Are you okay?” “I’m okay. I’m more than okay.”
He looked at his son in the passenger seat. Misha opened his eyes and looked at him with fear. Fear of his mother’s reaction. “Marisha, our son is alive. Misha is alive. He’s here with me now. We’re coming home.”
Silence on the other end of the line. Then a scream. A scream that tore from the depths of her soul. “What? Roma, for God’s sake, don’t joke like that! Don’t do this to me!” “I’m not joking, my love. I swear on everything. It’s him.”
“It’s our boy. There was a mistake with the identification. He’s alive. He’s injured. He’s changed. But it’s him. It’s our Misha.” Roman couldn’t stop crying.
“We’ll be there in half an hour. Get everything ready. Our son is coming home.” Marina dropped the phone on the floor. Her screams filled the empty house. Screams of desperation, of joy, of disbelief.
The housekeeper ran in from the kitchen, thinking some tragedy had occurred. “Marina Viktorovna, what’s wrong? Are you unwell?” But Marina couldn’t speak. She could only cry and laugh at the same time.
The mad laughter of someone who doesn’t know whether to believe it or if they’ve finally gone insane. In the car, Roman drove slowly. Not because of the rain or traffic, but because he couldn’t stop looking to his side.
Every second, he took his eyes off the road to make sure Misha was still there, that this wasn’t a dream. That he wouldn’t wake up to find he’d imagined it all. “Dad, what if Mom doesn’t believe me?” Misha asked in a small voice.
“What if she looks at me and doesn’t recognize me? I’ve changed so much.” “She’ll know, son. A mother always knows,” Roman said. But deep down, he was afraid too.
Afraid that Marina would look at this thin, scarred boy and not see the perfect son she had lost. The truth was, Misha had changed, changed a lot.
The scar on his face completely altered his features. The badly healed broken leg made him walk with a limp. His hair, once thick and shiny, now grew in patches, with bald spots where the burns had prevented it from growing back.
And he was so thin, so very thin, that he looked like a different boy. But the eyes. The eyes were the same. Brown, large, with that special look Marina always said was just like his grandfather’s.
They pulled up to the gated community. The guard almost refused to let them in when he saw the dirty, ragged boy in the passenger seat of Roman’s car. “Roman Alexandrovich, are you sure that…”
“Open the gate, Zhenya, now!” Roman’s voice had an authority he hadn’t used in months. “This is my son. My son has come home.” Zhenya turned pale. Everyone in the community knew about the Tarasov family’s tragedy.
Many had been to the funeral. Some still brought food to the house from time to time, trying to ease a pain that couldn’t be eased. The gate slowly opened. Roman drove in and parked in the garage.
A huge white mansion with a pristine garden. Everything money could buy, except the one thing that mattered. Until now. The front door flew open before Roman even turned off the engine.
Marina ran out barefoot, in her nightgown, with disheveled hair. She had been awakened from her sedatives by Roman’s call. “Misha! Misha!” she was screaming and crying at the same time.
Roman got out of the car and opened the passenger door. He helped Misha out, supporting him firmly because the crutch was slippery from the rain. Marina stopped three meters away. She stopped abruptly, as if she had hit an invisible wall.
She stared. Just stared. Her eyes wide, her mouth open, her hands trembling. “Mom!” Misha whispered. “Mom, it’s me!” “No, it can’t be!” Marina shook her head.
“My son was… He didn’t have these scars! He didn’t…”
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