**PART 1**
I buried my first love thirty years ago.
At least, that’s what I believed.
Gabriel was seventeen.
I was sixteen.
We were young enough to believe we had forever and old enough to think we understood what love meant.
We spent almost every afternoon together that summer. We rode our bicycles along the river, shared ice cream on the courthouse steps, and talked about the future as if it were something we could simply choose.
Gabriel came from a wealthy family.
I didn’t.
His parents owned several businesses in town and lived in a huge white house behind iron gates.
My mother cleaned houses for a living.
Gabriel’s parents never liked me.
His mother once told him, within earshot of me, that girls like me didn’t belong in their family.
Gabriel didn’t care.
He told me he loved me.
Then, one night, everything changed.
There was a fire at his family’s lake house.
The news said Gabriel had been trapped inside.
I remember standing outside the hospital at two in the morning while firefighters searched the ruins.
I remember Gabriel’s father grabbing my arm.
“This is your fault.”
I remember his mother screaming that Gabriel had been planning to run away with me.
I remember asking the police if they had found him.
They wouldn’t look me in the eye.
Two days later, there was a funeral.
Closed casket.
No viewing.
His parents said the fire had destroyed the body beyond recognition.
I stood beside the grave holding the photograph Gabriel had given me.
I couldn’t cry.
I simply stared at the coffin and kept thinking:
That’s not him.
But eventually, everyone else moved on.
I didn’t.
For years, I dreamed about Gabriel.
Sometimes I dreamed he was standing outside my house.
Sometimes he called my name.
Sometimes I woke up convinced I had heard his voice.
I eventually married.
I had children.
I built a life.
But some part of me remained sixteen years old, standing beside a burning house and waiting for Gabriel to walk out.
Thirty years passed.
Then, last month, a moving truck pulled up next door.
I was watering my flowers when the back doors opened.
A man stepped out.
I dropped the watering can.
He looked about forty-seven.
Gray beginning at his temples.
Tall.
Broad shoulders.
But it wasn’t any of that.
It was his eyes.
The exact same green eyes.
The same crooked smile.
The same slight tilt of his head when he listened.
My heart began pounding.
I told myself it was impossible.
There were millions of people in the world.
People resembled each other.
Memory could play tricks.
I went inside.
I didn’t tell anyone.
Three days later, someone knocked on my door.
It was him.
“Hi,” he said. “I’m Elias. I just moved in next door.”
I stared at him.
“Have we met?”
He smiled.
“I don’t think so.”
His voice was different.
Older.
Deeper.
But there was something familiar about it.
We talked for several minutes.
Then he reached for something on a shelf.
His sleeve slid up.
I saw the scars.
Burn scars.
Long, pale lines running across his forearm.
My breath caught.
But it wasn’t the burns that stopped me.
It was a tiny crescent-shaped scar near his wrist.
I’d seen it thousands of times.
Gabriel got it when we were fourteen after he fell through a broken fence.
I had cleaned the wound myself.
I knew that scar.
My voice barely came out.
“Gabe?”
He froze.
The room went completely silent.
He slowly lowered his arm.
Then he looked at me.
Not Elias.
Gabriel.
My Gabriel.
His eyes filled with tears.
“You were never supposed to know I survived.”
