Misha didn’t need to finish.
“They thought it was you,” Roman finished in a dead voice. “A misidentification.” “Yes, his body was… It was badly burned, Dad. And he was about my age. My height, too.”
“When you and Mom came for the identification, you were so devastated that you didn’t…” Roman felt such a mix of guilt, anger, and relief that he didn’t know what to do with it all. How had he not noticed? How had he buried another boy, thinking it was his son?
“And you? How did you find out the truth?” “Not right away, Dad. Not for a long time. I was in that hospital for almost three months. My head recovered slowly.”
“One day, I woke up and remembered our address. I remembered your full name. Everything.” Misha looked at the headstone. “There was an article about the accident and a picture of you, crying at the funeral. That’s when I knew I’d been declared dead.”
“Why didn’t you call? Why didn’t you ask someone to let me know?” Roman wanted to scream, but he couldn’t. He could only cry. “I tried, Dad. I swear, I tried.”
“But when I called home, the housekeeper answered. I told her I was Misha, that I was alive. She hung up, thinking it was a prank. I called again, and she cursed at me.”
Roman remembered. He remembered Aunt Masha mentioning some pranksters who had been calling her. He had told her to hang up and block any unknown numbers. Oh my God, it had been his son.
It was Misha trying to get home. “When I was discharged from the hospital, I had nowhere to go. No money, no way to get to you. I lived on the streets for weeks, starving, sleeping at church doors.”
Misha lowered his head. “One day I gathered enough change, and when I got to our street, I saw you leaving the house. You were different, Dad. Thinner, older, with the face of a man who doesn’t sleep properly.”
“And I got scared.” “Scared? What were you scared of?” “That you wouldn’t believe me, that you’d chase me away, that I would become another pain in your life.” The words came out in agony.
“And I saw you driving to the cemetery, I followed you, and today… Today I gathered the courage to speak because I can’t do it anymore, Dad. I can’t live like I don’t exist anymore.”
Roman pulled the boy to him. A desperate, tight hug, as if the whole world depended on it. Misha cried, Roman cried. The rain poured relentlessly, washing away six months of pain.
“You do exist, son, my boy. You exist,” Roman repeated through his sobs. “You’re alive. Thank God, you’re alive.” They sat there like that, hugging.
For how long? Neither of them could say. They lost track of time. It didn’t matter. Nothing else mattered anymore.
When they finally broke the embrace, Roman looked directly into his son’s eyes. “We’re going home now. You need a hot bath, food, rest, and tomorrow we’ll go to the hospital. We’ll do tests, DNA, whatever it takes to prove that you are you.”
He gently cupped the boy’s disfigured face, as if it might shatter. Misha smiled—a crooked smile because of the scar, but it was a real smile, the first in six months. Roman helped the boy to his feet.
He took the homemade crutch and held his son’s hand tightly as they walked slowly through the cemetery. They passed the headstone one last time. That stone with the wrong name, that stone under which lay a boy no one had looked for.
“Dad.” “Yes, son.” “Could we, I don’t know, do something for the boy who died in my place? He had no one. No one to cry for him, no one to put flowers on his grave.”
Roman felt his heart clench again, but it was a different kind of pain now. The pain of realizing that his son, even after everything he’d been through, was still thinking of others. “We will, son.”
“We’ll find out who he was, give him a proper funeral, with a name, with dignity,” Roman promised. “No one deserves to disappear from the world without a trace.” They reached the car. Roman opened the door and helped Misha get in.
The boy leaned back into the soft leather seat and closed his eyes. He was exhausted. Before starting the car, Roman took out his phone. His hands were shaking so much he almost dropped it.
He dialed a number he knew by heart. The home number. Three rings. Four. “Hello.” The voice of Marina, his ex-wife, came from the other end. Tired, dead inside, just like his own.
“Marina.” Roman could barely speak. “Marina, you need to sit down.” “Roma, what is it? Did something happen?
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