**Diary Entry**
Raising triplets had been entirely ordinaryuntil one of them began saying things no seven-year-old should know.
We raised them the same way, yet one day, one of them started speaking in ways that unsettled us. From the beginning, people joked wed never tell them apart. So, we gave them bow ties: blue, red, and emerald. Three identical boys with matching scrapes, their own secret language, and the uncanny habit of finishing each others sentences. It felt like raising one soul split across three bodies.
Then Elliotthe one in emeraldstarted waking in tears. Not from nightmares. From what he called *memories*.
Do you remember the old house with the red door? he asked one morning.
We didnt. Our house never had one.
Why dont we see Mrs Langley anymore? She always gave me peppermint sweets.
We knew no one by that name.
Later, he whispered at night, I miss Dads green Buickthe one with the dented bumper.
Wed never owned a Buick.
At first, we laughed it off as childish imagination. But Elliots tone wasnt playful. He spoke with quiet certainty, as if recalling his own past.
Soon, he began drawing. Page after page of the same place: a house with a red door, tulips in the garden, ivy climbing the chimney. His brothers thought it was brilliant. Elliot just looked sad, as if mourning something lost.
One day, while I rummaged through garage boxes, he asked for his old baseball mitt.
You dont play baseball, mate, I said.
I did, he murmured. Before the fall. He touched the back of his head.
We took him to a doctor. The paediatrician referred us to a psychologist. Dr. Barnes listened carefully and said Elliots memories werent ordinary fantasies. Some call them past-life recollections, she explained. Controversial, yesbut real to the child.
I didnt want to believe it. Then Dr. Reed, a researcher, asked Elliot during a video call:
What was your name before?
Danny, he said. Danny Carter or Carter. I lived in Oxford. In a house with a red door.
He described falling off a ladder while retrieving a flag. A head injury. Pain. Darkness.
Days later, Dr. Reed called. Shed found records: Daniel Carter, Oxford. Died in 1978, aged seven. Skull fracture from a ladder fall.
The photo she sent nearly stopped my heart. The boy looked like Elliot. Same curls. Same eyes.
After that, Elliot seemed calmer, as if closing a chapter. The drawings stopped. The strange memories faded. He returned to playing with his brothers, laughing as before.
Then a letter arrived. No return address. Inside: a photo of a house with a red door, tulips in the garden, ivy on the chimney. A shaky signature read: *Thought you might like this.* *Mrs Langley*
Wed never told anyone about Mrs Langley. Only Elliot. And Dr. Reed, whod since vanished.
Years later, at fifteen, Elliot kept a shoebox under his bed. Inside: a single marble, blue with green swirls. A note in childish scrawl: *For Elliotfrom Danny. You found it.*
When I asked where it came from, he smiled.
Some things dont need explaining, Dad.
I still dont know if I believe in past lives. But I believe in Elliot. In the quiet wisdom he carries, in the way he sometimes gazes at the skyas if remembering something far away.
Children come with their own stories. Sometimes, those stories arent ours to understand. Only to hold.
