Two Years After My 5-Year-Old Son Died, I Heard Someone Knocking on My Door Saying, ‘Mom, It’s Me’

It was late Thursday night. I was wiping the counter when I heard three soft knocks and a trembling voice:

“Mom… it’s me.”

Impossible. My son Evan had died two years ago. I had kissed his tiny casket, mourned him every day.

I opened the door. A little boy stood there, barefoot, wearing the faded blue rocket ship shirt he had on at the hospital. Same freckles, same dimple.

“Mommy?” he whispered. “I came home.”

He knew things only my son would—his favorite cup, the way he drooled on the straw. I called 911. Officers arrived. Evan refused to let go of me. A hospital check and DNA test confirmed the impossible: he was mine.

Detective Harper explained a breach at the state morgue. Evan had been taken, mistaken for another child, and kept by a woman named Melissa.

Two days later, Melissa and an accomplice were arrested. Evan was finally home, safe.

Now he sleeps beside me, clutching my hand. Sometimes I watch his chest rise and fall, marveling that, against all odds, my son came home.