thought. The one I had folded so carefully, then hidden away in a box in the darkest corner of my closet. A box I hadn’t opened in years. A box filled with silent grief.
It was the blanket I had chosen for my first baby. The baby I lost. The one I carried for thirteen weeks before my body failed us both. The one I never named out loud, but always, always thought of as a little boy. My son.
My breath caught in my throat. This couldn’t be happening. She couldn’t know. She was too young. I had never told anyone outside of my husband. We never talked about it. It was too painful, too raw. A secret I had buried deep, deep down.
I sat on the edge of her bed, trembling. How? How was this possible? Had she seen the box? Had she overheard a whisper? No. We didn’t whisper. We just… avoided.
A tear slipped down my cheek. I looked at her, peaceful in her sleep, her small chest rising and falling.
The next morning, I found her playing in the living room, building a tower of blocks. She had placed two small chairs side-by-side.
“One, two, three…” she counted, placing a block on the first chair. Then, she paused. Her eyes looked to the second chair, a quiet, knowing look on her face. “And him,” she murmured, placing another block. “He’s always here.”
My heart shattered. I finally understood. It wasn’t a coincidence. It wasn’t an imaginary friend. It wasn’t a phase.
She was counting him. She was counting our first baby. The baby I lost, the one whose existence I had erased from our lives, from our conversations, from my very thoughts, in a desperate attempt to heal.
But my daughter, my bright, perceptive, empathetic daughter, hadn’t erased him. She had found him. She had given him a space, a name, a personality. She had made him real, vivid, present, in a way I had been too broken, too afraid, to do myself.
He’s my brother. He likes the green blanket. He’s a baby.
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, sit in front of Dodger legend Sandy Koufax as they watch Game four of the World Series between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Toronto Blue Jays | Source: Getty Images
He was the silent ghost of my deepest sorrow, and she, with her innocent, boundless love, had welcomed him home. She was carrying the grief I had buried, giving it a voice, giving him a life she instinctively knew he deserved.
And as I stood there, watching her play with her unseen brother, the guilt and the heartbreak washed over me in a suffocating wave. I hadn’t just lost a baby; I had denied him to his sister. My secret grief had become her unspoken connection. And in her innocent counting, she was calling me out, forcing me to confront the truth I had tried so desperately to forget. She wasn’t just counting “someone we couldn’t see.” She was counting the pieces of my broken heart, one by heartbreaking one.
