Chapter 1: The Girl in the Window
I lost my 11-year-old daughter in a car accident — after we moved to another city, my younger daughter said, "Mom, I saw my sister in the window.
She lives in the house across the street."
It had only been a few months since my 11-year-old daughter, Ava, d*ed in a car accident.
That day, my husband, Ryan, had picked Ava up from school, and they were driving home when another car crashed into them.
Ryan miraculously survived.
But Ava didn't.
That kind of pain never really goes away.
Sometimes I feel like I can't even breathe because it hurts so much.
But I'm trying to keep living because I still have my 5-year-old daughter, Gabriella.
Ryan and I decided we wanted to move to another city.
We just needed some kind of change.
So we sold our house and bought another one in a city about three hours away.
The first few nights in the new house were fine.
It even felt like we were starting to take our minds off the grief a little.
But one morning, I stepped into Gabriella's room to get her ready for preschool, and she was standing by the window.
When I asked why she hadn't put her toys in her backpack yet, she turned to me and said:
"Mom, I saw Ava in the window of that house."
And she pointed at the house across the street.
I hadn't met the people who lived there yet, and honestly, I thought the place might even be empty, maybe for sale, because I'd never seen anyone coming or going.
I looked out the window, but there was no one there.
The next day, Gabriella ran up to me and said again that she'd seen Ava in the window of the same house.
I tried to calm her down and gently explain that it wasn't possible.
But Gabriella burst into tears and said:
"Mom, I'm not lying.
I really saw Ava there."
That left me uneasy.
I started worrying that Gabriella was taking the loss of her sister much harder than I'd realized.
That night, I put her to bed and sat in a chair by her window, just keeping an eye on her because I was so worried she'd start crying again.
Then, out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw the curtains shift in the window across the street.
I turned toward it and looked more closely.
There really was a little girl standing there.
The moment she saw me, she quickly pulled the curtain shut.
I didn't see her face.
The next morning, I baked an apple pie and decided to go introduce myself to the people in that house and figure out what was going on.
I knocked on the door, and a woman who looked to be around 60 answered.
Then I heard someone coming down the stairs behind her, asking who was at the door.
And that's when I screamed:
"Oh my God, Ava?
What the hell is going on here?"
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May you like
Who is that little girl — and why does she look exactly like Ava?
Comment **"NEXT"** if you want Part 2 in the comments.
